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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fiend’s Delight, by Dod Grile
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Fiend’s Delight
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Pseudonym: Dod Grile
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2002 [eBook #4793]
+[Most recently updated: February 18, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIEND’S DELIGHT ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Fiend’s Delight
+
+by Dod Grile
+
+
+“Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no
+worthy action done.”
+
+New York:
+1873.
+
+TO THE IMMUTABLE AND INFALLIBLE GODDESS, GOOD TASTE, IN GRATITUDE FOR
+HER CONDEMNATION OF ALL SUPERIOR AUTHORS, AND IN THE HOPE OF
+PROPITIATING HER CREATORS AND EXPOUNDERS,
+This Volume is reverentially Dedicated BY HER DEVOUT WORSHIPPER,
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PREFACE
+
+ SOME FICTION
+ One More Unfortunate
+ The Strong Young Man of Colusa
+ The Glad New Year
+ The Late Dowling, Senior
+ “Love’s Labour Lost”
+ A Comforter
+ Little Isaac
+ The Heels of Her
+ A Tale of Two Feet
+ The Scolliver Pig
+ Mr. Hunker’s Mourner
+ A Bit of Chivalry
+ The Head of the Family
+ Deathbed Repentance
+ The New Church that was not Built
+ A Tale of the Great Quake
+ Johnny
+ The Child’s Provider
+ Boys who Began Wrong
+ A Kansas Incident
+ Mr. Grile’s Girl
+ His Railway
+ Mr. Gish Makes a Present
+ A Cow-County Pleasantry
+ The Optimist, and What He Died Of
+ The Root of Education
+ Retribution
+ The Faithful Wife
+ Margaret the Childless
+ The Discomfited Demon
+ The Mistake of a Life
+ L. S.
+ The Baffled Asian
+
+ TALL TALK
+ A Call to Dinner
+ On Death and Immortality
+ Music—Muscular and Mechanical
+ The Good Young Man
+ The Average Parson
+ Did We Eat One Another?
+ Your Friend’s Friend
+ Le Diable est aux Vaches
+ Angels and Angles
+ A Wingless Insect
+ Pork on the Hoof
+ The Young Person
+ A Certain Popular Fallacy
+ Pastoral Journalism
+ Mendicity’s Mistake
+ Insects
+ Picnicking considered as a Mistake
+ Thanksgiving Day
+ Flogging
+ Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of the Press
+ Charity
+ The Study of Human Nature
+ Additional Talk—Done in the Country
+
+ Current Journalings
+
+ OBITUARY NOTICES
+ CHRISTIANS
+ PAGANS
+
+ MUSINGS, PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
+
+ LAUGHORISMS
+
+ “ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA
+
+ POESY
+ Ye Idyll of ye Hippopopotamus
+ Epitaph on George Francis Train
+ Jerusalem, Old and New
+ Communing with Nature
+ Conservatism and Progress
+ Inter Arma Silent Leges
+ Quintessence
+ Resurgam
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The atrocities constituting this “cold collation” of diabolisms are
+taken mainly from various Californian journals. They are cast in the
+American language, and liberally enriched with unintelligibility. If
+they shall prove incomprehensible on this side of the Atlantic, the
+reader can pass to the other side at a moderately extortionate charge.
+In the pursuit of my design I think I have killed a good many people in
+one way and another; but the reader will please to observe that they
+were not people worth the trouble of leaving alive. Besides, I had the
+interests of my collaborator to consult. In writing, as in compiling, I
+have been ably assisted by my scholarly friend Mr. Satan; and to this
+worthy gentleman must be attributed most of the views herein set forth.
+While the plan of the work is partly my own, its spirit is wholly his;
+and this illustrates the ascendancy of the creative over the merely
+imitative mind. _Palmam qui meruit ferat_—I shall be content with the
+profit.
+
+DOD GRILE.
+
+
+
+
+SOME FICTION
+
+
+
+
+“One More Unfortunate.”
+
+
+It was midnight—a black, wet, midnight—in a great city by the sea. The
+church clocks were booming the hour, in tones half-smothered by the
+marching rain, when an officer of the watch saw a female figure glide
+past him like a ghost in the gloom, and make directly toward a wharf.
+The officer felt that some dreadful tragedy was about to be enacted,
+and started in pursuit. Through the sleeping city sped those two dark
+figures like shadows athwart a tomb. Out along the deserted wharf to
+its farther end fled the mysterious fugitive, the guardian of the night
+vainly endeavouring to overtake, and calling to her to stay. Soon she
+stood upon the extreme end of the pier, in the scourging rain which
+lashed her fragile figure and blinded her eyes with other tears than
+those of grief. The night wind tossed her tresses wildly in air, and
+beneath her bare feet the writhing billows struggled blackly upward for
+their prey. At this fearful moment the panting officer stumbled and
+fell! He was badly bruised; he felt angry and misanthropic. Instead of
+rising to his feet, he sat doggedly up and began chafing his abraded
+shin. The desperate woman raised her white arms heavenward for the
+final plunge, and the voice of the gale seemed like the dread roaring
+of the waters in her ears, as down, down, she went—in imagination—to a
+black death among the spectral piles. She backed a few paces to secure
+an impetus, cast a last look upon the stony officer, with a wild shriek
+sprang to the awful verge and came near losing her balance. Recovering
+herself with an effort, she turned her face again to the officer, who
+was clawing about for his missing club. Having secured it, he started
+to leave.
+
+In a cosy, vine-embowered cottage near the sounding sea, lives and
+suffers a blighted female. Nothing being known of her past history, she
+is treated by her neighbours with marked respect. She never speaks of
+the past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of a
+certain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes an
+expression which can only be described as frozen profanity.
+
+
+
+
+The Strong Young Man of Colusa.
+
+
+Professor Dramer conducted a side-show in the wake of a horse-opera,
+and the same sojourned at Colusa. Enters unto the side show a powerful
+young man of the Colusa sort, and would see his money’s worth. Blandly
+and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man’s
+attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the
+blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves
+before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the
+spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful
+rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently
+absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays
+clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into
+his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings
+transcend expression. Not a syllable breathes he, but with a deep-drawn
+sigh he turns his broad back upon the astonishing display, and goes
+thoughtfully forth into his native wild. Half an hour later might have
+been seen that brawny Colusan, emerging from an adjacent forest with a
+strong faggot.
+
+Then this Colusa young man unto the appalled Professor thus: “Ther
+ain’t no good place yer in Kerloosy fur fittin’ out serpence to be
+subtler than all the beasts o’ the field. Ther’s enmity atween our seed
+and ther seed, an’ it shell brooze ther head.” And with a singleness of
+purpose and a rapt attention to detail that would have done credit to a
+lean porker garnering the strewn kernels behind a deaf old man who
+plants his field with corn, he started in upon that reptilian host, and
+exterminated it with a careful thoroughness of extermination.
+
+
+
+
+The Glad New Year.
+
+
+A poor brokendown drunkard returned to his dilapidated domicile early
+on New Year’s morn. The great bells of the churches were jarring the
+creamy moonlight which lay above the soggy undercrust of mud and snow.
+As he heard their joyous peals, announcing the birth of a new year, his
+heart smote his old waistcoat like a remorseful sledge-hammer.
+
+“Why,” soliloquized he, “should not those bells also proclaim the
+advent of a new resolution? I have not made one for several weeks, and
+it’s about time. I’ll swear off.”
+
+He did it, and at that moment a new light seemed to be shed upon his
+pathway; his wife came out of the house with a tin lantern. He rushed
+frantically to meet her. She saw the new and holy purpose in his eye.
+She recognised it readily—she had seen it before. They embraced and
+wept. Then stretching the wreck of what had once been a manly form to
+its full length, he raised his eyes to heaven and one hand as near
+there as he could get it, and there in the pale moonlight, with only
+his wondering wife, and the angels, and a cow or two, for witnesses, he
+swore he would from that moment abstain from all intoxicating liquors
+until death should them part. Then looking down and tenderly smiling
+into the eyes of his wife, he said: “Is it not well, dear one?” With a
+face beaming all over with a new happiness, she replied:
+
+“Indeed it is, John—let’s take a drink.” And they took one, she with
+sugar and he plain.
+
+The spot is still pointed out to the traveller.
+
+
+
+
+The Late Dowling, Senior
+
+
+My friend, Jacob Dowling, Esq., had been spending the day very
+agreeably in his counting-room with some companions, and at night
+retired to the domestic circle to ravel out some intricate accounts.
+Seated at his parlour table he ordered his wife and children out of the
+room and addressed himself to business. While clambering wearily up a
+column of figures he felt upon his cheek the touch of something that
+seemed to cling clammily to the skin like the caress of a naked oyster.
+Thoughtfully setting down the result of his addition so far as he had
+proceeded with it, he turned about and looked up.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, “but you have not the advantage of
+my acquaintance.”
+
+“Why, Jake,” replied the apparition—whom I have thought it useless to
+describe—“don’t you know me?”
+
+“I confess that your countenance is familiar,” returned my friend, “but
+I cannot at this moment recall your name. I never forget a face, but
+names I cannot remember.”
+
+“Jake!” rumbled the spectre with sepulchral dignity, a look of
+displeasure crawling across his pallid features, “you’re foolin’.”
+
+“I give you my word I am quite serious. Oblige me with your name, and
+favour me with a statement of your business with me at this hour.”
+
+The disembodied party sank uninvited into a chair, spread out his knees
+and stared blankly at a Dutch clock with an air of weariness and
+profound discouragement. Perceiving that his guest was making himself
+tolerably comfortable my friend turned again to his figures, and
+silence reigned supreme. The fire in the grate burned noiselessly with
+a mysterious blue light, as if it could do more if it wished; the Dutch
+clock looked wise, and swung its pendulum with studied exactness, like
+one who is determined to do his precise duty and shun responsibility;
+the cat assumed an attitude of intelligent neutrality. Finally the
+spectre trained his pale eyes upon his host, pulled in a long breath
+and remarked:
+
+“Jake, I’m yur dead father. I come back to have a talk with ye ’bout
+the way things is agoin’ on. I want to know ’f you think it’s right
+notter _recognise_ yur dead parent?”
+
+“It _is_ a little rough on you, dear,” replied the son without looking
+up, “but the fact is that [7 and 3 are 10, and 2 are 12, and 6 are 18]
+it is so long since you have been about [and 3 off are 15] that I had
+kind of forgotten, and [2 into 4 goes twice, and 7 into 6 you can’t]
+you know how it is yourself. May I be permitted to again inquire the
+precise nature of your present business?”
+
+“Well, yes—if you wont talk anything but shop I s’pose I must come to
+the p’int. Isay! you don’t keep any thing to drink ’bout yer, do
+ye—Jake?”
+
+“14 from 23 are 9—I’ll get you something when we get done. Please
+explain how we can serve one another.”
+
+“Jake, I done everything for you, and you ain’t done nothin’ for me
+since I died. I want a monument bigger’n Dave Broderick’s, with an
+eppytaph in gilt letters, by Joaquin Miller. I can’t git into any kind
+o’ society till I have ’em. You’ve no idee how exclusive they are where
+I am.”
+
+This dutiful son laid down his pencil and effected a stiffly vertical
+attitude. He was all attention:
+
+“Anything else to-day?” he asked—rather sneeringly, I grieve to state.
+
+“No-o-o, I don’t think of anything special,” drawled the ghost
+reflectively; “I’d like to have an iron fence around it to keep the
+cows off, but I s’pose that’s included.”
+
+“_Of_ course! And a gravel walk, and a lot of abalone shells, and fresh
+posies daily; a marble angel or two for company, and anything else that
+will add to your comfort. Have you any other extremely reasonable
+request to make of me?”
+
+“Yes—since you mention it. I want you to contest my will. Horace Hawes
+is having his’n contested.”
+
+“My fine friend, you did not make any will.”
+
+“That ain’t o’ no consequence. You forge me a good ’un and contest
+that.”
+
+“With pleasure, sir; but that will be extra. Now indulge me in one
+question. You spoke of the society where you reside. _Where_ do you
+reside?”
+
+The Dutch clock pounded clamorously upon its brazen gong a countless
+multitude of hours; the glowing coals fell like an avalanche through
+the grate, spilling all over the cat, who exalted her voice in a squawk
+like the deathwail of a stuck pig, and dashed affrighted through the
+window. A smell of scorching fur pervaded the place, and under cover of
+it the aged spectre walked into the mirror, vanishing like a dream.
+
+
+
+
+“Love’s Labour Lost”
+
+
+Joab was a beef, who was tired of being courted for his clean, smooth
+skin. So he backed through a narrow gateway six or eight times, which
+made his hair stand the wrong way. He then went and rubbed his fat
+sides against a charred log. This made him look untidy. You never
+looked worse in your life than Joab did.
+
+“Now,” said he, “I shall be loved for myself alone. I will change my
+name, and hie me to pastures new, and all the affection that is then
+lavished upon me will be pure and disinterested.”
+
+So he strayed off into the woods and came out at old Abner Davis’
+ranch. The two things Abner valued most were a windmill and a
+scratching-post for hogs. They were equally beautiful, and the fame of
+their comeliness had gone widely abroad. To them Joab naturally paid
+his attention. The windmill, who was called Lucille Ashtonbury
+Clifford, received him with expressions of the liveliest disgust. His
+protestations of affection were met by creakings of contempt, and as he
+turned sadly away he was rewarded by a sound spank from one of her
+fans. Like a gentlemanly beef he did not deign to avenge the insult by
+overturning Lucille Ashtonbury; and it is well for him that he did not,
+for old Abner stood by with a pitchfork and a trinity of dogs.
+
+Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off
+and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name was
+Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a multitude of
+pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling beef of uncanny
+exterior:
+
+“Comeer!”
+
+Joab paused, looked at her with his ox-eyes, and gravely marching up,
+commenced a vigorous scratching against her.
+
+“Arabella,” said he, “do you think you could love a shaggy-hided beef
+with black hair? Could you love him for himself alone?”
+
+Arabella had observed that the black rubbed off, and the hair lay sleek
+when stroked the right way.
+
+“Yes, I think so; could you?”
+
+This was a poser: Joab had expected her to talk business. He did not
+reply. It was only her arch way; she thought, naturally, that the best
+way to win any body’s love was to be a fool. She saw her mistake. She
+had associated with hogs all her life, and this fellow was a beef!
+Mistakes must be rectified very speedily in these matters.
+
+“Sir, I have for you a peculiar feeling; I may say a tenderness.
+Hereafter you, and you only, shall scratch against Arabella Cliftonbury
+Howard!”
+
+Joab was delighted; he stayed and scratched all day. He was loved for
+himself alone, and he did not care for anything but that. Then he went
+home, made an elaborate toilet, and returned to astonish her. Alas! old
+Abner had been about, and seeing how Joab had worn her smooth and
+useless, had cut her down for firewood. Joab gave one glance, then
+walked solemnly away into a “clearing,” and getting comfortably astride
+a blazing heap of logs, made a barbacue of himself!
+
+After all, Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford, the light-headed windmill,
+seems to have got the best of all this. I have observed that the
+light-headed commonly get the best of everything in this world; which
+the wooden-headed and the beef-headed regard as an outrage. I am not
+prepared to say if it is or not.
+
+
+
+
+A Comforter
+
+
+William Bunker had paid a fine of two hundred dollars for beating his
+wife. After getting his receipt he went moodily home and seated himself
+at the domestic hearth. Observing his abstracted and melancholy
+demeanour, the good wife approached and tenderly inquired the cause.
+“It’s a delicate subject, dear,” said he, with love-light in his eyes;
+“let’s talk about something good to eat.”
+
+Then, with true wifely instinct she sought to cheer him up with
+pleasing prattle of a new bonnet he had promised her. “Ah! darling,” he
+sighed, absently picking up the fire-poker and turning it in his hands,
+“let us change the subject.”
+
+Then his soul’s idol chirped an inspiring ballad, kissed him on the top
+of his head, and sweetly mentioned that the dressmaker had sent in her
+bill. “Let us talk only of love,” returned he, thoughtfully rolling up
+his dexter sleeve.
+
+And so she spoke of the vine-enfolded cottage in which she fondly hoped
+they might soon sip together the conjugal sweets. William became
+rigidly erect, a look not of earth was in his face, his breast heaved,
+and the fire-poker quivered with emotion. William felt deeply. “Mine
+own,” said the good woman, now busily irrigating a mass of snowy dough
+for the evening meal, “do you know that there is not a bite of meat in
+the house?”
+
+It is a cold, unlovely truth—a sad, heart-sickening fact—but it must be
+told by the conscientious novelist. William repaid all this
+affectionate solicitude—all this womanly devotion, all this trust,
+confidence, and abnegation in a manner that needs not be particularly
+specified.
+
+A short, sharp curve in the middle of that iron fire-poker is eloquent
+of a wrong redressed.
+
+
+
+
+Little Isaac
+
+
+Mr. Gobwottle came home from a meeting of the Temperance Legion
+extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it
+and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who
+was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest
+depths of the bolster: “Say, Jane?”
+
+Jane gave a vicious stab with the needle, impaling one of her fingers,
+and continued her work. There was a long silence, faintly punctuated by
+the bark of a distant dog. Again that voice—“Say—Jane!”
+
+The lady laid aside her work and wearily, replied: “Isaac, do go to
+sleep; they _are_ off.”
+
+Another and longer pause, during which the ticking of the clock became
+painful in the intensity of the silence it seemed to be measuring.
+“Jane, _what’s_ off!” “Why, your boots, to be sure,” replied the
+petulant woman, losing patience; “I pulled them off when you first lay
+down.”
+
+Again the prostrate gentleman was still. Then when the candle of the
+waking housewife had burned low down to the socket, and the wasted
+flame on the hearth was expiring bluely in convulsive leaps, the head
+of the family resumed: “Jane, who said anything about boots?”
+
+There was no reply. Apparently none was expected, for the man
+immediately rose, lengthened himself out like a telescope, and
+continued: “Jane, I must have smothered that brat, and I’m ’fernal
+sorry!”
+
+“What brat?” asked the wife, becoming interested.
+
+“Why, ours—our little Isaac. I saw you put ’im in bed last week, and
+I’ve been layin’ right onto ’im!”
