text:
John Godfrey Saxe

John Godfrey Saxe (2 June 1816 – 31 March 1887) was an American poet.

Quotes

 * Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.
 * As quoted in University Chronicle. University of Michigan (27 March 1869) books.google.de, Daily Cleveland Herald (29 March 1869), McKean Miner (22 April 1869), and "Quote... Misquote" by Fred R. Shapiro in The New York Times (21 July 2008); similar remarks have long been attributed to Otto von Bismarck, but this is the earliest known quote regarding laws and sausages, and according to Shapiro's research, such remarks only began to be attributed to Bismarck in the 1930s.

 * It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind.
 * "The Blindmen and the Elephant", a poem based on ancient parables of blind men and an elephant.

 * And so these men of Hindustan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right And all were in the wrong. So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
 * "The Blindmen and the Elephant".

 * Again I hear the creaking step! — He's rapping at the door! — Too well I know the boding sound That ushers in a bore.
 * "My Familiar".

 * In vain I speak of urgent tasks; In vain I scowl and pout; A frown is no extinguisher — It does not put him out!
 * "My Familiar".

 * He takes the strangest liberties — But never takes his leave!
 * "My Familiar".

 * Young men! it 's a critical thing to go Exactly right with a lady in tow; But when you are in the proper track, Just go ahead, and never look back!
 * "Orpheus and Eurydice".

 * Don't use strong drink, — pray let me advise, — It 's bad for the stomach, and ruins the eyes;
 * "Polyphemus and Ulysses".

 * INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!"
 * "Sonnet to a Clam".

 * "God bless the man who first invented sleep!" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I.
 * "Early Rising".

 * But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off, — Early Rising!
 * "Early Rising".

 * I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right! — it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!"
 * "Early Rising"; compare: "The healthy-wealthy-wise affirm, That early birds obtain the worm — (The worm rose early too!)", Frederick Locker-Lampson.

 * "Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried: "Three times! — you know the fable, — (I'll make it thirty," muttered he, "But I will lay the cable!")
 * "How Cyrus Laid the Cable".

 * NAY, weep not, dearest, though the child be dead; He lives again in Heaven's unclouded life,
 * "Bereavement".

 * What Lowely meant she didn't know For she always avoided "everything low,"
 * "The Proud Miss MacBride".

 * I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in the eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing — yes, — I'm growing old!
 * "I'm growin old.

 * I asked of Echo 't other day (Whose words are few and often funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love, and matrimony. Quoth Echo, plainly, — "Matter-o'-money."
 * "Echo".

 * 'T is wise to learn; 't is God-like to create.
 * "The Library".

 * A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But she was rich, and he was poor, And so it might not be.
 * "The Way of the World".

 * A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But he was high and she was low, And so it might not be.
 * "The Way of the World".

 * A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But their sires disputed about the Mass, And so it might not be.
 * "The Way of the World".

 * Bless me! this is pleasant Riding on the Rail.
 * "Hymn of the Rail".

The Masquerade and Other Poems (1866)

 * The Poet's License! — 't is the right, Within the rule of duty, To look on all delightful things Throughout the world of beauty. To gaze with rapture at the stars That in the skies are glowing; To see the gems of perfect dye That in the woods are growing, — And more than sage astronomer, And more than learned florist, To read the glorious homilies Of Firmament and Forest.
 * "The Poet's License".

 * When Nature gives a gorgeous rose, Or yields the simplest fern, She writes this motto on the leaves, — "To whom it may concern!" And so it is the poet comes And revels in her bowers, And, — though another hold the land, Is owner of the flowers.
 * "The Poet's License".

title: John Godfrey Saxe


text:
Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist and poet, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced along with his sister, Mary Lamb.

Quotes

 * Severe and saintly righteousness Composed the clear white bridal dress; Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King Bought with his blood the marriage ring
 * A Vision Of Repentance, as quoted in Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

 * In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb The delicate sense and most divine repose Of spiritus angelical Blessed be God, The measure of his judgments is not fixed By man's erroneous standard. He discerns No such inordinate difference and vast Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, No man on earth is holy called: they best Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield, To him of his own works the praise, his due.
 * Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72

 * Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust, Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping
 * In his letter to Vincent Novello (8 November 1830)

 * MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. —With me “the former things are passed away,” and I have something more to do that [than] to feel. God almighty have us all in his keeping.
 * Lamb in September 27, 1796. In his letter to Coleridge; after the family tragedy. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Letters (1905).

