serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish
young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd
to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and
on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there.
It is a notable circumstance that extraordinary names never seem
extraordinary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were
branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite
unconscious of anything out of the common.

I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but
English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not
thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or
dead, can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for
example--if the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as
remarkable, in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British
officer who was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of
blessed memory 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished
himself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine
Coffin. I trust that the gallant major became a colonel later and is
still alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to lose a man with a
name like that.

Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of "The Pall Mall
Gazette" an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was
arrested (it ought to have been by "a peeler") for purloining money
from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of
Bradford--_des noms bien idylliques!_ What mortal could have a more
ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled Onions?
And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more incredible
coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No story-writer