+
+“What under the sun _do_ you mean?” asked the good wife; “we haven’t
+any brat, and never had, and his name should not be Isaac if we had. I
+believe you are crazy.”
+
+The man balanced his bulk rather unsteadily, looked hard into the eyes
+of his companion, and triumphantly emitted the following conundrum:
+“Jane, look-a-here! If we haven’t any brat, what’n thunder’s the use o’
+bein’ married!”
+
+Pending the solution of the momentous problem, its author went out and
+searched the night for a whisky-skin.
+
+
+
+
+The Heels of Her
+
+
+Passing down Commercial-street one fine day, I observed a lady standing
+alone in the middle of the sidewalk, with no obvious business there,
+but with apparently no intention of going on. She was outwardly very
+calm, and seemed at first glance to be lost in some serene
+philosophical meditation. A closer examination, however, revealed a
+peculiar restlessness of attitude, and a barely noticeable uneasiness
+of expression. The conviction came upon me that the lady was in
+distress, and as delicately as possible I inquired of her if such were
+not the case, intimating at the same time that I should esteem it a
+great favour to be permitted to do something. The lady smiled blandly
+and replied that she was merely waiting for a gentleman. It was
+tolerably evident that I was not required, and with a stammered apology
+I hastened away, passed clear around the block, came up behind her, and
+took up a position on a dry-goods box; it lacked an hour to dinner
+time, and I had leisure. The lady maintained her attitude, but with
+momently increasing impatience, which found expression in singular
+wave-like undulations of her lithe figure, and an occasional
+unmistakeable contortion. Several gentlemen approached, but were
+successively and politely dismissed. Suddenly she experienced a quick
+convulsion, strode sharply forward one step, stopped short, had another
+convulsion, and walked rapidly away. Approaching the spot I found a
+small iron grating in the sidewalk, and between the bars two little
+boot heels, riven from their kindred soles, and unsightly with snaggy
+nails.
+
+Heaven only knows why that entrapped female had declined the proffered
+assistance of her species—why she had elected to ruin her boots in
+preference to having them removed from her feet. Upon that day when the
+grave shall give up its dead, and the secrets of all hearts shall be
+revealed, I shall know all about it; but I want to know now.
+
+
+
+
+A Tale of Two Feet
+
+
+My friend Zacharias was accustomed to sleep with a heated stone at his
+feet; for the feet of Mr. Zacharias were as the feet of the dead. One
+night he retired as usual, and it chanced that he awoke some hours
+afterwards with a well-defined smell of burning leather, making it
+pleasant for his nostrils.
+
+“Mrs. Zacharias,” said he, nudging his snoring spouse, “I wish you
+would get up and look about. I think one of the children must have
+fallen into the fire.”
+
+The lady, who from habit had her own feet stowed comfortably away
+against the warm stomach of her lord and master, declined to make the
+investigation demanded, and resumed the nocturnal melody. Mr. Zacharias
+was angered; for the first time since she had sworn to love, honour,
+and obey, this female was in open rebellion. He decided upon prompt and
+vigorous action. He quietly moved over to the back side of the bed and
+braced his shoulders against the wall. Drawing up his sinewy knees to a
+level with his breast, he placed the soles of his feet broadly against
+the back of the insurgent, with the design of propelling her against
+the opposite wall. There was a strangled snort, then a shriek of female
+agony, and the neighbours came in.
+
+Mutual explanations followed, and Mr. Zacharias walked the streets of
+Grass Valley next day as if he were treading upon eggs worth a dollar a
+dozen.
+
+
+
+
+The Scolliver Pig
+
+
+One of Thomas Jefferson’s maxims is as follows: “When angry, count ten
+before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.” I once knew a man to
+square his conduct by this rule, with a most gratifying result. Jacob
+Scolliver, a man prone to bad temper, one day started across the fields
+to visit his father, whom he generously permitted to till a small
+corner of the old homestead. He found the old gentleman behind the
+barn, bending over a barrel that was canted over at an angle of seventy
+degrees, and from which issued a cloud of steam. Scolliver _père_ was
+evidently scalding one end of a dead pig—an operation essential to the
+loosening of the hair, that the corpse may be plucked and shaven.
+
+“Good morning, father,” said Mr. Scolliver, approaching, and displaying
+a long, cheerful smile. “Got a nice roaster there?” The elder
+gentleman’s head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until
+his eyes pointed backward; then he drew his arms out of the barrel, and
+finally, revolving his body till it matched his head, he deliberately
+mounted upon the supporting block and sat down upon the sharp edge of
+the barrel in the hot steam. Then he replied, “Good mornin’ Jacob. Fine
+mornin’.”
+
+“A little warm in spots, I should imagine,” returned the son. “Do you
+find that a comfortable seat?” “Why-yes-it’s good enough for an old
+man,” he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and with an uneasy
+gesture of the legs; “don’t make much difference in this life where we
+set, if we’re good—does it? This world ain’t heaven, anyhow, I
+s’spose.”
+
+“There I do not entirely agree with you,” rejoined the young man,
+composing his body upon a stump for a philosophical argument. “I don’t
+neither,” added the old one, absently, screwing about on the edge of
+the barrel and constructing a painful grimace. There was no argument,
+but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party sprang off that barrel
+with exceeding great haste, as of one who has made up his mind to do a
+thing and is impatient of delay. The seat of his trousers was steaming
+grandly, the barrel upset, and there was a great wash of hot water,
+leaving a deposit of spotted pig. In life that pig had belonged to Mr.
+Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver the younger was angry, but
+remembering Jefferson’s maxim, he rattled off the number ten, finishing
+up with “You—thief!” Then perceiving himself _very_ angry, he began all
+over again and ran up to one hundred, as a monkey scampers up a ladder.
+As the last syllable shot from his lips he planted a dreadful blow
+between the old man’s eyes, with a shriek that sounded like—“You son of
+a sea-cook!”
+
+Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken beef, and his son
+often afterward explained that if he had not counted a hundred, and so
+given himself time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he could
+ever have licked the old man.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Hunker’s Mourner
+
+
+Strolling through Lone Mountain cemetery one day my attention was
+arrested by the inconsolable grief of a granite angel bewailing the
+loss of “Jacob Hunker, aged 67.” The attitude of utter dejection, the
+look of matchless misery upon that angel’s face sank into my heart like
+water into a sponge. I was about to offer some words of condolence when
+another man, similarly affected, got in before me, and laying a rather
+unsteady hand upon the celestial shoulder tipped back a very senile
+hat, and pointing to the name on the stone remarked with the most exact
+care and scrupulous accent: “Friend of yours, perhaps; been dead long?”
+
+There was no reply; he continued: “Very worthy man, that Jake; knew him
+up in Tuolumne. Good feller—Jake.” No response: the gentleman settled
+his hat still farther back, and continued with a trifle less exactness
+of speech: “I say, young wom’n, Jake was my pard in the mines. Goo’
+fell’r I ’bserved!”
+
+The last sentence was shot straight into the celestial ear at short
+range. It produced no effect. The gentleman’s patience and rhetorical
+vigilance were now completely exhausted. He walked round, and planting
+himself defiantly in front of the vicarious mourner, he stuck his hands
+doggedly into his pockets and delivered the following rebuke, like the
+desultory explosions of a bunch of damaged fire-crackers: “It wont do,
+old girl; ef Jake knowed how you’s treatin’ his old pard he’d jest git
+up and snatch you bald headed—_he_ would! You ain’t no friend o’ his’n
+and you ain’t yur fur no good—you bet! Now you jest ’sling your swag
+an’ bolt back to heaven, or I’m hanged ef I don’t have suthin’ worse’n
+horse-stealin’ to answer fur, this time.”
+
+And he took a step forward. At this point I interfered.
+
+
+
+
+A Bit of Chivalry
+
+
+At Woodward’s Garden, in the city of San Francisco, is a rather badly
+chiselled statue of Pandora pulling open her casket of ills. Pandora’s
+raiment, I grieve to state, has slipped down about her waist in a
+manner exceedingly reprehensible. One evening about twilight, I was
+passing that way, and saw a long gaunt miner, evidently just down from
+the mountains, and whom I had seen before, standing rather unsteadily
+in front of Pandora, admiring her shapely figure, but seemingly afraid
+to approach her. Seeing me advance, he turned to me with a queer,
+puzzled expression in his funny eyes, and said with an earnestness that
+came near defeating its purpose, “Good ev’n’n t’ye, stranger.” “Good
+evening, sir,” I replied, after having analyzed his salutation and
+extracted the sense of it. Lowering his voice to what was intended for
+a whisper, the miner, with a jerk of his thumb Pandoraward, continued:
+“Stranger, d’ye hap’n t’know ’er?” “Certainly; that is Bridget Pandora,
+a Greek maiden, in the pay of the Board of Supervisors.”
+
+He straightened himself up with a jerk that threatened the integrity of
+his neck and made his teeth snap, lurched heavily to the other side,
+oscillated critically for a few moments, and muttered: “Brdgtpnd—.” It
+was too much for him; he went down into his pocket, fumbled feebly
+round, and finally drawing out a paper of purely hypothetical tobacco,
+conveyed it to his mouth and bit off about two-thirds of it, which he
+masticated with much apparent benefit to his understanding, offering
+what was left to me. He then resumed the conversation with the easy
+familiarity of one who has established a claim to respectful attention:
+
+“Pardner, couldn’t ye interdooce a fel’r’s wants tknow’er?”
+“Impossible; I have not the honour of her acquaintance.” A look of
+distrust crept into his face, and finally settled into a savage scowl
+about his eyes. “Sed ye knew ’er!” he faltered, menacingly. “So I do,
+but I am not upon speaking terms with her, and—in fact she declines to
+recognise me.” The soul of the honest miner flamed out; he laid his
+hand threateningly upon his pistol, jerked himself stiff, glared a
+moment at me with the look of a tiger, and hurled this question at my
+head as if it had been an iron interrogation point: _“W’at a’ yer ben
+adoin’ to that gurl?”_
+
+I fled, and the last I saw of the chivalrous gold-hunter, he had his
+arm about Pandora’s stony waist and was endeavouring to soothe her
+supposed agitation by stroking her granite head.
+
+
+
+
+The Head of the Family
+
+
+Our story begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was
+decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the
+deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with it to
+the house.
+
+“There!” ejaculated the young man, bowling the gory pate across the
+threshold at his mother’s feet, “look at that, will you?”
+
+The old lady adjusted her spectacles, lifted the dripping head into her
+lap, wiped the face of it with her apron, and gazed into its fishy eyes
+with tender curiosity. “John,” said she, thoughtfully, “is this yours?”
+
+“No, ma, it ain’t none o’ mine.”
+
+“John,” continued she, with a cold, unimpassioned earnestness, “where
+did you get this thing?”
+
+“Why, ma,” returned the hopeful, “that’s Pap’s.”
+
+“John”—and there was just a touch of severity in her voice—“when your
+mother asks you a question you should answer that particular question.
+Where did you get this?”
+
+“Out in the medder, then, if you’re so derned pertikeller,” retorted
+the youngster, somewhat piqued; “the mowin’ machine lopped it off.”
+
+The old lady rose and restored the head into the hands of the young
+man. Then, straightening with some difficulty her aged back, and
+assuming a matronly dignity of bearing and feature, she emitted the
+rebuke following:
+
+“My son, the gentleman whom you hold in your hand—any more pointed
+allusion to whom would be painful to both of us—has punished you a
+hundred times for meddling with things lying about the farm. Take that
+head back and put it down where you found it, or you will make your
+mother very angry.”
+
+
+
+
+Deathbed Repentance
+
+
+An old man of seventy-five years lay dying. For a lifetime he had
+turned a deaf ear to religion, and steeped his soul in every current
+crime. He had robbed the orphan and plundered the widow; he had wrested
+from the hard hands of honest toil the rewards of labour; had lost at
+the gaming-table the wealth with which he should have endowed churches
+and Sunday schools; had wasted in riotous living the substance of his
+patrimony, and left his wife and children without bread. The
+intoxicating bowl had been his god—his belly had absorbed his entire
+attention. In carnal pleasures passed his days and nights, and to the
+maddening desires of his heart he had ministered without shame and
+without remorse. He was a bad, bad egg! And now this hardened iniquitor
+was to meet his Maker! Feebly and hesitatingly his breath fluttered
+upon his pallid lips. Weakly trembled the pulse in his flattened veins!
+Wife, children, mother-in-law, friends, who should have hovered
+lovingly about his couch, cheering his last moments and giving him
+medicine, he had killed with grief, or driven widely away; and he was
+now dying alone by the inadequate light of a tallow candle, deserted by
+heaven and by earth. No, not by heaven. Suddenly the door was pushed
+softly open, and there entered the good minister, whose pious counsel
+the suffering wretch had in health so often derided. Solemnly the man
+of God advanced, Bible in hand. Long and silently he stood uncovered in
+the presence of death. Then with cold and impressive dignity he
+remarked, “Miserable old sinner!”
+
+Old Jonas Lashworthy looked up. He sat up. The voice of that holy man
+put strength into his aged limbs, and he stood up. He was reserved for
+a better fate than to die like a neglected dog: Mr. Lashworthy was
+hanged for braining a minister of the Gospel with a boot-jack. This
+touching tale has a moral.
+
+MORAL OF THIS TOUCHING TALE.—In snatching a brand from the eternal
+burning, make sure of its condition, and be careful how you lay hold of
+it.
+
+
+
+
+The New Church that was not Built
+
+
+I have a friend who was never a church member, but was, and is, a
+millionaire—a generous benevolent millionaire—who once went about doing
+good by stealth, but with a natural preference for doing it at his
+office. One day he took it into his thoughtful noddle that he would
+like to assist in the erection of a new church edifice, to replace the
+inadequate and shabby structure in which a certain small congregation
+in his town then worshipped. So he drew up a subscription paper,
+modestly headed the list with “Christian, 2000 dollars,” and started
+one of the Deacons about with it. In a few days the Deacon came back to
+him, like the dove to the ark, saying he had succeeded in procuring a
+few names, but the press of his private business was such that he had
+felt compelled to intrust the paper to Deacon Smith.
+
+Next day the document was presented to my friend, as nearly blank as
+when it left his hands. Brother Smith explained that he (Smith) had
+started this thing, and a brother calling himself “Christian,” whose
+name he was not at liberty to disclose, had put down 2000 dollars.
+Would our friend aid them with an equal amount? Our friend took the
+paper and wrote “Philanthropist, 1000 dollars,” and Brother Smith went
+away.
+
+In about a week Brother Jones put in an appearance with the
+subscription paper. By extraordinary exertions Brother Jones—thinking a
+handsome new church would be an ornament to the town and increase the
+value of real estate—had got two brethren, who desired to remain
+_incog_., to subscribe: “Christian” 2000 dollars, and “Philanthropist”
+1000 dollars. Would my friend kindly help along a struggling
+congregation? My friend would. He wrote “Citizen, 500 dollars,”
+pledging Brother Jones, as he had pledged the others, not to reveal his
+name until it was time to pay.
+
+Some weeks afterward, a clergyman stepped into my friend’s
+counting-room, and after smilingly introducing himself, produced that
+identical subscription list.
+
+“Mr. K.,” said he, “I hope you will pardon the liberty, but I have set
+on foot a little scheme to erect a new church for our congregation, and
+three of the brethren have subscribed handsomely. Would you mind doing
+something to help along the good work?”
+
+My friend glanced over his spectacles at the proffered paper. He rose
+in his wrath! He towered! Seizing a loaded pen he dashed at that fair
+sheet and scrabbled thereon in raging characters, “Impenitent
+Sinner—_Not one cent, by G—!_”
+
+After a brief explanatory conference, the minister thoughtfully went
+his way. That struggling congregation still worships devoutly in its
+original, unpretending temple.
+
+
+
+
+A Tale of the Great Quake
+
+
+One glorious morning, after the great earthquake of October 21, 1868,
+had with some difficulty shaken me into my trousers and boots, I left
+the house. I may as well state that I left it immediately, and by an
+aperture constructed for another purpose. Arrived in the street, I at
+once betook myself to saving people. This I did by remarking closely
+the occurrence of other shocks, giving the alarm and setting an example
+fit to be followed. The example was followed, but owing to the vigour
+with which it was set was seldom overtaken. In passing down Clay-street
+I observed an old rickety brick boarding-house, which seemed to be just
+on the point of honouring the demands of the earthquake upon its
+resources. The last shock had subsided, but the building was slowly and
+composedly settling into the ground. As the third story came down to my
+level, I observed in one of the front rooms a young and lovely female
+in white, standing at a door trying to get out. She couldn’t, for the
+door was locked—I saw her through the key-hole. With a single blow of
+my heel I opened that door, and opened my arms at the same time.
+
+“Thank God,” cried I, “I have arrived in time. Come to these arms.”
+
+The lady in white stopped, drew out an eye-glass, placed it carefully
+upon her nose, and taking an inventory of me from head to foot,
+replied:
+
+“No thank you; I prefer to come to grief in the regular way.”
+
+While the pleasing tones of her voice were still ringing in my ears I
+noticed a puff of smoke rising from near my left toe. It came from the
+chimney of that house.
+
+
+
+
+Johnny
+
+
+Johnny is a little four-year-old, of bright, pleasant manners, and
+remarkable for intelligence. The other evening his mother took him upon
+her lap, and after stroking his curly head awhile, asked him if he knew
+who made him. I grieve to state that instead of answering “Dod,” as
+might have been expected, Johnny commenced cramming his face full of
+ginger-bread, and finally took a fit of coughing that threatened the
+dissolution of his frame. Having unloaded his throat and whacked him on
+the back, his mother propounded the following supplementary conundrum:
+
+“Johnny, are you not aware that at your age every little boy is
+expected to say something brilliant in reply to my former question? How
+can you so dishonour your parents as to neglect this golden
+opportunity? Think again.”
+
+The little urchin cast his eyes upon the floor and meditated a long
+time. Suddenly he raised his face and began to move his lips. There is
+no knowing what he might have said, but at that moment his mother noted
+the pressing necessity of wringing and mopping his nose, which she
+performed with such painful and conscientious singleness of purpose
+that Johnny set up a war-whoop like that of a night-blooming tomcat.