 * I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further...God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!
 * Lamb's letter to Coleridge (24 October 1796)’ as quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905), Letter 11.

 * Far transcend my weak invention. ’Tis a simple Christian child, Missionary young and mild, From her store of script’ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say Our Father To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart.
 * “The Young Catechist” (1827)

 * Atheists, or Deists only in the name, By word or deed deny a God. They eat Their daily bread, & draw the breath of heaven, Without a thought or thanks; heav'n's roof to them Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, No more, that light them to their purposes. They 'wander loose about.' They nothing see, Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save. So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,' Or like a dream of murder in the night, Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking The bones of all their pride.
 * Living Without God In The World (1798)

 * The flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry
 * Lamb's letter to Charles Cowden Clarke (summer, 1821), as quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905), Letter 263

 * Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
 * Letter to Coleridge (1790)

 * I have something more to do than to feel.
 * Letter to Coleridge (27 September 1796), after the death of Lamb's mother.

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
 * I have had playmates, I have had companions,
 * Old Familiar Faces (1798)

 * For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.
 * Letter to Coleridge (6 August 1800)

 * Please to blot out gentle hearted, and substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-ey'd, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the Gentleman in question.
 * Letter to Coleridge (14 August 1800)

 * Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.
 * Letter to Wordsworth (30 January 1801)

 * The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
 * Letter to Thomas Manning (15 February 1802)

 * Nursed amid her [London's] noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?
 * Letter to Thomas Manning (15 February 1802)

To that unknown and silent shore.
 * Gone before
 * Hester (1803), st. 7

 * A good-natured woman...which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor.
 * Letter to William Hazlitt (10 November 1805)

 * Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
 * Letter to Southey (9 August 1815)

 * This very night I am going to leave off Tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.
 * Letter to Thomas Manning (26 December 1815)

 * [Of Coleridge] His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged.
 * Letter to Wordsworth (26 April 1816)

 * I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
 * Letter to John Chambers (1817)

 * Fanny Kelly's divine plain face.
 * Letter to Mrs. Wordsworth (18 February 1818)

And holiday-rejoicing spirit down .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . Sabbath-less Satan!
 * Who first invented work, and bound the free
 * Work (1819)

 * I came home for ever!
 * Letter to Bernard Barton (6 April 1825), on leaving his "33 years' desk" at the East India House.

What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?
 * Riddle of destiny, who can show
 * On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (1827)

 * When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!'
 * Letter to Proctor (22 January 1829), in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject (2000), p. 526

Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, nor for Handel.
 * Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
 * Letter to Mrs. William Hazlitt (1830)

 * Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world?  There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?
 * Letter to George Dyer (20 December 1830)

 * He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
 * Letter to Samuel Rogers (21 December 1833)

 * The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
 * Quoted in "Table Talk" in The Athenaeum magazine (4 January 1834)

 * The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.
 * My First Play; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Not if I know myself at all.
 * The Old and New Schoolmaster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.
 * Written at Cambridge; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.
 * I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
 * To the Editor of the Every-Day Book; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.
 * Captain Starkey; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Neat, not gaudy.
 * Letter to Wordsworth (1806); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
 * Lamb's Suppers; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."
 * Autobiographical Recollections (Leslie) ; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.
 * cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 186

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)
That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed.
 * For I hate, yet love thee, so,

Would do anything but die.
 * For thy sake, tobacco, I

Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.
 * Nay, rather,

That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, through thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem.
 * Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,

That our best friends do not know us.
 * Thou through such a mist dost show us,

Essays of Elia (1823)

 * The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
 * Oxford in the Vacation

 * For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
 * Oxford in the Vacation

 * The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.
 * The Two Races of Men

 * Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
 * The Two Races of Men

 * I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!
 * New Year's Eve

 * A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.
 * Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * I have no ear.
 * A Chapter on Ears

 * Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.
 * A Chapter on Ears; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
 * Imperfect Sympathies

 * Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
 * Witches, and Other Night Fears

 * Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
 * Valentine's Day

 * It is good to love the unknown.
 * Valentine's Day; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
 * The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.

