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Show ROLAND AND DIANA. A wit among the students of the Rochester Theological Seminary has contrived the following love tale, the chief interest of which will be found ??? in the assemblage of words liable to be mispronounced. Webster's? Worcester's? Dictionary is the standard, the pronunciation first given in that volume being always the one to decide. Let our readers try this puzzle in orthpogy? <br><br> Roland and Diana were lovers. Diana was ephemeral but comely, hypochondrical but not lugubrious, didactic but not dishonest, nor given to ribald or truculent grimaces. Her pedal extremities were perhaps a trifle too large for playing organ pedals successfully, but her heart was not at all adamantine, and her address was peremptory without being effuse?. On the whole she might well become the inamorata of one retired to some quiet vicarage away from the squalor and clangor, the dishonesty and contumely, of a great metropolis. <br><br> Roland on the other hand, was of a saturnine countenance, at once ??? and combative in disposition, so that his wassails and orgies were almost maniacal in their details. He was a telegrapher by profession, having received a diploma from Cains? Oains? College, but aggrandized, his stipend by dabbling in philology, orthoopy?, and zoology during his lecture hours, so that he was accused of fetichism? and forgiversation? by his patrons. Still his acumen and prescience were such that only a misogynist would discern that he was an aspirant for the gallows. His acetic, rather than ascetic, nature apparently inclined him to visit a chemical laboratory, well filled with apparatus, to which he had access, when he often returned with globules of iodine and albumen on his [unreadable word] shoes which subjected him to the risk of numerous altercations with his landlady, a virago and pythoness? [unreadable word and line]. <br><br> Roland had, however, become acclimated to his place, received everything with equability, reclined upon the divan while he contemplated the elysium? where Diana dwelt, and addressed donative [unreadable] to her in the subsidence of the raillery. <br><br> There was a certain diocesan who endeavored to dispossess Roland in the affections of Diana, but he was enervated by bronchitis, laryngitis, and diphtheria, which on their subsidence left his carotid artery in an apparently lethargic condition. He had sent Diana a ring set with onyx, a chalcedonic variety of stone, and once hung a placard where he knew she would see it from her casement, but she steadfastly rejected his overtures, and ogled him as if he were a dromedary. The diocesan betook himself to absolutory prayers, but continued his digressions and inquiries. <br><br> Roland became cognizant of this amour and armed with a [unreadable] inveigled him into a kind of assignation beneath a jasmine, where he inveighed against this "Gay Lothario," who defended himself with a falchion until Roland disarmed him, boughing? his palfrey withal. After the joust the prebendary aAbjectly apologized, albeit in a scarcely respirable condition, then hastened to the pharmacsutie?'s aerie for coparbs?, morphine, and quinine, and was not seen again until the next Michaelmas? <br><br> Roland returned on Thanksgiving Day, took an inventory of his possessions, which consisted of a large quantity of almond cement?, a package of envelopes, a dish of anchovy sauce, a tame falcon, a book on acoustics, a miniature of a mirage?, a treatise on the epizootie? Epitzooto?, a stomacher lined with sarcenet, a cerement of sepulture, a cadaver and a bomb. The next day the hymeneal rites were performed, and Diana became thenceforth his faithful coadjutant and housewife. |