+
+It may be objected that this little tale is neither instructive nor
+amusing. I have never seen any stories of bright children that were.
+
+
+
+
+The Child’s Provider
+
+
+Mr. Goboffle had a small child, no wife, a large dog, and a house. As
+he was unable to afford the expense of a nurse, he was accustomed to
+leave the child in the care of the dog, who was much attached to it,
+while absent at a distant restaurant for his meals, taking the
+precaution to lock them up together to prevent kidnapping. One day,
+while at his dinner, he crowded a large, hard-boiled potato down his
+neck, and it conducted him into eternity. His clay was taken to the
+Coroner’s, and the great world went on, marrying and giving in
+marriage, lying, cheating, and praying, as if he had never existed.
+
+Meantime the dog had, after several days of neglect, forced an egress
+through a window, and a neighbouring baker received a call from him
+daily. Walking gravely in, he would deposit a piece of silver, and
+receiving a roll and his change would march off homeward. As this was a
+rather unusual proceeding in a cur of his species, the baker one day
+followed him, and as the dog leaped joyously into the window of the
+deserted house, the man of dough approached and looked in. What was his
+surprise to see the dog deposit his bread calmly upon the floor and
+fall to tenderly licking the face of a beautiful child!
+
+It is but fair to explain that there was nothing but the face
+remaining. But this dog did so love the child!
+
+
+
+
+Boys who Began Wrong
+
+
+Two little California boys were arrested at Reno for horse thieving.
+They had started from Surprise Valley with a cavalcade of thirty
+animals, and disposed of them leisurely along their line of march,
+until they were picked up at Reno, as above explained. I don’t feel
+quite easy about those youths—away out there in Nevada without their
+Testaments! Where there are no Sunday School books boys are so apt to
+swear and chew tobacco and rob sluice-boxes; and once a boy begins to
+do that last he might as well sell out; he’s bound to end by doing
+something bad! I knew a boy once who began by robbing sluice-boxes, and
+he went right on from bad to worse, until the last I heard of him he
+was in the State Legislature, elected by Democratic votes. You never
+saw anybody take on as his poor old mother did when she heard about it.
+
+“Hank,” said she to the boy’s father, who was forging a bank note in
+the chimney corner, “this all comes o’ not edgercatin’ ’im when he was
+a baby. Ef he’d larnt spellin’ and ciferin’ he never could a-ben
+elected.”
+
+It pains me to state that old Hank didn’t seem to get any thinner under
+the family disgrace, and his appetite never left him for a minute. The
+fact is, the old gentleman wanted to go to the United States Senate.
+
+
+
+
+A Kansas Incident
+
+
+An invalid wife in Leavenworth heard her husband make proposals of
+marriage to the nurse. The dying woman arose in bed, fixed her large
+black eyes for a moment upon the face of her heartless spouse with a
+reproachful intensity that must haunt him through life, and then fell
+back a corpse. The remorse of that widower, as he led the blushing
+nurse to the altar the next week, can be more easily imagined than
+described. Such reparation as was in his power he made. He buried the
+first wife decently and very deep down, laying a handsome and
+exceedingly heavy stone upon the sepulchre. He chiselled upon the stone
+the following simple and touching line: “She can’t get back.”
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Grile’s Girl
+
+
+In a lecture about girls, Cady Stanton contrasted the buoyant spirit of
+young males with the dejected sickliness of immature women. This, she
+says, is because the latter are keenly sensitive to the fact that they
+have no aim in life. This is a sad, sad truth! No longer ago than last
+year the writer’s youngest girl—Gloriana, a skin-milk blonde concern of
+fourteen—came pensively up to her father with big tears in her little
+eyes, and a forgotten morsel of buttered bread lying unchewed in her
+mouth.
+
+“Papa,” murmured the poor thing, “I’m gettin’ awful pokey, and my
+clothes don’t seem to set well in the back. My days are full of
+ungratified longin’s, and my nights don’t get any better. Papa, I think
+society needs turnin’ inside out and scrapin’. I haven’t got nothin’ to
+aspire to—no aim; nor anything!”
+
+The desolate creature spilled herself loosely into a cane-bottom chair,
+and her sorrow broke “like a great dyke broken.”
+
+The writer lifted her tenderly upon his knee and bit her softly on the
+neck.
+
+“Gloriana,” said he, “have you chewed up all that toffy in two days?”
+
+A smothered sob was her frank confession.
+
+“Now, see here, Glo,” continued the parent, rather sternly, “don’t let
+me hear any more about ‘aspirations’—which are always adulterated with
+_terra alba_—nor ‘aims’—which will give you the gripes like anything.
+You just take this two shilling-piece and invest every penny of it in
+lollipops!”
+
+You should have seen the fair, bright smile crawl from one of that
+innocent’s ears to the other—you should have marked that face sprinkle,
+all over with dimples—you ought to have beheld the tears of joy jump
+glittering into her eyes and spill all over her father’s clean shirt
+that he hadn’t had on more than fifteen minutes! Cady Stanton is
+impotent of evil in the Grile family so long as the price of sweets
+remains unchanged.
+
+
+
+
+His Railway
+
+
+The writer remembers, as if it were but yesterday, when he edited the
+Hang Tree _Herald_. For six months he devoted his best talent to
+advocating the construction of a railway between that place and
+Jayhawk, thirty miles distant. The route presented every inducement.
+There would be no grading required, and not a single curve would be
+necessary. As it lay through an uninhabited alkali flat, the right of
+way could be easily obtained. As neither terminus had other than
+pack-mule communication with civilization, the rolling stock and other
+material must necessarily be constructed at Hang Tree, because the
+people at the other end didn’t know enough to do it, and hadn’t any
+blacksmith. The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted
+the most seductive charm of the scheme. After six months of
+conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first
+shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly
+the devil put it into the head of one of the Directors to inquire
+publicly what the road was designed to carry. It is needless to say the
+question was never satisfactorily answered, and the most daring
+enterprise of the age was knocked perfectly cold. That very night a
+deputation of stockholders waited upon the editor of the _Herald_ and
+prescribed a change of climate. They afterward said the change did them
+good.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Gish Makes a Present
+
+
+In the season for making presents my friend Stockdoddle Gish, Esq.,
+thought he would so far waive his superiority to the insignificant
+portion of mankind outside his own waistcoat as to follow one of its
+customs. Mr. Gish has a friend—a delicate female of the shrinking
+sort—whom he favours with his esteem as a sort of equivalent for the
+respect she accords him when he browbeats her. Our hero numbers among
+the blessings which his merit has extorted from niggardly Nature a
+gaunt meathound, between whose head and body there exists about the
+same proportion as between those of a catfish, which he also resembles
+in the matter of mouth. As to sides, this precious pup is not
+dissimilar to a crockery crate loosely covered with a wet sheet. In
+appetite he is liberal and cosmopolitan, loving a dried sheepskin as
+well in proportion to its weight as a kettle of soap. The village which
+Mr. Gish honours by his residence has for some years been kept upon the
+dizzy verge of financial ruin by the maintenance of this animal.
+
+The reader will have already surmised that it was this beast which our
+hero selected to testify his toleration of his lady friend. There never
+was a greater mistake. Mr. Gish merely presented her a sheaf of
+assorted angle-worms, neatly bound with a pink ribbon tied into a
+simple knot. The dog is an heirloom and will descend to the Gishes of
+the next generation, in the direct line of inheritance.
+
+
+
+
+A Cow-County Pleasantry
+
+
+About the most ludicrous incident that I remember occurred one day in
+an ordinarily solemn village in the cow-counties. A worthy matron, who
+had been absent looking after a vagrom cow, returned home, and pushing
+against the door found it obstructed by some heavy substance, which,
+upon examination, proved to be her husband. He had been slaughtered by
+some roving joker, who had wrought upon him with a pick-handle. To one
+of his ears was pinned a scrap of greasy paper, upon which were
+scrambled the following sentiments in pencil-tracks:
+
+“The inqulosed boddy is that uv old Burker. Step litely, stranger, fer
+yer lize the mortil part uv wat you mus be sum da. Thers arrest for the
+weery! If Burker heddenta wurkt agin me fer Corner I wuddenta bed to
+sit on him. Ov setch is the kingum of hevvun! You don’t want to moov
+this boddy til ime summuns to hold a ninquest. Orl flesh are gras!”
+
+The ridiculous part of the story is that the lady did not wait to
+summon the Coroner, but took charge of the remains herself; and in
+dragging them toward the bed she exploded into her face a shotgun,
+which had been cunningly contrived to discharge by a string connected
+with the body. Thus was she punished for an infraction of the law. The
+next day the particulars were told me by the facetious Coroner himself,
+whose jury had just rendered a verdict of accidental drowning in both
+cases. I don’t know when I have enjoyed a heartier laugh.
+
+
+
+
+The Optimist, and What He Died Of
+
+
+One summer evening, while strolling with considerable difficulty over
+Russian Hill, San Francisco, Mr. Grile espied a man standing upon the
+extreme summit, with a pensive brow and a suit of clothes which seemed
+to have been handed down through a long line of ancestors from a remote
+Jew peddler. Mr. Grile respectfully saluted; a man who has any clothes
+at all is to him an object of veneration. The stranger opened the
+conversation:
+
+“My son,” said he, in a tone suggestive of strangulation by the
+Sheriff, “do you behold this wonderful city, its wharves crowded with
+the shipping of all nations?”
+
+Mr. Grile beheld with amazement.
+
+“Twenty-one years ago—alas! it used to be but twenty,” and he wiped
+away a tear—“you might have bought the whole dern thing for a Mexican
+ounce.”
+
+Mr. Grile hastened to proffer a paper of tobacco, which disappeared
+like a wisp of oats drawn into a threshing machine.
+
+“I was one among the first who—”
+
+Mr. Grile hit him on the head with a paving-stone by way of changing
+the topic.
+
+“Young man,” continued he, “do you feel this bommy breeze? There isn’t
+a climit in the world—”
+
+This melancholy relic broke down in a fit of coughing. No sooner had he
+recovered than he leaped into the air, making a frantic clutch at
+something, but apparently without success.
+
+“Dern it,” hissed he, “there goes my teeth; blowed out again, by
+hokey!”
+
+A passing cloud of dust hid him for a moment from view, and when he
+reappeared he was an altered man; a paroxysm of asthma had doubled him
+up like a nut-cracker.
+
+“Excuse me,” he wheezed, “I’m subject to this; caught it crossin’ the
+Isthmus in ’49. As I was a-sayin’, there’s no country in the world that
+offers such inducements to the immygrunt as Californy. With her fertile
+soil, her unrivalled climit, her magnificent bay, and the rest of it,
+there is enough for all.”
+
+This venerable pioneer picked a fragmentary biscuit from the street and
+devoured it. Mr. Grile thought this had gone on about long enough. He
+twisted the head off that hopeful old party, surrendered himself to the
+authorities, and was at once discharged.
+
+
+
+
+The Root of Education
+
+
+A pedagogue in Indiana, who was “had up” for unmercifully waling the
+back of a little girl, justified his action by explaining that “she
+persisted in flinging paper pellets at him when his back was turned.”
+That is no excuse. Mr. Grile once taught school up in the mountains,
+and about every half hour had to remove his coat and scrape off the
+dried paper wads adhering to the nap. He never permitted a trifle like
+this to unsettle his patience; he just kept on wearing that gaberdine
+until it had no nap and the wads wouldn’t stick. But when they took to
+dipping them in mucilage he made a complaint to the Board of Directors.
+
+“Young man,” said the Chairman, “ef you don’t like our ways, you’d
+better sling your blankets and git. Prentice Mulford tort skule yer for
+more’n six months, and he never said a word agin the wads.”
+
+Mr. Grile briefly explained that Mr. Mulford might have been brought up
+to paper wads, and didn’t mind them.
+
+“It ain’t no use,” said another Director, “the children hev got to be
+amused.”
+
+Mr. Grile protested that there were other amusements quite as
+diverting; but the third Director here rose and remarked:
+
+“I perfeckly agree with the Cheer; this youngster better travel. I
+consider as paper wads lies at the root uv popillar edyercation; ther a
+necessary adjunck uv the skool systim. Mr. Cheerman, I move and second
+that this yer skoolmarster be shot.”
+
+Mr. Grile did not remain to observe the result of the voting.
+
+
+
+
+Retribution
+
+
+A citizen of Pittsburg, aged sixty, had, by tireless industry and the
+exercise of rigid economy, accumulated a hoard of frugal dollars, the
+sight and feel whereof were to his soul a pure delight. Imagine his
+sorrow and the heaviness of his aged heart when he learned that the
+good wife had bestowed thereof upon her brother bountiful largess
+exceeding his merit. Sadly and prayerfully while she slept lifted he
+the retributive mallet and beat in her brittle pate. Then with the
+quiet dignity of one who has redressed a grievous wrong, surrendered
+himself unto the law this worthy old man. Let him who has never known
+the great grief of slaughtering a wife judge him harshly. He that is
+without sin among you, let him cast the first stone—and let it be a
+large heavy stone that shall grind that wicked old man into a powder of
+exceeding impalpability.
+
+
+
+
+The Faithful Wife.
+
+
+“A man was sentenced to twenty years’ confinement for a deed of
+violence. In the excitement of the moment his wife sought and obtained
+a divorce. Thirteen years afterward he was pardoned. The wife brought
+the pardon to the gate; the couple left the spot arm in arm; and in
+less than an hour they were again united in the bonds of wedlock.”
+
+Such is the touching tale narrated by a newspaper correspondent. It is
+in every respect true; I knew the parties well, and during that long
+bitter period of thirteen years it was commonly asked concerning the
+woman: “Hasn’t that hag trapped anybody yet? She’ll have to take back
+old Jabe when he gets out.” And she did. For nearly thirteen weary
+years she struggled nobly against fate: she went after every unmarried
+man in her part of the country; but “No,” said they, “we cannot—indeed
+we cannot—marry you, after the way you went back on Jabe. It is likely
+that under the same circumstances you would play us the same scurvy
+trick. G’way, woman!” And so the poor old heartbroken creature had to
+go to the Governor and get the old man pardoned out. Bless her for her
+steadfast fidelity!
+
+
+
+
+Margaret the Childless
+
+
+This, therefore, is the story of her:—Some four years ago her husband
+brought home a baby, which he said he found lying in the street, and
+which they concluded to adopt. About a year after this he brought home
+another, and the good woman thought she could stand that one too. A
+similar period passed away, when one evening he opened the door and
+fell headlong into the room, swearing with studied correctness at a dog
+which had tripped him up, but which upon inspection turned out to be
+another baby. Margaret’s suspicion was aroused, but to allay his she
+hastened to implore him to adopt that darling also, to which, after
+some slight hesitation, he consented. Another twelvemonth rolled into
+eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and
+going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well
+with unwonted industry. As the bucket neared the top he reached down
+and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding
+it up, explained to the astonished matron: “Look at this, now; did you
+ever see such a sweet young one go a-campaignin’ about the country
+without a lantern and a-tumblin’ into wells? There, take the poor
+little thing in to the fire, and get off its wet clothes.” It suddenly
+flashed across his mind that he had neglected an obvious precaution—the
+clothes were not wet—and he hastily added: “There’s no tellin’ what
+would have become of it, a-climbin’ down that rope, if I hadn’t seen it
+afore it got down to the water.”
+
+Silently the good wife took that infant into the house and disrobed it;
+sorrowfully she laid it alongside its little brothers and sister; long
+and bitterly she wept over the quartette; and then with one tender look
+at her lord and master, smoking in solemn silence by the fire, and
+resembling them with all his might, she gathered her shawl about her
+bowed shoulders and went away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+The Discomfited Demon
+
+
+I never clearly knew why I visited the old cemetery that night. Perhaps
+it was to see how the work of removing the bodies was getting on, for
+they were all being taken up and carted away to a more comfortable
+place where land was less valuable. It was well enough; nobody had
+buried himself there for years, and the skeletons that were now exposed
+were old mouldy affairs for which it was difficult to feel any respect.
+However, I put a few bones in my pocket as souvenirs. The night was one
+of those black, gusty ones in March, with great inky clouds driving
+rapidly across the sky, spilling down sudden showers of rain which as
+suddenly would cease. I could barely see my way between the empty
+graves, and in blundering about among the coffins I tripped and fell
+headlong. A peculiar laugh at my side caused me to turn my head, and I
+saw a singular old gentleman whom I had often noticed hanging about the
+Coroner’s office, sitting cross-legged upon a prostrate tombstone.
+
+“How are you, sir?” said I, rising awkwardly to my feet; “nice night.”
+
+“Get off my tail,” answered the elderly party, without moving a muscle.
+
+“My eccentric friend,” rejoined I, mockingly, “may I be permitted to
+inquire your street and number?”
+
+“Certainly,” he replied, “No. 1, Marle Place, Asphalt Avenue, Hades.”
+
+“The devil!” sneered I.
+
+“Exactly,” said he; “oblige me by getting off my tail.”
+
+I was a little staggered, and by way of rallying my somewhat dazed
+faculties, offered a cigar: “Smoke?”
+
+“Thank you,” said the singular old gentleman, putting it under his
+coat; “after dinner. Drink?”
+
+I was not exactly prepared for this, but did not know if it would be
+safe to decline, and so putting the proffered flask to my lips
+pretended to swig elaborately, keeping my mouth tightly closed the
+while. “Good article,” said I, returning it. He simply remarked,
+“You’re a fool,” and emptied the bottle at a gulp.
+
+“And now,” resumed he, “you will confer a favour I shall highly
+appreciate by removing your feet from my tail.”
+
+There was a slight shock of earthquake, and all the skeletons in sight
+arose to their feet, stretched themselves and yawned audibly. Without
+moving from his seat, the old gentleman rapped the nearest one across
+the skull with his gold-headed cane, and they all curled away to sleep
+again.
+
+“Sire,” I resumed, “indulge me in the impertinence of inquiring your
+business here at this hour.”
+
+“My business is none of yours,” retorted he, calmly; “what are you up
+to yourself?”
+
+“I have been picking up some bones,” I replied, carelessly.
