At a rehearsal of _As You Like It_, Mrs. Billington, who sustained the
principal female character, called out in a very peremptory manner,
"Fellow, bring me my crook." Mr. Simmonds, the property-man, immediately
replied, "Madam, your fellow is not here." She felt the rebuke, and made
the request more successfully in more proper language; thus by hook or
by crook obtaining it.
* * * * *
Cato the Censor only repented of three things during his life--to have
gone by sea when he could go by land, to have passed a day inactive, and
to have told a secret to his wife.
* * * * *
"GONE TO JERICHO."
Tradition says that there is more than one place in the county of Essex
to which Henry VIII. used occasionally to retire with his mistresses.
One of these was Blackmore, at some distance from Shenfield. The
manor-house of Blackmore is called _Jericho;_ so when Harry chose to
retire with his mistresses, the cant phrase among the courtiers was,
"_He was gone to Jericho_." Hence this proverb or saying.