 * Presents, I often say, endear absents.
 * A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * It argues an insensibility.
 * A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Last Essays of Elia (1833)

 * A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.
 * Poor Relations

 * I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
 * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

 * When I am not walking, I am reading;
 * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

 * Books think for me.
 * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

 * Things in books' clothing.
 * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

 * Books which are no books.
 * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.
 * The Convalescent

 * Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
 * Amicus Redivivus

 * A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
 * Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best

 * A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.
 * Popular Fallacies: XI, That We Must Not Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

 * The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.
 * Popular Fallacies: XIII, That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog

 * If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.
 * “The superannuated man”

 * From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.
 * “The superannuated man”

 * I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty.
 * “The superannuated man”

 * Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations.
 * “The superannuated man”

 * Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it ...
 * “The superannuated man”

 * A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.
 * “The superannuated man”

 * I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.
 * “The superannuated man”

Attributed

 * The mixture spoils two good things, as Charles Lamb (Elia) used to say of brandy and water.
 * Abraham Hayward, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1848

Quotes about Charles Lamb

 * Surely it is a matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with bitterness and made druken with wormwood, I conjre you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God and your God,' the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven.
 * Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Lamb, after the family tragedy.

 * Oaths fell from his mouth with a gentleness and sweetness which the blessings of other men cannot reach. His essays of Elia are full of this bright humour, this tender criticism. A ripple of tender laughter rips through them, just broke here and there by a sob.
 * Walter Levin.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Charles Lamb


text:
Artemus Ward

Artemus Ward (April 23, 1834 – March 6, 1867) was the nom de plume of Charles Farrar Browne, an American humorous writer.

Quotes

 * I am not a politician, and my other habits are good, also.
 * Fourth of July Oration.

 * The prevailin' weakness of most public men is to Slop over. G. Washington never slopt over.
 * Fourth of July Oration.

 * I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am.
 * Artemus Ward, His Travels, Lecture (1865).

 * Did you ever have the measels, and if so, how many?
 * Artemus Ward, His Travels, The Census.

 * My wife is one of the best wimin on this continent, altho' she isn't always gentle as a lamb, with mint sauce.
 * Artemus Ward, His Travels, "A War Meeting"

 * The Puritans nobly fled from a land of despotism to a land of freedim, where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but could prevent everybody else from enjoyin his.
 * London Punch Letters, No. 5 (1866).

 * Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?
 * Moses, the Sassy.

 * He is dreadfully married. "He's the most married man I ever saw in my life."
 * Moses, the Sassy.

 * Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrer [sic] money to do it with.
 * Science and Natural History, Letter VII to Punch, part of the Artemus Ward in London series (22 October 1866).

 * The sun has a right to "set" where it wants to, and so, I may add, has a hen.
 * A Mormon Romance, ch. 4.

 * They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, etc., make it prof'tible cherishin' it.
 * At the Tomb of Shakespeare.

Artemus Ward, His Book (1862)

 * I now bid you a welcome adoo.
 * The Shakers.

 * ...their eyes sparkled like diminds, their cheeks was like roses, and they was charmin enuff to make a man throw stuns at his granmother, if they axed him to.
 * The Shakers.

 * Hearto4, as I hav numerously obsarved, I have abstrained from having any sentimunts or principles, my pollertics, like my religion, bein of a exceedin accommodatin character. But the fack can't be no longer disgised that a Krysis is onto us, & I feel it's my dooty to accept your invite for one consecutive nite only.
 * The Crisis.

 * N.B. This is rote sarcastikul.
 * A Visit to Brigham Young.

 * The female woman is one of the greatest institooshuns of which this land can boste.
 * Woman's Rights.

Artemus Ward in London (1867)

 * Yes; there was an oration. We have a passion for oratory in America—political oratory chiefly. Our political orators never lose a chance to "express their views." They will do it. You cannot stop them. There was an execution in Ohio one day, and the Sheriff, before placing the rope round the murderer's neck, asked him if he had any remarks to make?  "If he hasn't," said a well-known local orator, pushing his way rapidly through the dense crowd to the gallows—"if our ill-starred feller-citizen don't feel inclined to make a speech and is in no hurry, I should like to avail myself of the present occasion to make some remarks on the necessity of a new protective tariff!"
 * "Pyrotechny: A Romance after the French" (p. 87, some paragraph breaks omitted)

title: Artemus Ward