+
+“Then you are—”
+
+“I am—”
+
+“A Ghoul!”
+
+“My good friend, you do me injustice. You have doubtless read very
+frequently in the newspapers of the Fiend in Human Shape whose actions
+and way of life are so generally denounced. Sire, you see before you
+that maligned party!”
+
+There was a quick jerk under the soles of my feet, which pitched me
+prone upon the ground. Scrambling up, I saw the old gentleman vanishing
+behind an adjacent sandhill as if the devil were after him.
+
+
+
+
+The Mistake of a Life
+
+
+The hotel was in flames. Mr. Pokeweed was promptly on hand, and tore
+madly into the burning pile, whence he soon emerged with a nude female.
+Depositing her tenderly upon a pile of hot bricks, he mopped his
+steaming front with his warm coat-tail.
+
+“Now, Mrs. Pokeweed,” said he, “where will I be most likely to find the
+children? They will naturally wish to get out.”
+
+The lady assumed a stiffly vertical attitude, and with freezing dignity
+replied in the words following:
+
+“Sir, you have saved my life; I presume you are entitled to my thanks.
+If you are likewise solicitous regarding the fate of the person you
+have mentioned, you had better go back and prospect round till you find
+her; she would probably be delighted to see you. But while I have a
+character to maintain unsullied, you shall not stand there and call me
+Mrs. Pokeweed!”
+
+Just then the front wall toppled outward, and Pokeweed cleared the
+street at a single bound. He never learned what became of the strange
+lady, and to the day of his death he professed an indifference that was
+simply brutal.
+
+
+
+
+L. S.
+
+
+Early one evening in the autumn of ’64, a pale girl stood singing
+Methodist hymns at the summit of Bush Street hill. She was attired,
+Spanish fashion, in a loose overcoat and slippers. Suddenly she broke
+off her song, a dark-browed young soldier from the Presidio cautiously
+approached, and seizing her fondly in his arms, snatched away the
+overcoat, retreating with it to an auction-house on Pacific Street,
+where it may still be seen by the benighted traveller, just a-going for
+two-and-half-and never gone!
+
+The poor maiden after this misfortune felt a bitter resentment swelling
+in her heart, and scorning to remain among her kind in that costume,
+took her way to the Cliff House, where she arrived, worn and weary,
+about breakfast-time.
+
+The landlord received her kindly, and offered her a pair of his best
+trousers; but she was of noble blood, and having been reared in luxury,
+respectfully declined to receive charity from a low-born stranger. All
+efforts to induce her to eat were equally unavailing. She would stand
+for hours on the rocks where the road descends to the beach, and gaze
+at the playful seals in the surf below, who seemed rather flattered by
+her attention, and would swim about, singing their sweetest songs to
+her alone. Passers-by were equally curious as to _her_, but a broken
+lyre gives forth no music, and her heart responded not with any more
+long metre hymns.
+
+After a few weeks of this solitary life she was suddenly missed. At the
+same time a strange seal was noted among the rest. She was remarkable
+for being always clad in an overcoat, which she had doubtless fished up
+from the wreck of the French galleon _Brignardello_, which went ashore
+there some years afterward.
+
+One tempestuous night, an old hag who had long done business as a
+hermitess on Helmet Rock came into the bar-room at the Cliff House, and
+there, amidst the crushing thunders and lightnings spilling all over
+the horizon, she related that she had seen a young seal in a
+comfortable overcoat, sitting pensively upon the pinnacle of Seal Rock,
+and had distinctly heard the familiar words of a Methodist hymn. Upon
+inquiry the tale was discovered to be founded upon fact. The identity
+of this seal could no longer be denied without downright blasphemy, and
+in all the old chronicles of that period not a doubt is even implied.
+
+One day a handsome, dark, young lieutenant of infantry, Don Edmundo by
+name, came out to the Cliff House to celebrate his recent promotion.
+While standing upon the verge of the cliff, with his friends all about
+him, Lady Celia, as visitors had christened her, came swimming below
+him, and taking off her overcoat, laid it upon a rock. She then turned
+up her eyes and sang a Methodist hymn.
+
+No sooner did the brave Don Edmundo hear it than he tore off his
+gorgeous clothes, and cast himself headlong in the billows. Lady Celia
+caught him dexterously by the waist in her mouth, and, swimming to the
+outer rock, sat up and softly bit him in halves. She then laid the
+pieces tenderly in a conspicuous place, put on her overcoat, and
+plunging into the waters was never seen more.
+
+Many are the wild fabrications of the poets about her subsequent
+career, but to this day nothing authentic has turned up. For some
+months strenuous efforts were made to recover the wicked Lieutenant’s
+body. Every appliance which genius could invent and skill could wield
+was put in requisition; until one night the landlord, fearing these
+constant efforts might frighten away the seals, had the remains quietly
+removed and secretly interred.
+
+
+
+
+The Baffled Asian
+
+
+One day in ’49 an honest miner up in Calaveras county, California, bit
+himself with a small snake of the garter variety, and either as a
+possible antidote, or with a determination to enjoy the brief remnant
+of a wasted life, applied a brimming jug of whisky to his lips, and
+kept it there until, like a repleted leech, it fell off.
+
+The man fell off likewise.
+
+The next day, while the body lay in state upon a pine slab, and the
+bereaved partner of the deceased was unbending in a game of seven-up
+with a friendly Chinaman, the game was interrupted by a familiar voice
+which seemed to proceed from the jaws of the corpse: “I say—Jim!”
+
+Bereaved partner played the king of spades, claimed “high,” and then,
+looking over his shoulder at the melancholy remains, replied, “Well,
+what is it, Dave? I’m busy.”
+
+“I say—Jim!” repeated the corpse in the same measured tone.
+
+With a look of intense annoyance, and muttering something about “people
+that could never stop dead more’n a minute,” the bereaved partner rose
+and stood over the body with his cards in his hand.
+
+“Jim,” continued the mighty dead, “how fur’s this thing gone?”
+
+“I’ve paid the Chinaman two-and-a-half to dig the grave,” responded the
+bereaved.
+
+“Did he strike anything?”
+
+The Chinaman looked up: “Me strikee pay dirt; me no bury dead ’Melican
+in ’em grave. Me keep ’em claim.”
+
+The corpse sat up erect: “Jim, git my revolver and chase that pig-tail
+off. Jump his dam sepulchre, and tax his camp five dollars each fer
+prospectin’ on the public domain. These Mungolyun hordes hez got to be
+got under. And—I say—Jim! ’f any more serpents come foolin’ round here
+drive ’em off. ’T’aint right to be bitin’ a feller when whisky’s two
+dollars a gallon. Dern all foreigners, anyhow!”
+
+And the mortal part pulled on its boots.
+
+
+
+
+TALL TALK
+
+
+
+
+A Call to Dinner
+
+
+When the starving peasantry of France were bearing with inimitable
+fortitude their great bereavement in the death of Louis le Grand, how
+cheerfully must they have bowed their necks to the easy yoke of Philip
+of Orleans, who set them an example in eating which he had not the
+slightest objection to their following. A monarch skilled in the
+mysteries of the _cuisine_ must wield the sceptre all the more gently
+from his schooling in handling the ladle. In royalty, the delicate
+manipulation of an _omelette soufflé_ is at once an evidence of genius,
+and an assurance of a tender forbearance in state policy. All good
+rulers have been good livers, and if all bad ones have been the same
+this merely proves that even the worst of men have still something
+divine in them.
+
+There is more in a good dinner than is disclosed by the removal of the
+covers. Where the eye of hunger perceives but a juicy roast, the eye of
+faith detects a smoking God. A well-cooked joint is redolent of
+religion, and a delicate pasty is crisp with charity. The man who can
+light his after-dinner Havana without feeling full to the neck with all
+the cardinal virtues is either steeped in iniquity or has dined badly.
+In either case he is no true man. We stoutly contend that that worthy
+personage Epicurus has been shamefully misrepresented by abstemious,
+and hence envious and mendacious, historians. Either his philosophy was
+the most gentle, genial, and reverential of antique systems, or he was
+not an Epicurean, and to call him so is a deceitful flattery. We hold
+that it is morally impossible for a man to dine daily upon the fat of
+the land in courses, and yet deny a future state of existence, beatific
+with beef, and ecstatic with all edibles. Another falsity of history is
+that of Heliogabalus—was it not?—dining off nightingales’ tongues. No
+true _gourmet_ would ever send this warbler to the shambles so long as
+scarcer birds might be obtained.
+
+It is a fine natural instinct that teaches the hungry and cadaverous to
+avoid the temples of religion, and a short-sighted and misdirected zeal
+that would gather them into the sanctuary. Religion is for the
+oleaginous, the fat-bellied, chylesaturated devotees of the table.
+Unless the stomach be lined with good things, the parson may say as
+many as he likes and his truths shall not be swallowed nor his wisdom
+inly digested. Probably the highest, ripest, and most acceptable form
+of worship is that performed with a knife and fork; and whosoever on
+the resurrection morning can produce from amongst the lumber of his
+cast-off flesh a thin-coated and elastic stomach, showing evidences of
+daily stretchings done in the body, will find it his readiest passport
+and best credential. We believe that God will not hold him guiltless
+who eats with his knife, but if the deadly steel be always well laden
+with toothsome morsels, divine justice will be tempered with mercy to
+that man’s soul. When the author of the “Lost Tales” represented
+Sisyphus as capturing his guest, the King of Terrors, and stuffing the
+old glutton with meat and drink until he became “a jolly, rubicund,
+tun-bellied Death,” he gave us a tale which needs no _hæc fabula docet_
+to point out the moral.
+
+We verily believe that Shakspeare writ down Fat Jack at his last gasp,
+as babbling, not o’ green fields, but o’ green turtle, and that that
+starvling Colley Cibber altered the text from sheer envy at a good
+man’s death. To die well we must live well, is a familiar platitude.
+Morality is, of course, _best_ promoted by the good quality of our
+fare, but quantitative excellence is by no means to be despised.
+_Cæteris paribus_, the man who eats much is a better Christian than the
+man who eats little, and he who eats little will pursue a more
+uninterrupted course of benevolence than he who eats nothing.
+
+
+
+
+On Death and Immortality
+
+
+Did it ever strike you, dear reader, that it must be a particularly
+pleasant thing to be dead? To say nothing hackneyed about the blessed
+freedom from the cares and vexations of life—which we cling to with
+such tenacity while we can, and which, when we have no longer the power
+to hold, we let go all at once, with probably a feeling of exquisite
+relief—and to take no account of this latter probable but totally
+undemonstrable felicity, it must be what boys call awfully jolly to be
+dead.
+
+Here you are, lying comfortably upon your back—what is left of it—in
+the cool dark, and with the smell of the fresh earth all about you.
+Your soul goes knocking about amongst an infinity of shadowy things,
+Lord knows where, making all sorts of silent discoveries in the gloom
+of what was yesterday an unknown and mysterious future, and which,
+after centuries of exploration, must still be strangely unfamiliar. The
+nomadic thing doubtless comes back occasionally to the old grave—if the
+body is so fortunate as to possess one—and looks down upon it with big
+round eyes and a lingering tenderness.
+
+It is hard to conceive a soul entirely cut loose from the old bones,
+and roving rudderless about eternity. It was probably this inability to
+mentally divorce soul from substance that gave us that absurdly
+satisfactory belief in the resurrection of the flesh. There is said to
+be a race of people somewhere in Africa who believe in the immortality
+of the body, but deny the resurrection of the soul. The dead will rise
+refreshed after their long sleep, and in their anxiety to test their
+rejuvenated powers, will skip bodily away and forget their souls. Upon
+returning to look for them, they will find nothing but little blue
+flames, which can never be extinguished, but may be carried about and
+used for cooking purposes. This belief probably originates in some dim
+perception of the law of compensation. In this life the body is the
+drudge of the spirit; in the next the situation is reversed.
+
+The heaven of the Mussulman is not incompatible with this kind of
+immortality. Its delights, being merely carnal ones, could be as well
+or better enjoyed without a soul, and the latter might be booked for
+the Christian heaven, with only just enough of the body to attach a
+pair of wings to. Mr. Solyman Muley Abdul Ben Gazel could thus enjoy a
+dual immortality and secure a double portion of eternal felicity at no
+expense to anybody.
+
+In fact, there can be no doubt whatever that this theory of a double
+heaven is the true one, and needs but to be fairly stated to be
+universally received, inasmuch as it supposes the maximum of felicity
+for terrestrial good behaviour. It is therefore a sensible theory,
+resting upon quite as solid a foundation of fact as any other theory,
+and must commend itself at once to the proverbial good sense of
+Christians everywhere. The trouble is that some architectural scoundrel
+of a priest is likely to build a religion upon it; and what the world
+needs is theory—good, solid, nourishing theory.
+
+
+
+
+Music—Muscular and Mechanical
+
+
+One cheerful evidence of the decivilization of the Anglo-Saxon race is
+the late tendency to return to first principles in art, as manifested
+in substituting noise for music. Herein we detect symptoms of a rapid
+relapse into original barbarism. The savage who beats his gong or
+kettledrum until his face is of a delicate blue, and his eyes assert
+themselves like those of an unterrified snail, believes that musical
+skill is a mere question of brawn—a matter of muscle. If not wholly
+ignorant of technical gymnastics, he has a theory that a deftness at
+dumb-bells is a prime requisite in a finished artist. The advance—in a
+circle—of civilization has only partially unsettled this belief in the
+human mind, and we are constantly though unconsciously reverting to it.
+
+It is true the modern demand for a great deal of music has outstripped
+the supply of muscle for its production; but the ingenuity of man has
+partially made up for his lack of physical strength, and the sublimer
+harmonies may still be rendered with tolerable effectiveness, and with
+little actual fatigue to the artist. As we retrograde towards the
+condition of Primeval Man—the man with the gong and kettledrum—the
+blacksmith slowly reasserts his place as the interpreter of the
+maestro.
+
+But there is a limit beyond which muscle, whether that of the arm or
+cheek, can no further go, without too great an expenditure of force in
+proportion to the volume of noise attainable. And right here the
+splendid triumphs of modern invention and discovery are made manifest;
+electricity and gunpowder come to the relief of puny muscle, simple
+appliance, and orchestras limited by sparse population. Batteries of
+artillery thunder exultingly our victory over Primeval Man, beaten at
+his own game—signally routed and put to shame, pounding his impotent
+gong and punishing his ridiculous kettledrum in frantic silence, amidst
+the clash and clang and roar of modern art.
+
+
+
+
+The Good Young Man
+
+
+Why is he? Why defaces he the fair page of creation, and why is he to
+be continued? This has never been explained; it is one of those
+dispensations of Providence the design whereof is wrapped in
+profoundest obscurity. The good young man is perhaps not without excuse
+for his existence, but society is without excuse for permitting it. At
+his time of life to be “good” is to insult humanity. Goodness is proper
+to the aged; it is their sole glory; why should this milky stripling
+bring it into disrepute? Why should he be permitted to defile with the
+fat of his sleek locks a crown intended to adorn the grizzled pow of
+his elders?
+
+A young man may be manly, gentle, honourable, noble, tender and true,
+and nobody will ever think of calling him a good young man. Your good
+young man is commonly a sneak, and is very nearly allied to that other
+social pest, the “nice young lady.” As applied to the immature male of
+our kind, the adjective “good” seems to have been perverted from its
+original and ordinary signification, and to have acquired a dyslogistic
+one. It is a term of reproach, and means, as nearly as may be,
+“characterless.” That any one should submit to have it applied to him
+is proof of the essential cowardice of Virtue.
+
+We believe the direst ill afflicting civilization is the good young
+man. The next direst is his natural and appointed mate, the nice young
+lady. If the two might be tied neck and heels together and flung into
+the sea, the land would be the fatter for it.
+
+
+
+
+The Average Parson
+
+
+Our objection to him is not that he is senseless; this—as it concerns
+us not—we can patiently endure. Nor that he is bigoted; this we expect,
+and have become accustomed to. Nor that he is small-souled, narrow, and
+hypocritical; all these qualities become him well, sitting easily and
+gracefully upon him. We protest against him because he is always
+“carrying on.”
+
+To carry on, in one way or another, seems to be the function of his
+existence, and essential to his health. When he is not doing it in the
+pulpit he is at it in the newspapers; when both fail him he resorts to
+the social circle, the church meeting, the Sunday-school, or even the
+street corner. We have known him to disport for half a day upon the
+kerb-stone, carrying on with all his might to whomsoever would endure
+it.
+
+No sooner does a young sick-faced theologue get safely through his
+ordination, as a baby finishes teething, than straightway he casts
+about him for an opportunity to carry on. A pretext is soon found, and
+he goes at it hammer and tongs; and forty years after you shall find
+him at the same trick with as simple a faith, as exalted an
+expectation, as vigorous an impotence, as the day he began.
+
+His carryings-on are as diverse in kind, as comprehensive in scope, as
+those of the most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a
+lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of
+sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in
+science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it
+gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced—ten to one while you are
+trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make
+mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of
+flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular eye; while at any
+exceptional phenomenon of nature, such as an earthquake, he will
+project himself frog-like into an infinity of lofty gymnastic
+absurdities.
+
+In short, the slightest agitation of the intellectual atmosphere sets
+your average parson into a tempest of pumping like the jointed ligneous
+youth attached to the eccentric of a boy’s whirligig. His philosophy of
+life may be boiled down into a single sentence: Carry on and you will
+be happy.
+
+
+
+
+Did We Eat One Another?
+
+
+There is no doubt of it. The unwelcome truth has long been suppressed
+by interested parties who find their account in playing sycophant to
+that self-satisfied tyrant Modern Man; but to the impartial philosopher
+it is as plain as the nose upon an elephant’s face that our ancestors
+ate one another. The custom of the Fiji Islanders, which is their only
+stock-in-trade, their only claim to notoriety, is a relic of barbarism;
+but it is a relic of _our_ barbarism.
