Not all that the wittiest men of
his time could say, nor aught that comedy or farce could produce on the
stage, was ever known to call up more than a smile on his iron-bound
countenance. Happening one day, however, to stray into the fields, he
espied an ass browsing on thistles; and in this there appears to have
been something so eminently ridiculous in those days that the man who
never laughed before could not help laughing at it outright. It was but
the burst of a moment; Agelastus immediately recovered himself, and
never laughed again.
MEMORY
[Sidenote: _Percy Anecdotes_]
A player being reproached by Rich for having forgot some of the words in
"The Beggar's Opera," on the fifty-third night of its performance, cried
out, "What! do you think one can remember a thing for ever?"
"COME IN HERE"
[Sidenote: _Percy Anecdotes_]
Burton, in his "Melancholy," quoting from Poggius, the Florentine, tells
us of a physician in Milan who kept a house for the reception of
lunatics, and, by way of cure, used to make his patients stand for a
length of time in a pit of water, some up to the knees, some to the
girdle, and others as high as the chin, _pro modo insaniae_, according as
they were more or less affected. An inmate of this establishment, who
happened, "by chance," to be pretty well recovered, was standing at the
door of the house, and, seeing a gallant cavalier ride past with a hawk
on his fist, and his spaniels after him, he must needs ask what all
these preparations meant.
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