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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 6
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
Among the curiosities in the church of St. Anna, Augsburg, there is the grave of a spice-merchant, with the epitaph P. P. P. We do not think that the most industrious ingenuity could supply the interpretation, which is as follows, and is very suggestive of Peter Piper and his pickled peppers:
Piper Peperit Pecuniam
Pecunia Peperit Pompam
Pompa Peperit Pauperiem
Pauperies Peperit Pietatem
Which may be freely rendered, following the alliteration: « Pepper produced Pelf; Pelf produced Pomp; Pomp produced Poverty; Poverty produced Piety. » A whole biography concealed in one letter !
A burglar at Gore having made an unsuccessful raid on a bookseller's shop, « Cyclops » has seized his tuneful lyre, and perpetrated nine stanzas on the subject with but a single rhyme. He thus begins:
There was an old burglar of Gore,
Who burgled a bookseller's store;
But he found that his pains
Far outbalanced his gains—
Which has oftentimes happened before.
There were booklets and pamphlets galore
On Drink, Female Franchise, and Lore,
And had he wished knowledge
To help him at college
He'd have got all he wanted—and more.
How he found that the bookseller's drawer
Had been « gone through, » and how the brute swore
To see a few « browns »
In the place of half-crowns
To tell would assuredly bore.
Homeward-bound comps in the small hours have many times interrupted burglars at their work, and such appears to have been the case in this instance, for the poet goes on to relate how « a fast compositor, who of races had won quite a score, » startled the robber, and gave chase, but notwithstanding his fleetness of foot, failed to capture him.