+
+Man is naturally a carnivorous animal. This none but greengrocers will
+dispute. That he was formerly less vegetarian in his diet than at
+present, is clear from the fact that market-gardening increases in the
+ratio of civilization. So we may safely assume that at some remote
+period Man subsisted upon an exclusively flesh diet. Our uniform vanity
+has given us the human mind as the _ne plus ultra_ of intelligence, the
+human face and figure as the standard of beauty. Of course we cannot
+deny to human fat and lean an equal superiority over beef, mutton, and
+pork. It is plain that our meat-eating ancestors would think in this
+way, and, being unrestrained by the mawkish sentiment attendant upon
+high civilization, would act habitually upon the obvious suggestion. _À
+priori_, therefore, it is clear that we ate ourselves.
+
+Philology is about the only thread which connects us with the
+prehistoric past. By picking up and piecing out the scattered remnants
+of language, we form a patchwork of wondrous design. Oblige us by
+considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,” and see if it be
+not suggestive of potted meats. Observe the significance of the phrase
+“sweet sixteen.” What a world of meaning lurks in the expression “she
+is sweet as a peach,” and how suggestive of luncheon are the words
+“tender youth.” A kiss itself is but a modified bite, and when a young
+girl insists upon making a “strawberry mark” upon the back of your
+hand, she only gives way to an instinct she has not yet learned to
+control. The fond mother, when she says her babe is almost “good enough
+to eat,” merely shows that she herself is only a trifle too good to eat
+it.
+
+These evidences might be multiplied _ad infinitum;_ but if enough has
+been said to induce one human being to revert to the diet of his
+ancestors, the object of this essay is accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+Your Friend’s Friend
+
+
+If there is any individual who combines within himself the vices of an
+entire species it is he. A mother-in-law has usually been thought a
+rather satisfactory specimen of total depravity; it has been customary
+to regard your sweetheart’s brother as tolerably vicious for a young
+man; there is excellent authority for looking upon your business
+partner as not wholly without merit as a nuisance—but your friend’s
+friend is as far ahead of these in all that constitutes a healthy
+disagreeableness as they themselves are in advance of the average
+reptile or the conventional pestilence.
+
+We do not propose to illustrate the great truth we have in hand by
+instances; the experience of the reader will furnish ample evidence in
+support of our proposition, and any narration of pertinent facts could
+only quicken into life the dead ghosts of a thousand sheeted annoyances
+to squeak and gibber through a memory studded thick with the tombstones
+of happy hours murdered by your friend’s friend.
+
+Also, the animal is too well known to need a description. Imagine a
+thing in all essential particulars the exact reverse of a desirable
+acquaintance, and you have his mental photograph. How your friend could
+ever admire so hopeless and unendurable a bore is a problem you are
+ever seeking to solve. Perhaps you may be assisted in it by a previous
+solution of the kindred problem—how he could ever feel affection for
+yourself? Perhaps your friend’s friend is equally exercised over that
+question. Perhaps from his point of view _you_ are your friend’s
+friend.
+
+
+
+
+Le Diable est aux Vaches.
+
+
+If it be that ridicule is the test of truth, as Shaftesbury is reported
+to have said and didn’t, the doctrine of Woman Suffrage is the truest
+of all faiths. The amount of really good ridicule that has been
+expended upon this thing is appalling, and yet we are compelled to
+confess that to all appearance “the cause” has been thereby shorn of no
+material strength, nor bled of its vitality. And shall it be admitted
+that this potent argument of little minds is as powerless as the
+dullards of all ages have steadfastly maintained? Forbid it, Heaven!
+the gimlet is as proper a gimlet as any in all Christendom, but the
+timber is too hard to pierce! Grant ye that “the movement” is waxing
+more wondrous with each springing sun, who shall say what it might not
+have been but for the sharp hatcheting of us wits among its boughs? If
+the doctor have not cured his patient by to-morrow he may at least
+claim that without the physic the man would have died to-day.
+
+And pray who shall search the vitals of a whale with a bodkin—who may
+reach his jackknife through the superposed bubber? Pachyderm, thy name
+is Woman! All the king’s horses and all the king’s men shall not bend
+the bow that can despatch a clothyard shaft through thy pearly hide.
+The male and female women who nightly howl their social and political
+grievances into the wide ear of the universe are as insensible to the
+prickings of ridicule as they are unconscious of logic. An intellectual
+Goliah of Gath might spear them with an epigram like unto a weaver’s
+beam, and the sting thereof would be as but the nipping of a red ant.
+Apollo might speed among them his silver arrows, which erst heaped the
+Phrygian shores with hecatombs of Argive slain, and they would but
+complain of the mosquito’s beak. Your female reformer goes smashing
+through society like a tipsy rhinoceros among the tulip beds, and all
+the torrent of brickbats rained upon her skin is shed, as globules of
+mercury might be supposed to run off the back of a dry drake.
+
+One of the rarest amusements in life is to go about with an icicle
+suspended by a string, letting it down the necks of the unwary. The
+sudden shrug, the quick frightened shudder, the yelp of apprehension
+are sources of a pure, because diabolical, delight. But these women—you
+may practise your chilling joke upon one of them, and she will calmly
+wonder where you got your ice, and will pen with deliberate fingers an
+ungrammatical resolution denouncing congelation as tyrannical and
+obsolete.
+
+We despair of ever dispelling these creatures by pungent
+pleasantries—of routing them by sharp censure. They are, apparently, to
+go on practically unmolested to the end. Meantime we are cast down with
+a mighty proneness along the dust; our shapely anatomy is clothed in a
+jaunty suit of sackcloth liberally embellished with the frippery of
+ashes; our days are vocal with wailing, our nights melodious with
+snuffle!
+
+Brethren, let us pray that the political sceptre may not pass from us
+into the jewelled hands which were intended by nature for the clouting
+of babes and sucklings.
+
+
+
+
+Angels and Angles
+
+
+When abandoned to her own devices, the average female has a tendency to
+“put on her things,” and to contrive the same, in a manner that is not
+conducive to patience in the male beholder. Her besetting iniquity in
+this particular is a fondness for angles, and she is unwavering in her
+determination to achieve them at whatever cost.
+
+Now we vehemently affirm that in woman’s apparel an angle is an offence
+to the male eye, and therefore a crime of no small magnitude. In the
+masculine garb angles are tolerable—angles of whatever acuteness. The
+masculine character and life are rigid and angular, and the apparel
+should, or at least may, proclaim the man. But with the soft, rounded
+nature of woman, her bending flexibility of temper, angles are
+absolutely incompatible. In her outward seeming all should be easy and
+flowing—every fold a nest of graces, and every line a curve.
+
+By close attention to this great truth, and a conscientious striving
+after its advantages, woman may hope to become rather comely of
+exterior, and to find considerable favour in the eyes of man. It is not
+impossible that, without any abatement of her present usefulness, she
+may come to be regarded as actually ornamental, and even attractive. If
+with her angles she will also renounce some hundreds of other equally
+harassing absurdities of attire, she may consider her position assured,
+and her claim to masculine toleration reasonably well grounded.
+
+
+
+
+A Wingless Insect
+
+
+It would be profitable in the end if man would take a hint from his
+lack of wings, and settle down comfortably into the assurance that
+midair is not his appointed element. The confession is a humiliating
+one, but there is a temperate balm in the consciousness that his
+inability to “shave with level wing” the blue empyrean cannot justly be
+charged upon himself. He has done his endeavour, and done it nobly; but
+he’ll break his precious neck.
+
+In Goldsmith’s veracious “History of Animated Nature” is a sprightly
+account of one Nicolas, who was called, if our memory be not at fault,
+the man-fish, and who was endowed by his Creator—the late Mr. Goldsmith
+aforesaid—with the power of conducting an active existence under the
+sea. That equally veracious and instructive work “The Arabian Nights’
+Entertainments,” peoples the bottom of old ocean with powerful nations
+of similarly gifted persons; while in our own day “the Man-Frog” has
+taught us what may be done in this line when one has once got the knack
+of it.
+
+Some years since (we do not know if he has yet suffered martyrdom at
+the hand of the fiendish White) there lived a noted Indian chieftain
+whose name, being translated, signifies
+“The-Man-Who-Walks-Under-the-Ground,” probably a lineal descendant of
+the gnomes. We have ourselves walked under the ground in wine cellars.
+
+With these notable examples in mind, we are not prepared to assert
+that, though man has as a rule neither the gills of a fish nor the nose
+of a mole, he may not enjoy a drive at the bottom of the sea, or a
+morning ramble under the subsoil. But with the exception of Peter
+Wilkins’ Flying Islanders—whose existence we vehemently dispute—and
+some similar creatures whom it suits our purpose to ignore, there is no
+record of any person to whom the name of
+The-Man-Who-Flies-Over-the-Hills may be justly applied. We make no
+account of the shallow device of Mongolfier, nor the dubious
+contrivance of Marriott. A gentleman of proper aspirations would scorn
+to employ either, as the Man-Frog would reject a diving-bell, or the
+subterranean chieftain would sneer at the Mont Cenis tunnel. These
+“weak inventions” only emphasize our impotence to strive with the
+subtle element about and above. They prove nothing so conclusively as
+that we _can’t_ fly—a fact still more strikingly proven by the constant
+thud of people tumbling out of them. To a Titan of comprehensive ear,
+who could catch the noises of a world upon his single tympanum as
+Hector caught Argive javelins upon his shield, the patter of dropping
+aeronauts would sound like the gentle pelting of hailstones upon a
+dusty highway—so thick and fast they fall.
+
+It is probable that man is no more eager to float free into space than
+the earth—if it be sentient—is to shake him off; but it would appear
+that he and it must, like the Siamese twins, consent to endure the
+disadvantages of a mutually disagreeable intimacy. We submit that it is
+hardly worth his while to continue “larding the lean earth” with his
+carcase in the vain endeavour to emulate angels, whom in no respect he
+at all resembles.
+
+
+
+
+Pork on the Hoof
+
+
+The motto _aut Cæsar aut nullus_ is principally nonsense, we take it.
+If one may not be a man, one may, in most cases, be a hog with equal
+satisfaction to his mind and heart.
+
+There is Thompson Washington Smith, for example (his name is not
+Thompson, nor Washington, nor yet Smith; we call him so to conceal his
+real name, which is perhaps Smythe). Now Thompson, there is reason to
+believe, tried earnestly for some years to be a man. Alas! he began
+while he was a boy, and got exhausted before he arrived at maturity. He
+could make no further effort, and manhood is not acquired without a
+mighty struggle, nor maintained without untiring industry. So having
+fatigued himself before reaching the starting-point, Thompson
+Washington did not re-enter the race for manhood, but contented his
+simple soul with achieving a modest swinehood. He became a hog of
+considerable talent and promise.
+
+Let it not be supposed that Thompson has anything in common with the
+typical, ideal hog—him who encrusts his hide with clay, and inhumes his
+muzzle in garbage. Far from it; he is a cleanly—almost a godly-hog,
+preternaturally fair of exterior, and eke fastidious of appetite. He is
+glossy of coat, stainless of shirt, immaculate of trousers. He is shiny
+of beaver and refulgent of boot. With all, a Hog. Watch him ten minutes
+under any circumstances and his face shall seem to lengthen and sharpen
+away, split at the point, and develop an unmistakeable snout. A ridge
+of bristles will struggle for sunlight under the gloss of his coat.
+This is your imagination, and that is about as far as it will take you.
+So long as Thompson Washington, actual, maintains a vertical attitude,
+Thompson Washington, unreal, will not assume an horizontal one. Your
+fancy cannot “go the whole hog.”
+
+It only remains to state explicitly to whom we are alluding. Well,
+there is a stye in the soul of every one of us, in which abides a
+porker more or less objectionable. We don’t all let him range at large,
+like Smith, but he will occasionally exalt his visage above the rails
+of even the most cleverly constructed pen. The best of us are they who
+spend most time repressing the beast by rapping him upon the nose.
+
+
+
+
+The Young Person
+
+
+We are prepared, not perhaps to prove, but to maintain, that
+civilization would be materially aided and abetted by the offer of a
+liberal reward for the scalps of Young Persons with the ears attached.
+Your regular Young Person is a living nuisance, whose every act is a
+provocation to exterminate her. We say “her,” not because, physically
+considered, the Y. P. is necesarily of the she sex; more commonly is it
+an irreclaimable male; but morally and intellectually it is an unmixed
+female. Her virtues are merely milk-and-morality-her intelligence is
+pure spiritual whey. Her conversation (to which not even her own
+virtues and intelligence are in any way related) is three parts
+rain-water that has stood too long and one part cider that has not
+stood long enough—a sickening, sweetish compound, one dose of which
+induces in the mental stomach a colicky qualm, followed, if no
+correctives be taken, by violent retching, coma, and death.
+
+The Young Person vegetates best in the atmosphere of parlours and
+ball-rooms; if she infested the fields and roadsides like the
+squirrels, lizards, and mud-hens, she would be as ruthlessly
+exterminated as they. Every passing sportsman would fill her with
+duck-shot, and every strolling gentleman would step out of his way to
+smite off her head with his cane, as one decapitates a thistle. But in
+the drawing-room one lays off his destructiveness with his hat and
+gloves, and the Young Person enjoys the same immunity that a sleepy
+mastiff grants to the worthless kitten campaigning against his nose.
+
+But there is no good reason why the Spider should be destroyed and the
+Young Person tolerated.
+
+
+
+
+A Certain Popular Fallacy
+
+
+The world makes few graver mistakes than in supposing a man must
+necessarily possess all the cardinal virtues because he has a big dog
+and some dirty children.
+
+We know a butcher whose children are not merely dirty—they are
+fearfully and wonderfully besmirched by the hand of an artist. He has,
+in addition, a big dog with a tendency to dropsy, who flies at you
+across the street with such celerity that he outruns his bark by a full
+second, and you are warned of your danger only after his teeth are
+buried in your leg. And yet the owner of these children and father of
+this dog is no whit better, to all appearance, than a baker who has
+clean brats and a mild poodle. He is not even a good butcher; he hacks
+a rib and lacerates a sirloin. He talks through his nose, which turns
+up to such an extent that the voice passes right over your head, and
+you have to get on a table to tell whether he is slandering his dead
+wife or swearing at yourself.
+
+If that man possessed a thousand young ones, exaltedly nasty, and dogs
+enough to make a sub-Atlantic cable of German sausage, you would find
+it difficult to make us believe in him. In fact, we look upon the big
+dog test of morality as a venerable mistake—natural but erroneous; and
+we regard dirty children as indispensable in no other sense than that
+they are inevitable.
+
+
+
+
+Pastoral Journalism
+
+
+There shall be joy in the household of the country editor what time the
+rural mind shall no longer crave the unhealthy stimuli afforded by
+fascinating accounts of corpulent beets, bloated pumpkins, dropsical
+melons, aspiring maize, and precocious cabbages. Then the bucolic
+journalist shall have surcease of toil, and may go out upon the meads
+to frisk with kindred lambs, frolic familiarly with loose-jointed
+colts, and exchange grave gambollings with solemn cows. Then shall the
+voice of the press, no longer attuned to the praises of the vegetable
+kingdom, find a more humble, but not less useful, employment in calling
+the animal kingdom to the evening meal beneath the sanctum window.
+
+To the over-worked editor life will have a fresh zest and a new
+significance. The hills shall hump more greenly upward to a bluer sky,
+the fields blush with a more tender sunshine. He will go forth at dawn
+with countless flipflaps of gymnastic joy; and when the white sun shall
+redden with the blood of dying day, and the hogs shall set up a fine
+evening hymn of supplication to the Giver of Swill, he will stand upon
+the editorial head, blissfully conscious that his intellect is
+a-ripening for the morrow’s work.
+
+The rural newspaper! We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over
+the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano,
+drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight
+do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who
+should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle—nothing to wound. The
+very atmosphere is saturated with “the spirit of the rural press;” and
+even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids
+over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly up again, tries to
+look as if he were not sleepy in the least. A pleasant smell of
+ploughed ground comes strong upon us. The tinkle of ghostly cow-bells
+falls drowsily upon the ear. Airy figures of phenomenal esculents float
+dreamily before our half-shut eyes, and vanish ere perfect vision can
+catch them. About and above are the drone of bees, and the muffled
+thunder of milk streams shooting into the foaming pail. The gabble of
+distant geese is faintly marked off by the bark of a distant dog. The
+city with its noises sinks away from our feet as from one in a balloon,
+and our senses are steeped in country languor. We slumber.
+
+God bless the man who first invented the country newspaper!—though
+Sancho Panza blessed him once before.
+
+
+
+
+Mendicity’s Mistake
+
+
+Your famishing beggar is a fish of as sorry aspect as may readily be
+scared up. Generally speaking, he is repulsive as to hat, abhorrent as
+to vesture, squalid of boot, and in _tout ensemble_ unseemly and
+atrocious. His appeal for alms falls not more vexingly upon the ear
+than his offensive personality smites hard upon the eye. The touching
+effectiveness of his tale is ever neutralized by the uncomeliness of
+his raiment and the inartistic besmirchedness of his countenance. His
+pleading is like the pathos of some moving ballad from the lips of a
+negro minstrel; shut your eyes and it shall make you fumble in your
+pocket for your handkerchief; open them, and you would fain draw out a
+pistol instead.
+
+It is to be wished that Poverty would garb his body in a clean skin,
+that Adversity would cultivate a taste for spotless linen, and that
+Beggary would address himself unto your pocket from beneath a downy
+hat. However, we cannot hope to immediately impress these worthy
+mendicants with the advantage of devoting a portion of their gains to
+the purchase of purple and fine linen, instead of expending their all
+upon the pleasures of the table and riotous living; but our duty unto
+them remains.
+
+The very least that one can do for the offensive needy is to direct
+them to the nearest clothier. That, therefore, is the proper course.
+
+
+
+
+Insects.
+
+
+Every one has observed, a solitary ant breasting a current of his
+fellows as he retraces his steps to pack off something he has
+forgotten. At each meeting with a neighbour there is a mutual pause,
+and the two confront each other for a moment, reaching out their
+delicate antennae, and making a critical examination of one another’s
+person. This the little creature repeats with tireless persistence to
+the end of his journey.
+
+As with the ant, so with the other insect—the sprightly “female of our
+species.” It is really delightful to watch the fine frenzy of her
+lovely eye as she notes the approach of a woman more gorgeously arrayed
+than herself, or the triumphant contempt that settles about her lips at
+the advance of a poorly clad sister. How contemplatively she lingers
+upon each detail of attire—with what keen penetration she takes in the
+general effect at a sweep!
+
+And this suggests the fearful thought—what _would_ the darlings do if
+they wore no clothes? One-half their pleasure in walking on the street
+would vanish like a dream, and an equal proportion of the philosopher’s
+happiness in watching them would perish in the barren prospect of an
+inartistic nudity.
+
+
+
+
+Picnicking considered as a Mistake
+
+
+Why do people attend public picnics? We do not wish to be iterative,
+but why do they? Heaven help them! it is because they know no better,
+and no one has had the leisure to enlighten them.
+
+Now your picnic-goer is a muff—an egregious, gregarious muff, and a
+glutton. Moreover, a nobody who, if he be male wears, in nine cases in
+ten, a red necktie and a linen duster to his heel; if she be female
+hath soiled hose to her calf, and in her face a premonition of colic to
+come.
+
+We hold it morally impossible to attend a picnic and come home pure in
+heart and undefiled of cuticle. For the dust will get in your nose,
+clog your ears, make clay in your mouth and mortar in your eyes, and so
+stop up all the natural passages to the soul; whereby the wickedness
+which that subtle organ doth constantly excrete is balked of its issue,
+tainting the entire system with a grievous taint.
+
+At picnics, moreover, is engendered an unpleasant perspiration, which
+the patient must perforce endure until he shall bathe him in a bath. It
+is not sweet to reek, and your picnicker must reek. Should he chance to
+break a leg, or she a limb, the inevitable exposure of the pedal
+condition is alarming and eke humiliating.
+
+
+
+
+Thanksgiving Day
+
+
+There be those of us whose memories, though vexed with an oyster-rake
+would not yield matter for gratitude, and whose piety though strained
+through a sieve would leave no trace of an object upon which to lavish
+thanks. It is easy enough, with a waistcoat selected for the occasion,
+to eat one’s proportion of turkey and hide away one’s allowance of
+wine; and if this be returning thanks, why then gratitude is
+considerably easier, and vastly more agreeable, than falling off a log,
+and may be acquired in one easy lesson without a master. But if more
+than this be required—if to be grateful means anything beyond being
+gluttonous, your true philosopher—he of the severe brow upon which
+logic has stamped its eternal impress, and from whose heart sentiment
+has been banished along with other small vices—your true philosopher,
+say we, will think twice before he “crooks the pregnant hinges of the
+knee” in humble observance of the day.
+
+For here is the nut of reason he is obliged to crack before he can
+obtain the kernel of emotion proper to the day. Unless the blessings we
+enjoy are favours from the Omnipotent, to be grateful is to be absurd.
+If they are, then, also the ills with which we are afflicted have the
+same origin. Grant this, and you make an offset of the latter against
+the former, or are driven either to the ridiculous position that we
+must be equally grateful for both evils and blessings, or the no less
+ridiculous one that all evils are blessings in disguise.
+
+But the truth is, my fine friend, your annual gratitude is a sorry
+sham, a cloak, my good fellow, to cover your unhandsome gluttony; and
+when by chance you do take to your knees, it is only that you prefer to
+digest your bird in that position. We understand your case accurately,
+and the hard sense we are poking at you is not a preachment for your
+edification, but a bit of harmless fun for our own diversion. For, look
+you! there is really a subtle but potent relation between the gratitude
+of the spirit and the stuffing of the flesh.
+
+We have ever taught the identity of Soul and Stomach; these are but
+different names for one object considered under differing aspects.
+Thankfulness we believe to be a kind of ether evolved by the action of
+the gastric fluid upon rich meats. Like all gases it ascends, and so
+passes out of the esophagus in prayer and psalmody. This beautiful
+theory we have tested by convincing experiments in the manner
+following:—
+
+_Experiment 1st._—A quantity of grass was placed in a large bladder,
+and a gill of the gastric fluid of a sheep introduced. In ten minutes
+the neck of the bladder emitted a contented bleat.
+
+_Experiment 2nd._—A pound of beef was substituted for the grass, and
+the fluid of a dog for that of the sheep. The result was a cheerful
+bark, accompanied by an agitation of the bottom of the bladder, as if
+it were attempting to wag an imaginary tail.
+
+_Experiment 3rd._—The bladder was charged with a handful of chopped
+turkey, and an ounce of human gastric juice obtained from the Coroner.
+At first, nothing but a deep sigh of satisfaction escaped from the neck
+of the bladder, followed by an unmistakeable grunt, similar to that of
+a hog. Upon increasing the proportion of turkey, and confining the gas,
+the bladder was very much distended, appearing to suffer great
+uneasiness. The restriction being removed, the neck distinctly
+articulated the words “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!”
+
+Against such demonstration as this any mere theological theorizing is
+of no avail.
+
+
+
+
+Flogging
+
+
+It may justly be demanded of the essayist that he shall give some small
+thought to the question of corporal punishment by means of the “cat,”
+and “ground-ash.” We have given the subject the most elaborate
+attention; we have written page after page upon it. Day and night we
+have toiled and perspired over that distressing problem. Through
+Summer’s sun and Winter’s snow, with all unfaltering purpose, we have
+strung miles of ink upon acres of paper, weaving wisdom into eloquence
+with the tireless industry of a silkworm fashioning his cocoon. We have
+refused food, scorned sleep, and endured thirst to see our work grow
+beneath our cunning hand. The more we wrote the wiser we became; the
+opinions of one day were rejected the next; the blind surmising of
+yesterday ripened into the full knowledge of to-day, and this matured
+into the superhuman omniscience of this evening. We have finally got so
+infernally clever that we have abandoned the original design of our
+great work, and determined to make it a compendium of everything that
+is accurately known up to date, and the bearing of this upon flogging
+in general.
+
+To other, and inferior, writers it is most fortunate that our design
+has taken so wide a scope. These can go on with their perennial wrangle
+over the petty question of penal and educational flagellation, while we
+grapple with the higher problem, and unfold the broader philosophy of
+an universal walloping.
+
+
+
+
+Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of the Press
+
+
+_Reflection 1._—The beneficent influence of the Press is most talked
+about by the Press.
+
+_Reflection 2._—If the Press were less evenly divided upon all social,
+political, and moral questions the influence of its beneficence would
+be greater than it is.
+
+_Reflection 3._—The beneficence of its influence would be more marked.
+
+_Reflection 4._—If the Press were more wise and righteous than it is,
+it might escape the reproach of being more foolish and wicked than it
+should be.
+
+_Reflection 5._—The foregoing Reflection is _not_ an identical
+proposition.
+
+_Reflection 6._—(_a_) The beneficent influence of the Press cannot be
+purchased for money. (_b_) It can if you have enough money.
+
+
+
+
+Charity
+
+
+Charity is certain to bring its reward—if judiciously bestowed. The
+Anglo-Saxons are the most charitable race in the world—and the most
+judicious. The right hand should never know of the charity that the
+left hand giveth. There is, however, no objection to putting it in the
+papers. Charity is usually represented with a babe in her arms—going to
+place it benevolently upon a rich man’s doorstep.
+
+
+
+
+The Study of Human Nature
+
+
+To the close student of human nature no place offers such manifold
+attractions, such possibilities of deep insight, such a mine of
+suggestion, such a prodigality of illustration, as a pig-pen at feeding
+time. It has been said, with allusion to this philosophical pursuit,
+that “there is no place like home;” but it will be seen that this is
+but another form of the same assertion.—_End of the Essay upon the
+Study of Human Nature._
+
+
+
+
+Additional Talk—Done in the Country
+
+I.
+
+.... Life in the country may be compared to the aimless drifting of a
+house-dog professing to busy himself about a lawn. He goes nosing
+about, tacking and turning here and there with the most intense
+apparent earnestness; and finally seizes a blade of grass by the
+middle, chews it savagely, drops it; gags comically, and curls away to
+sleep as if worn out with some mighty exercise. Whatever pursuit you
+may engage in in the country is sure to end in nausea, which you are
+quite as sure to try to get recognised as fatigue.
+
+II.
+
+.... A windmill keeps its fans going about; they do not stop long in
+one position. A man should be like the fans of a windmill; he should go
+about a good deal, and not stop long—in the country.
+
+III.
+
+.... A great deal has been written and said and sung in praise of green
+trees. And yet there are comparatively few green trees that are good to
+eat. Asparagus is probably the best of them, though celery is by no
+means to be despised. Both may be obtained in any good market in the
+city.
+
+IV.
+
+.... A cow in walking does not, as is popularly supposed, pick up all
+her feet at once, but only one of them at a time. Which one depends
+upon circumstances. The cow is but an indifferent pedestrian. _Hæc
+fabula docet_ that one should not keep three-fourths of his capital
+lying idle.
+
+V.
+
+.... The Quail is a very timorous bird, who never achieves anything
+notable, yet he has a crest. The Jay, who is of a warlike and powerful
+family, has no crest. There is a moral in this which Aristocracy will
+do well to ponder. But the quail is very good to eat and the jay is
+not. The quail is entitled to a crest. (In the Eastern States, this
+meditation will provoke dispute, for there the jay has a crest and the
+quail has not. The Eastern States are exceptional and inferior.)
+
+VI.
+
+.... The destruction of rubbish with fire makes a very great smoke. In
+this particular a battle resembles the destruction of rubbish. There
+would be a close resemblance even if a battle evolved no smoke.
+Rubbish, by the way, is not good eating, but an essayist should not be
+a _gourmet_—in the country.
+
+VII.
+
+.... Sweet milk should be taken only in the middle of the night. If
+taken during the day it forms a curd in the stomach, and breeds a dire
+distress. In the middle of the night the stomach is supposed to be
+innocent of whisky, and it is the whisky that curdles the milk. Should
+you be sleeping nicely, I would not advise you to come out of that
+condition to drink sweet milk.
+
+VIII.
+
+.... In the country the atmosphere is of unequal density, and in
+passing through the denser portions your silk hat will be ruffled, and
+the country people will jeer at it. They will jeer at it anyhow. When
+going into the country, you should leave your silk hat at a bank,
+taking a certificate of deposit.
+
+IX.
+
+.... The sheep chews too fast to enjoy his victual.
+
+
+
+
+CURRENT JOURNALINGS
+
+
+... Following is the manner of death incurred by Dr. Deadwood, the
+celebrated African explorer, which took place at Ujijijijiji, under the
+auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of England, assisted, at
+some distance, by Mr. Shandy of the _New York Herald:_—
+
+An intelligent gorilla has recently been imported to this country, who
+had the good fortune to serve the Doctor as a body servant in the
+interior of Africa, and he thus describes the manner of his master’s
+death. The Doctor was accustomed to pass his nights in the stomach of
+an acquaintance—a crocodile about fifty feet long. Stepping out one
+evening to take an observation of one of the lunar eclipses peculiar to
+the country, he spoke to his host, saying that as he should not return,
+until after bedtime, he would not trouble him to sit up to let him in;
+he would just leave the door open till he came home. By way of doing
+so, he set up a stout fence-rail between his landlord’s distended jaws,
+and went away.
+
+Returning about midnight, he took off his boots outside, so as not to
+awaken his friend, entered softly, knocked away the prop, and prepared
+to turn in. But the noise of pounding on the rail had aroused the
+householder, and so great was the feeling of relief induced by the
+relaxation of the maxillary muscles, that he unconsciously shut his
+mouth to smile, without giving his tenant time to get into the bedroom.
+The Doctor was just stooping to untie his drawers, when he was caught
+between the floor and ceiling, like a lemon in a squeezer.
+
+Next day the melancholy remains were given up to our informant, who
+displays a singular reticence regarding his disposition of them; merely
+picking his teeth with his claws in an absent, thoughtful kind of way,
+as if the subject were too mournful to be discussed in all its
+harrowing details.
+
+None of the Doctor’s maps or instruments were recovered; his bereaved
+landlord holds them as security for certain rents claimed to be due and
+unpaid. It is probable that Great Britain will make a stern demand for
+them, and if they are not at once surrendered will—submit her claim to
+a Conference.
+
+.... The prim young maidens who affiliate with the Young Men’s
+Christian Association of San Francisco—who furnish the posies for their
+festivals, and assist in the singing of psalms—have a gymnasium in the
+temple. Thither they troop nightly to display their skill in turning
+inside out and shutting themselves up like jack-knives of the gentler
+kind.
+
+Here may be seen the godly Rachel and the serious Ruth, suspended by
+their respective toes between the heaven to which they aspire and the
+wicked world they do abhor. Here the meek-eyed Hannah, pendent from the
+horizontal bar, doubleth herself upon herself and stares fixedly
+backward from between her shapely limbs, a thing of beauty and a joy
+for several minutes. Mehitable Ann, beloved of young Soapenlocks,
+vaults lightly over a barrier and with unspoken prayer lays hold on the
+unstable trapeze mounting aloft in air. Jerusha, comeliest of her sex,
+ties herself in a double bow-knot, and meditates upon the doctrine of
+election.
+
+O, blessed temple of grace divine! O, innocence and youth and simple
+faith! O, water and molasses and unsalted butter! O, niceness absolute
+and godly whey! Would that we were like unto these ewe lambs, that we
+might frisk and gambol among them without evil. Would that we were
+female, and Christian, and immature, with a flavour as of green grass
+and a hope in heaven. Then would we, too, sing hymns through our
+blessed nose, and contort and musculate with much satisfaction of soul,
+even in the gymnasium of The Straight-backed.
+
+.... Some raging iconoclast, after having overthrown religion by
+history, upset history by science, and then toppled over science, has
+now laid his impious hands upon babies’ nursing bottles.
+
+“The tubes of these infernal machines,” says this tearing beast, “are
+composed of india-rubber dissolved in bisulphide of carbon, and
+thickened with lead, resin, and sometimes oxysulphuret of antimony,
+from which, when it comes in contact with the milk, sulphuretted
+hydrogen is evolved, and lactate of lead formed in the stomach.”
+
+This logic is irresistible. Granting only that the tubes are made in
+that simple and intelligible manner (and anybody can see for himself
+that they are), the sulphuretted hydrogen and the lactate of lead
+follow (down the œsophagus) as a logical sequence. But the scientific
+horror seems to be profoundly unaware that these substances are not
+only harmless to the child, but actually nutritious and essential to
+its growth. Not only so, but nature has implanted in its breast an
+instinctive craving for these very comforts. Often have we seen some
+wee thing turn disgusted from the breast and lift up its thin voice:
+“Not for Joseph; give me the bottle with the oxysulphuret of antimony
+tube. I take sulphuretted hydrogen and lactate of lead in mine every
+time!” And we have said: “Nature is working in that darling. What God
+hath joined together let no man put asunder!”
+
+And we have thought of the wicked iconoclast.
+
+.... There are a lot of evil-minded horses about the city, who seem to
+take a fiendish delight in letting fly their heels at whomsoever they
+catch in a godly reverie unconscious of their proximity. This is
+perfectly natural and human, but it is annoying to be always getting
+horse-kicked when one is not in a mood for it.
+
+The worst of it is, these horses always manage it so as to get tethered
+across the sidewalk in the most populous thoroughfares, where they at
+once drop into the semblance of a sound slumber. By this means they
+lure the unsuspecting to their doom, and just as some unconscious
+pedestrian is passing astern of them they wake up, and without a
+preliminary yawn, or even a warning shake of the tail like the more
+chivalrous rattlesnake, they at once discharge their feet at him with a
+rapidity and effect that are quite surprising if the range be not too
+long. Usually this occurs in Merchant-street, below Montgomery, and the
+damage is merely nominal; some worthless Italian fisherman, market
+gardener, or decayed gentleman oozing out of a second-class restaurant
+being the only sufferer.
+
+Rut not infrequently these playful brutes get themselves tethered in
+some fashionable promenade, and the consequence is demoralizing to
+white people. We speak within the limits of possibility when we say
+that we have seen no less than seven women and children in the air at
+once, impelled heavenward by as many consecutive kicks of a single
+skilled operator. No longer ago than we can remember we saw an aged
+party in spectacles and a clawhammer coat gyrating through the air like
+an irregular bolt shot out of a catapult. Before we could ascertain
+from him the site of the quadruped from whom he had received his
+impulsion, he had passed like a vague dream, and the equine scoundrel
+went unwhipped of justice.
+
+These flying squadrons are serious inconveniences to public travel; it
+is conducive to profanity to have a whizzing young woman, a rattling
+old man, or a singing baby flung against one’s face every few moments
+by the hoofs of some animal whom one has never injured, and who is a
+perfect stranger.
+
+It ought to be stopped.
+
+.... In the telegraphic account of a distressing railway accident in
+New York, we find the following:—“The body of Mr. Germain was
+identified by his business partner, John Austin, who seemed terribly
+affected by his loss.”
+
+O, reader, how little we think upon the fearful possibilities hidden
+away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its
+light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object,
+about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and
+shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and
+makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a
+sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets;
+to-morrow—we lose our business partner!
+
+.... Mr. J. L. Dummle, one of our most respected citizens, left his
+home to go, as he said, to his office. There was nothing unusual in his
+demeanour, and he appeared to be in his customary health and spirits.
+It is not known that there was anything in his financial or domestic
+affairs to make life distasteful to him. About half an hour after
+parting with his family, he was seen conversing with a friend at the
+corner of Kearny and Sutter-streets, from which point he seems to have
+gone directly to the Vallejo-street wharf. He was here seen by the
+captain of the steamer _New World_, standing upon the extreme end of
+the wharf, but the circumstance did not arouse any suspicion in the
+mind of the Captain, to whom he was well known. At that moment some
+trivial business diverted the Captain’s attention, and he saw Mr.
+Dummle no more; but it has been ascertained that the latter proceeded
+directly home, where he may now be seen by any one desiring to obtain
+further particulars of the melancholy event here narrated.
+
+Mr. Dummle speaks of it with perfect frankness and composure.
+
+.... In deference to a time-worn custom, on the first day of the year
+the writer swore to, affixed a revenue stamp upon, and recorded the
+following document:—
+
+“I will not, during this year, utter a profane word—unless in
+sport—without having been previously vexed by something.
+
+“I will murder no one that does not offend me, except for his money.
+
+“I will commit highway robbery upon none but small school children, and
+then only under the stimulus of present or prospective hunger.
+
+“I will not bear false witness against my neighbour where nothing is to
+be made by it.
+
+“I will be as moral and religious as the law shall compel me to be.
+
+“I will run away with no man’s wife without her full and free consent,
+and never, no never, so help me heaven! will I take his children along.
+
+“I wont write any wicked slanders against anybody, unless by refraining
+I should sacrifice a good joke.
+
+“I wont beat any cripples who do not come fooling about me when I am
+busy; and I will give all my neighbours’ boots to the poor.”
+
+....A town in Vermont has a society of young men, formed for the
+express purpose of rescuing young ladies from drowning. We warn these
+gentlemen that we will not accept even honorary membership in their
+concern; we do not sympathize with the movement. Upon several occasions
+we have stood by and seen young ladies’ noses disappear beneath the
+waters blue, with a stolid indifference that would have been creditable
+in a husband. It was a trifle rough on the darlings, but if we know our
+own mind we do not purpose, just for the doubtful pleasure of saving a
+female’s life, to surrender our prerogative of marrying when and whom
+we like.
+
+If we take a fancy to a woman we shall wed her, but we’re not to be
+coerced into matrimony by any ridiculous school-girl who may chance to
+fall into a horse-pond. We know their tricks and their manners—waking
+to consciousness in a fellow’s arms and throwing their own wet ones
+about his neck, saying, “The life you have preserved, noble youth, is
+yours; whither thou goest I will go; thy horses and carriages shall be
+my horses and carriages!”
+
+We are too old a sturgeon to be caught with a spoon-hook. Ladies in the
+vicinity of our person need not hesitate to fling themselves madly into
+the first goose-puddle that obstructs their way; their liberty of
+action will be scrupulously respected.
+
+.... There is a bladdery old nasality ranging about the country upon
+free passes, vexing the public ear with “hallowed songs,” and making of
+himself a spectacle to the eye. This bleating lamb calls himself the
+“Sacred Singer,” and has managed to get that pleasing title into the
+newspapers until it is become as offensive as himself.
+
+Now, therefore, we do trustfully petition that this wearisome
+psalm-sharp, this miauling meter-monger, this howling dervish of hymns
+devotional, may strain his trachea, unsettle the braces of his lungs,
+crack his ridiculous gizzard and perish of pneumonia starvation. And
+may the good Satan seize upon the catgut strings of his tuneful soul,
+and smite therefrom a wicked, wicked waltz!
+
+.... We hold a most unflattering opinion of the man who will thieve a
+dog, but between him and the man who will keep one, the moral
+difference is not so great as to be irreconcilable.
+
+Our own dog is a standing example of canine inutility. The scurvy cur
+is not only totally depraved in his morals, but his hair stands the
+wrong way, and his tail is of that nameless type intermediate between
+the pendulously pitiful and the spirally exasperating—a tail which
+gives rise to conflicting emotions in the mind of the beholder, and
+causes the involuntarily uplifted hand to hesitate if it shall knuckle
+away the springing tear, or fall in thunderous vengeance upon the head
+of the dog’s master.
+
+That dog spends about half his elegant leisure in devouring the cold
+victuals of compassion, and the other half in running after the bricks
+of which he is the provocation and we are the target. Within the last
+six years we employed as editors upon the unhappy journal which it was
+intended that this article should redeem, no less than sixteen
+pickpockets, hoping they would steal him; but with an acute
+intelligence of which their writing conveyed but an imperfect idea,
+they shunned the glittering bait, as one walks to windward of the
+deadly upas tree. We have given him away to friends until we haven’t a
+friend left; we have offered him at auction-sales, and been ourselves
+knocked down; we have decoyed him into strange places and abandoned
+him, until we are poor from the payment of unpromised rewards. In the
+character of a charitable donation he has been driven from the door of
+every orphan asylum, foundling hospital, and reform school in the
+State. Not a week passes but we forfeit exemplary damages for inciting
+him to fall foul of passing gentlemen, in the vain hope of getting him
+slain.
+
+If any one would wish to purchase a cheap dog, we would sell this
+beast.
+
+.... A religious journal published in the Far West says that Brothers
+Dong, Gong, and Tong are Chinese converts to its church. There is a
+fine religious nasality about these names that is strongly suggestive
+of the pulpit in the palmy days of the Puritans.
+
+By the way, we should dearly love to know how to baptize a Chinaman. We
+have a shrewd suspicion that it is done as the Mongolian laundryman
+dampens our linen: by taking the mouth full of water and spouting it
+over the convert’s head in a fine spray. If so, it follows that the
+pastor having most “cheek” is best qualified for cleansing the pagan
+soul.
+
+An important question arises here. Suppose Dong, Gong, and Tong to have
+been baptized in this way, who pronounced that efficacious formula, “I
+baptize thee in the name,” etc.? Clearly the parson, with his mouth
+full of water, could not have done so at the instant of baptism, and if
+the sentence was spoken by any other person it was a falsehood. It must
+therefore have been spoken either before the minister distended his
+cheeks, or after he had exhausted them. In either case, according to
+the learned Dr. Sicklewit, the ceremony is utterly null and void of
+effect. (_Study of Baptism_, vol. ix., ch. cxix. § vi. p. 627, line 13
+from bottom.)
+
+Possibly, however, D., G. and T. were not baptized in this way. Then
+how the devil were they baptized?—and why?
+
+.... Henry Wolfe, of Kentucky, aged one hundred and eight years, who
+had never been sick in his life, lay down one fine day and sawed his
+neck asunder with a razor. Henry did not believe in self-slaughter; he
+despised it. It was Henry’s opinion that as God had placed us here we
+should stay until it was His pleasure to remove us. That is also our
+opinion, and the opinion of all other good Christians who would like to
+die but are afraid to do it. It will be observed that Henry could not
+claim originality of opinion.
+
+But there is a point beyond which hope deferred maketh the heart sick,
+and Henry had passed that point. He waited patiently till he was naked
+of scalp and deaf of ear. He endured without repining the bent back,
+the sightless eyes, and the creaking joints incident to over-maturity.
+But when he saw a man perish of senility, who in infancy had called him
+“Old Hank,” Mr. Wolfe thought patience had ceased to be commendable,
+and he abandoned his post of duty without being regularly relieved.
+
+It is to be hoped he will be hotly punished for it.
+
+.... One day an obscure and unimportant person pitched himself among
+the rolling porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busy-body,
+not at once clearly apprehending that the matter was none of his
+immediate business, hied him down to the engineer and commanded that
+official to “back her, hard!” As it is customary upon the high seas for
+such orders to emanate from the officer in command, that particular
+boat kept forging ahead, and the unimportant old person carried out his
+original design—that is, he went to the bottom like an iron wedge.
+Rises the press in its wrath and prates about a Grand Jury! Shrieks an
+intelligent public, in chorus, at the heartless engineer!
+
+Meantime the pretty fish are running away with choice bits of God’s
+image at the bottom of the bay; the cunning crab makes merry with a
+dead man’s eye, the nipping shrimp sweetens himself for the table upon
+the clean juices of a succulent corpse. Below all is peace and fat
+feasting; above rolls the sounding ocean of eternal Bosh!
+
+.... There is war! The woman suffrage folk go up against one another,
+because that a portion of them cleave to the error that the Bible is a
+collection of fables. These will probably divest themselves of this
+belief about the time that Mr. Satan stands over them with a
+toasting-fork, points significantly to a glowing gridiron, and says to
+each suffrager:
+
+“Madame, I beg your pardon, but you will please retire to the ladies’
+dressing-room, disrobe, unpad, lay off your back-hair; and make
+yourself as comfortable as possible while some fresh coals are being
+put on the fire. When you have unmade your toilet you may touch that
+bell, and you will be nicely buttered and salted for the iron. A polite
+and gentlemanly attendant will occasionally turn you, and I shall take
+pleasure in looking in upon you once in a million years, to see that
+you are being properly done. Exceedingly sultry weather, Madame. _Au
+revoir_.”
+
+.... The funeral of the Rev. Father Byrne took place from the Church of
+the Holy Cross. The ceremonies were of the most solemn and impressive
+character, and were keenly enjoyed by the empty benches by which the
+Protestant clergy were ably represented. Why turned ye not out, O
+Biblethump, and Muddletext, and you, Hymnsing? Is it thus that the
+Master was wont to treat the dead?
+
+Now get thee into the secret recesses of thy closet, Rev. Lovepreach;
+knuckle down upon thy knees and pray to a tolerant God not to smite
+thee with a plague. For lo! thou hast been a bigoted, bat-eyed,
+cat-hearted fraud—a preacher of peace and a practiser of strife. For
+these many years thy tongue hath been dropping gospel honey, and thy
+soul secreting bitterness. Thy voice has been as the sound of glad
+horns upon a hill, but thy ways are the ways of a gaunt hound tracking
+the hunted stag. “Holier than we,” are you? And when the worker of
+differing faith is gone to his account, you turn your sleek back upon
+the God’s image as it is given to the waiting worms. Perdition seize
+thee and thy holiness! we’ll none of it.
+
+.... Two hundred dollars for biting a woman’s neck and arms! That was
+the sentence imposed upon the gentle Mr. Hill, because His Eminence set
+his incisors into the yielding tissue of Mrs. Langdon, a lady with whom
+his wife happened to be debating by means of a stew-kettle.
+
+If this monstrous decision stand, the writer owes the treasury about
+ten thousand dollars. Though by nature of a mild and gentle appetite,
+preferring simple roots and herbs, yet it has been his custom to nip
+all female necks and arms that have been willingly submitted unto his
+teeth. He hath found in this harmless, and he had supposed lawful,
+practice, an exceeding sweetness of sensation, and a satisfaction
+wherewith the delights of sausage, or the bliss of pigs’ feet, can in
+nowise compare. Having commonly found the gratification mutual, he
+thinks he is justified in maintaining its innocence.
+
+.... We are tolerably phlegmatic and notoriously hard to provoke. We
+look on with considerable composure while our favourite Chinaman is
+being dismembered in the streets, and our dog publicly insulted.
+Detecting an alien hand in our trousers pocket excites in us only a
+feeling of temperate disapprobation, and an open swindle executed upon
+our favourite cousin by an unscrupulous shopkeeper we regard simply as
+an instance of enterprise which has taken an unfortunate direction.
+Slow to anger, quick to forgive, charitable in judgment and to mercy
+prone; with unbounded faith in the entire goodness of man and the
+complete holiness of woman; seeking ever for palliating circumstances
+in the conduct of the blackest criminal—we are at once a model of
+moderation and a pattern of forbearance.
+
+But if Mrs. Victoria Woodhull and her swinish crew of free lovers had
+but a single body, and that body lay asleep under the upturned root of
+a prostrate oak, we would work with a dull jack-knife day and
+night—month in and month out—through summer’s sun and winter’s storm—to
+sever that giant trunk, and let that mighty root, clasping its mountain
+of inverted earth, back into the position assigned to it by nature and
+by nature’s God!
+
+.... We like a liar—a thoroughly conscientious, industrious, and
+ingenious liar. Not your ordinary prevaricator, who skirts along the
+coast of truth, keeping ever within sight of the headlands and
+promontories of probability—whose excursions are limited to short,
+fair-weather reaches into the ocean of imagination, and who paddles for
+port as if the devil were after him whenever a capful of wind threatens
+a storm of exposure; but a bold, sea-going liar, who spurns a
+continent, striking straight out for blue water, with his eyes fixed
+upon the horizon of boundless mendacity.
+
+We have found such a one, and our hat is at half-mast in token of
+profound esteem and conscious inferiority. This person gravely tells us
+that at the burning of the Archiepiscopal Palace at Bourges, among
+other valuable manuscripts destroyed was the original death-warrant of
+Jesus Christ, signed at Jerusalem by one Capel, and dated U. C. 783.
+Not only so, but he kindly favours us with a literal translation of it!
+
+One cannot help warming up to a man who can lie like that. Talk about
+Chatterton’s Rowley deception, Macpherson’s Ossian fraud, or Locke’s
+moon hoax! Compared with this tremendous fib they are as but the stilly
+whisper of a hearth-stone cricket to the shrill trumpeting of a wounded
+elephant—the piping of a sick cocksparrow to the brazen clang of a
+donkey in love!
+
+.... For the memory of the late John Ridd, of Illinois, we entertain
+the liveliest contempt. Mr. Ridd recently despatched himself with a
+firearm for the following reasons, set forth in a letter that he left
+behind.
+
+“Two years ago I discovered that I was worthless. My great failings are
+insincerity of character and sly ugliness. Any one who watched me a
+little while would discover my unenviable nature.”
+
+Now, it is not that Mr. Ridd was worthless that we hold his memory in
+reprobation; nor that he was insincere, nor sly, nor ugly. It is
+because possessing these qualities he was fool enough to think they
+disqualified him for the duties of life, or stood in the way of his
+being an ornament to society and an honour to his country.
+
+....“About the first of next month,” says a pious contemporary, “we
+shall discontinue the publication of our paper in this city, and shall
+remove our office and fixtures to—, where we hope for a blessing upon
+our work, and a share of advertising patronage.”
+
+A numerous editorial staff of intelligent jackasses will accompany the
+caravan. In imagination we behold them now, trudging gravely along
+behind the moving office fixtures, their goggle eyes cast down in
+Christian meditation, their horizontal ears flopping solemnly in unison
+with their measured tread. Ever and anon the leader halts, uprolls the
+speculative eye, arrests the oscillation of the ears, laying them
+rigidly back along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank
+jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from
+their eternal repose. His companions take up the parable in turn, “and
+the echoes, huddling in affright, like Odin’s hounds,” go baying down
+the valleys and clamouring amongst the pines, like a legion of
+invisible fiends after a strange cat. Then again all is hush, and
+tramp, and sanctity, and flop, and holy meditation! And so the
+pilgrimage is accomplished. Selah! Hee-haw!
+
+.... A man in California has in his possession the rope with which his
+father was hanged by a vigilance committee in ’49 for horse-stealing.
+He keeps it neatly coiled away in an old cheese-box, and every Sunday
+morning he lays his left hand reverently upon it, and with uncovered
+head and a look of stern determination in his eye, raises his right to
+heaven, and swears by an avenging God it served the old man right!
+
+It has not been deemed advisable to put this dutiful son under bonds to
+keep the peace.
+
+.... A contemporary has some elaborate obituary commendation of a boy
+seven years of age, who was “a child of more than ordinary
+sprightliness, loved the Bible, and was deeply impressed with a
+veneration for holy things.”
+
+Now we would sorrowfully ask our contemporary if he thinks flattery
+like this can soothe the dull cold ear of young Dobbin? Dobbin _père_
+may enjoy it as light and entertaining reading, but when the
+resurrecting angel shall stir the dust of young Theophilus with his
+foot, and sing out “get up, Dobbin,” we think that sprightly youth will
+whimper three times for molasses gingerbread before he will signify an
+audible aspiration for the Bible. A sweet-tooth is often mistaken for
+early piety, and licking a sugar archangel may be easily construed as
+veneration for holy things.
+
+.... A young physician of Troy became enamoured of a rich female
+patient, and continued his visits after she was convalescent. During
+one of these he had the misfortune to give her the small-pox, having
+neglected to change his clothes after calling on another patient
+enjoying that malady. The lady had to be removed to the pest-house,
+where the stricken medico sedulously attends her for nothing. His
+generosity does not end here: he declares that should she recover he
+will marry her—if she be not too badly pitted.
+
+Apparently the legal profession does not enjoy a monopoly of all the
+self-sacrifice that is current in the world.
+
+.... A young woman stood before the mirror with a razor. Pensively she
+twirled the unaccustomed instrument in her jewelled fingers, fancying
+her smooth cheek clothed with a manly beard. In imagination she saw her
+pouting lips shaded by the curl of a dark moustache, and her eyes grew
+dim with tears that it was not, never could be, so. And the mirrored
+image wept back at her a silent sob, the echo of her grief.
+
+“Ah,” she sighed, “why did not God make me a man? Must I still drag out
+this hateful, whiskerless existence?”
+
+The girlish tears welled up again and overran her eyes. Thoughtfully
+she crossed her right hand over to her left ear; carefully but timidly
+she placed the keen, cold edge of the steel against the smooth
+alabaster neck, twisted the fingers of her other hand into her long
+black hair, drew back her head and ripped away. There was an apparition
+in that mirror as of a ripe watermelon opening its mouth to address a
+public meeting; there were the thud and jar of a sudden sitting down;
+and when the old lady came in from frying doughnuts in the adjoining
+room she found something that seemed to interest her—something still
+and warm and wet—something kind of doubled up.
+
+Ah! poor old wretch! your doughnuts shall sizzle and sputter and swim
+unheeded in their grease; but the beardless jaw that should have wagged
+filially to chew them is dropped in death; the stomach which they
+should have distended is crinkled and dry for ever!
+
+.... Miss Olive Logan’s lecture upon “girls” has suggested to the
+writer the propriety of delivering one upon “boys.” He doesn’t know
+anything about boys, and is therefore entirely unprejudiced. He was
+never a boy himself—has always been just as old as he is now; though
+the peculiar vagueness of his memory previously to the time of building
+the pyramid of Cheops, and his indistinct impressions as to the
+personal appearance of Job, lead to the suspicion that his faculties at
+that time were partially undeveloped. He regards himself as the only
+lecturer extant who can do justice to boys; and he prefers to do it
+with an axe-handle, but is willing, like Olive Logan, to sacrifice his
+mere preferences for the purpose of making money.
+
+This lecture will take place as soon as a sum of money has been sent to
+this office sufficiently large to justify him in renting a hall for one
+hour’s uninterrupted profanity—sixty minutes of careful, accurate, and
+elaborate cursing. Admission—all the money you have about you. Boys
+will be charged in proportion to their estimated depravity; fifty
+dollars a head for the younger sorts, and from five hundred to one
+thousand for those more advanced in general diabolism.
+
+.... Some women in New York have set the fashion of having costly
+diamonds set into their front teeth. The attention of robbers and
+garotters is called to this fact, with the recommendation that no
+greater force be used than is necessary. The use of the ordinary
+bludgeon or slung shot would be quite needless; a gentle tap on the
+head with a clay pipe or a toothpick will place the victim in the
+proper condition to be despoiled. Great care should be exercised in
+extracting the jewels; instead of the teeth being knocked inwards, as
+in ordinary cases of mere purposeless mangling, they should be
+artistically lifted out by inserting the point of a crowbar into the
+mouth and jumping on the other end.
+
+.... The Coroner having broken his leg, inquests will hereafter be held
+by the Justices of the Peace. People intending to commit suicide will
+confer a favour by worrying along until the Coroner shall recover, as
+the Justices are all new to the business. The cold, uncharitable world
+is tolerably hard to endure, but if unfortunates will secure some
+respectable employment and go to work at it they will be surprised to
+find how glibly the moments will glide away. The Coroner will probably
+be ready for their carcases in about four weeks, and it would be well
+not to bind themselves to service for a longer period, lest he should
+find it necessary to send for them and do their little business
+himself. A fair supply of street-cadavers and water-corpses can usually
+be counted on, but it is absolutely necessary to have a certain
+proportion of suicides.
+
+.... John Reed, of Illinois, is a man who knows his rights, and knowing
+dares maintain. Having communicated to a young lady his intention of
+conferring upon her the honour of his company at a Fourth of July
+celebration, John was pained and disgusted to hear the proposal quietly
+declined. John went thoughtfully away to a neighbour who keeps a
+double-shotgun. This he secured, and again sought the object of his
+hopeless preference. The object was seated at the dinner-table
+contending with her lobscouse, and did not feel his presence near. Mr.
+Reed poised and sighted his artillery, and with the very natural
+remark, “I think this fetcher,” he exploded the twin charges. A moment
+later might have been seen the rare spectacle of a headless young lady
+sitting bolt upright at table, spooning a wad of hash into the top of
+her neck. The wall opposite presented the appearance of having been
+bombarded with fresh livers and baptized with sausage-meat.
+
+No one in the vicinity slept any that night. They were busy getting
+ready for the Fourth: the gentlemen going about inviting the ladies to
+attend the celebration, and the ladies hastily and unconditionally
+accepting.
+
+.... In answer to the ladies who are always bothering him for a
+photograph, Mr. Grile hopes to satisfy all parties by the following
+meagre description of his charms.
+
+In person he is rather thin early in the morning, and a trifle
+corpulent after dinner; in complexion pale, with a suspicion of ruby
+about the gills. He wears his hair brown, and parted crosswise of his
+remarkably fine head. His eyes are of various colours, but mostly
+bottle-green, with a glare in them reminding one of incipient
+hydrophobia—from which he really suffers. A permanent depression in the
+bridge of his nose was inherited from a dying father what time the son
+mildly petitioned for a division of the estate to which he and his
+seventeen brothers were about to become the heirs. The mouth is
+gentlemanly capacious, indicative of high breeding and feeding; the
+under jaw projects slightly, forming a beautiful natural reservoir for
+the reception of beer and other liquids. The forehead retreats rapidly
+whenever a creditor is met, or an offended reader espied coming toward
+the office.
+
+His legs are of unequal length, owing to his constant habit of using
+one of them to kick people who may happen to present a fairer mark than
+the nearest dog. His hand is remarkably slender and white, and is
+usually inserted in another man’s pocket. In dress he is wonderfully
+fastidious, preferring to wear nothing but what is given him. His gait
+is something between those of a mud-turtle and a jackass-rabbit,
+verging closely on to the latter at periods of supposed personal
+danger, as before intimated.
+
+In conversation he is animated and brilliant, some of his lies being
+quite equal to those of Coleridge or Bolingbroke; but in repose he
+resembles nothing so much as a heap of old clothes. In conclusion, his
+respect for letter-writing ladies is so great that he would not touch
+one of them with a ten-foot pole.
+
+.... Only one hundred and ten thousand pious pilgrims visited Mount
+Ararat in a body this year. The urbane and gentlemanly proprietors of
+the Ark Tavern complain that their receipts have hardly been sufficient
+to pay for the late improvements in this snug retreat. These gentlemen
+continue to keep on hand their usual assortment of choice wines,
+liquors, and cigars.
+
+Opposite the Noah House, Shem Street, between Ham and Japhet.
+
+.... It is commonly supposed that President Lopez, of Paraguay, was
+killed in battle; but after reading the following slander upon him and
+his mother, written some time since by a friend of ours, it is
+difficult to believe he did not commit suicide:—
+
+“The telegraph informs us that President Lopez, of Paraguay, has again
+murdered his mother for conspiring against his life. That sprightly,
+and active old lady has now been executed three thousand times for the
+same offence. She is now eighty-three years old, and erect as a
+telegraph pole. Time writes no wrinkles on her awful brow, and her
+teeth are as sound as on the day of her birth. She rises every morning
+punctually at four o’clock and walks ten miles; then, after a light
+breakfast, enters her study and proceeds to hatch out a new conspiracy
+against her first born. About 2 P. M. it is discovered, and she is
+publicly executed. A light toast and a cup of strong tea finish the
+day’s business; she retires at seven and goes to sleep with her mouth
+open. She has pursued this life with the most unfaltering regularity
+for the last fifty years. It is only by this unswerving adherence to
+hygienic principles that she has attained her present green old age.”
+
+.... There is a person resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot
+regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval. It is not
+that the woman—for this person is a mature female—ever did us any harm,
+or is likely to; that is not our grievance. What we seriously object to
+and actively contemn—yea, bitterly denounce—is the nose of her. So
+mighty a nose we have never beheld—so spacious, and open, and roomy a
+human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture. It rises
+from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic!
+It turns up at an angle that fills the spectator with admiration, and
+impresses him with an awe that is speechless.
+
+But we have no space for a description of this eternal proboscis.
+Suffice it that its existence is a standing menace to society, a threat
+to civilization, and a danger to commerce. The woman who will harbour
+and cherish such an organ is no better than a pirate. We do not know
+who she is, and we have no desire to know. We only know that all the
+angels could not pull us past her house with a chain cable, without
+giving us one look at that astounding feature. It is the one prominent
+landmark of the nineteenth century—the special wonder of the age—the
+solitary marvel of a generation!
+
+We would give anything to see her blow it.
+
+.... At the Coroner’s inquest in the case of John Harvey there was
+considerable difficulty in ascertaining the cause of death, but as one
+witness testified that the deceased was pounding fulminate of mercury
+at the Powder Works just previously to his lamented demise, there is
+good reason to believe he was hoist into heaven with his own petard. In
+fact, such fractions of him as have come to hand, up to date, seem to
+confirm this view. This evidence is rather disjointed and fragmentary,
+but it is sufficient to discourage the brutal practice of pounding
+fulminate of mercury when our streets and Sunday-schools are swarming
+with available Chinaman who seldom hit back.
+
+.... We find the following touching tale in all the newspapers. It
+belongs to that class of tales concerning which the mildest doubt is
+hateful blasphemy.
+
+“A little girl in Ithaca, just before she died, exclaimed: ‘Papa, take
+hold of my hand and help me across.’ Her father had died two months
+before. Did she see him?”
+
+There is not a doubt of it; but interested relatives have somewhat
+misstated the little girl’s exclamation, which was this:—
+
+“Papa, take hold of my hand, and I will help you out of that.”
+
+.... We get the most distressing accounts of the famine in Persia. It
+is said that cannibalism is as common among the starving inhabitants as
+pork-eating in California.
+
+This is very sad; it shows either a very low state of Persian morality
+or a conspicuous lack of Persian ingenuity. They ought to manage it as
+the conscientious Indians do. In time of famine these gentle creatures
+never disgrace themselves by feasting upon each other: they permit
+their dogs to devour the dead, and then they eat the dogs.
+
+.... An old lady was set upon by a fiend in human apparel, and
+remorselessly kissed in the presence of her daughter.
+
+This happened a few days since in Iowa, where the fiend now lies
+buried. Any man who is so dead to shame, and so callous of soul
+generally, as to force his unwelcome endearments upon a poor,
+defenceless old lady, while her beautiful young daughter stands weeping
+by, equally defenceless, deserves pretty much all the evil that can be
+done to him. Splitting him like a fish is so disgracefully inadequate a
+punishment, that the man who should administer it might justly be
+regarded as an accomplice.
+
+.... From London we have intelligence of the stabbing to death of a man
+by mistake. His assassin mistook him for a person related to himself,
+whose loss would be his own financial gain. Fancy the utter dejection
+of this stabber when he discovered the absurd blunder he had committed!
+We believe a slip like that would justify a man in throwing down the
+knife and discarding murder for ever; while two such errors would be
+ample excuse for him to go into some kind of business.
+
+.... A small but devout congregation were at worship. When it had
+become a free exhibition, in which any brother could enact a part, a
+queer-looking person got up and began a pious and learned exhortation.
+He spake for some two hours, and was listened to with profound
+attention, his discourse punctuated with holy groans and pious amens
+from an edified circle of the saintly. Tears fell as the gentle rains
+from heaven. Several souls were then and there snatched as brands from
+the eternal burning, and started on their way to heaven rejoicing. At
+the end of the second hour, and as the inspired stranger approached
+“eighty-seventhly,” some one became curious to know who the teacher
+was, when lo! it turned out that he was an escaped lunatic from the
+Asylum.
+
+The curses of the elect were not loud but deep. They fumed with
+exceeding wrath, and slopped over with pious indignation at the swindle
+put upon them. The inspired, however, escaped, and was afterwards
+captured in a cornfield.
+
+The funeral was unostentatious.
+
+.... We hear a great deal of sentiment with regard to the last solar
+eclipse. Considerable ink has been consumed in setting forth the
+terrible and awe-inspiring features of the scene. As there will be no
+other good one this season, the following recipe for producing one
+artificially will be found useful:—Suspend a grindstone from the centre
+of a room. Take a cheese of nearly the same size, and after blacking
+one side of it, pass it slowly across the face of the grindstone and
+observe the effect in a mirror placed opposite, on the cheese side. The
+effect will be terrific, and may be heightened by taking a rum punch
+just at the instant of contact. This plan is quite superior to that of
+nature, for with several cheeses graduated in size, all known varieties
+of eclipse may be presented. In writing up the subsequent account, a
+great many interesting phenomena may be introduced quite impossible to
+obtain either by this or any other process.
+
+.... We have observed with considerable impatience that the authors of
+Sunday School books do not seem to know anything; there is no reason
+why these pleasant volumes should not be made as effective as they are
+deeply interesting. The trouble is in the method of treating wicked
+children; instead of being destroyed by appalling calamities, they
+should simply be made painfully ridiculous.
+
+For example, the little scoundrel who climbs up an apple-tree to
+plunder a bird’s-nest, ought _never_ to fall and break his neck. He
+should be permitted to garner his unholy harvest of eggs in his pocket,
+then lose his balance, catch the seat of his pantaloons on a knot-hole,
+and hang doubled up, with the smashed eggs trickling down his jacket,
+and getting into his hair and eyes. Then the good little girls should
+be lugged in, to poke fun at him, and ask him if he likes ’em hard or
+soft. This would be a most impressive warning.
+
+The boy who neglects his prayers to go boating on a Sunday ought not to
+be drowned. He should be spilled out into the soft mud along shore, and
+stuck fast where the Sunday School scholars could pelt him with slush,
+and their teacher have a fair fling at him with a dead cat.
+
+The small female glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get
+poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made
+to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have
+to be gouged out of her with a chisel and hammer.
+
+Then there is the swearing party, who is struck by lightning—a very
+shallow and unprofitable device. He should open his face to swear,
+dislocate his jaw, be unable to get closed up, and the rats should get
+in at night, make nests there, and breed.
+
+There are other suggestions that might be made, but these will give a
+fair idea of our method, the foundation of which is the substitution of
+potent ridicule for the current grave but imbecile rebuke. It may be
+gratifying to learn that we are embodying our views in a whole library
+of Sunday School literature, adapted to the meanest capacity, and
+therefore equally edifying to pupil, pastor, and parent.
+
+.... A young correspondent, who has lately read a great deal in the
+English papers about “baby-farming,” wishes to know what that may be.
+It is a new method of agriculture, in which the young of our species
+are used for manure.
+
+The babies are collected each day and put into large vats containing
+equal parts of hydrobicarbonate of oxygenated sulphide, and oxygenated
+sulphide of hydrobicarbonate, where they are left to soak overnight. In
+the morning they are carefully macerated in a mortar and are then
+poured into shallow copper pans, where they remain until all the liquid
+portions have been evaporated by the sun. The residuum is then scraped
+out, and after the addition of a certain proportion of quicklime the
+whole is thrown away. Ordinary bone dust and charcoal are then used for
+manure, and the baby farmers seldom fail of getting a good crop of
+whatever they plant, provided they stick the seeds in right end up.
+
+It will be seen that the result depends more upon the hydrobicarbonate
+than upon the infants; there isn’t much virtue in babies. But then our
+correspondent should remember that there is none at all in adults.
+
+.... A young woman writes to a contemporary, desiring to learn if it is
+true that kissing a dead man will cure the tooth-ache. It might; it
+sometimes makes a great difference whether you take your medicine hot
+or cold. But we would earnestly advise her to try kissing a multitude
+of live men before taking so peculiar a prescription. It is our
+impression that corpses are absolutely worthless for kissing purposes,
+and if one can find no better use for them, they might as well be
+handed over to the needy and deserving worm.
+
+.... Mr. Knettle, deceased, became irritated, and fired three shots
+from a revolver into the head of his coy sweetheart, while she was
+making believe to run away from him. It has seldom been our lot—except
+in the cases of a few isolated policemen—to record so perfectly
+satisfactory target practice. If that man had lived he would have made
+his mark as well as hit it. He died by his own hand at the beginning of
+a brilliant career, and although we cannot hope to emulate his
+shooting, we may cherish the memory of his virtues just as if we could
+bring down our girl every time at ten paces.
+
+.... A pedagogue has been sentenced to the county gaol, for six months,
+for whipping a boy in a brutal manner. The public heartily approves the
+sentence, and, quite naturally, we dissent. We know nothing whatever
+about this particular case, but upon general principles we favour the
+extreme flagellation of incipient Man. In our own case the benefit of
+the system is apparent; had not our pious parent administered daily
+rebukes with such foreign bodies as he could lay his hands on we might
+have grown up a Presbyterian deacon.
+
+Look at us now!
+
+.... A man who played a leading part in a late railroad accident had
+had his life insured for twenty thousand dollars. Unfortunately the
+policy expired just before he did, and he had neglected to renew it.
+This is a happy illustration of the folly of procrastination. Had he
+got himself killed a few days sooner his widow would have been provided
+with the means of setting up housekeeping with another man.
+
+.... People ought not to pack cocked pistols about in the hip pockets
+of their trousers; the custom is wholly indefensible. Such is the
+opinion of the last man who leaned up against the counter in a
+Marysville drinking-saloon for a quiet chat with the barkeeper.
+
+The odd boot will be given to the poor.
+
+.... A man ninety-seven years of age has just died in the State of New
+York. The Sun says he had conversed with both President Washington and
+President Grant.
+
+If there were any further cause of death it is not stated.
+
+.... The letter following was written by the Rev. Reuben Hankerlockew,
+a Persian Christian, in relation to the late famine in his country. The
+Rev. gentleman took a hopeful view of affairs.
+
+“Peace be with you—bless your eyes! Our country is now suffering the
+direst of calamities, compared with which the punishment of Tarantulus”
+(we suppose our correspondent meant Tantalus) “was nice, and the agony
+of a dyspeptic ostrich in a junk shop is a condition to be coveted. We
+are in the midst of plenty, but we can’t get anything that seems to
+suit. The supply of old man is practically unlimited, but it is too
+tough to chew. The market stalls are full of fresh girl, but the
+scarcity of salt renders the meat entirely useless for table purposes.
+Prime wife is cheap as dirt—and about as good. There is a ‘corner’ in
+pickled baby, and nobody can ‘fill.’ The same article on the hoof is
+all held by a ring of speculators at figures which appal the man of
+moderate means. Of the various brands of ‘cemetery,’ that of Japan is
+most abundant, owing to the recent pestilence, but it is, fishy and
+rank. As for grain, or vegetable filling of any kind, there is none in
+Persia, except the small lot I have on hand, which will be disposed of
+in limited quantities for ready money. But don’t you foreigners bother
+about us—we shall get along all right—until I have disposed of my
+cereals. Persia does not need any foreign corn until after that.”
+
+It is improbable that the Rev. gentleman himself perished of
+starvation.
+
+.... We are filled with unspeakable gratification to record the death
+of that double girl who has been in everybody’s mouth for months. This
+shameless little double-ender, with two heads and one body—two cherries
+on a single stem, as it were—has been for many moons afflicting our
+simple soul with an itching desire that she might die—the nasty pig!
+Two half-girls, joined squarely at the waist, and without any legs, are
+not a pleasant type of the coming woman.
+
+Had she lived, she would have been a bone of social, theological, and
+political contention, and we should never have heard the end—of which
+she had two alike. If she had lived to marry, some mischief—making
+scoundrel would have procured the indictment of her husband for bigamy.
+The preachers would have fought for her, and if converted separately,
+her Methodist end might have always been thrashing her Episcopal end,
+or _vice versâ_. When she came to serve on a jury, nobody could have
+decided if there ought to be eleven others or only ten; and if she ever
+voted twice, the opposite party would have had her up for repeating;
+and if only once, she would have been read out of her own, for criminal
+apathy in the exercise of the highest duty, etc.
+
+We bless God for taking her away, though what He can want with her is
+as difficult a problem as herself or Himself. She will have to wear two
+golden crowns, thus entailing a double expense; she wont be able to fly
+any, and having no legs, she must be constantly watched to keep her
+from rolling out of heaven. She will just have to lie on a soft cloud
+in some out-of-the-way corner, and eternally toot two trumpets, without
+other exercise. If Gabriel is the sensible fellow we think him, he wont
+wake her at the Resurrection.
+
+Look at this infant in any light you please, and it is evident that she
+was a dead failure and is yet. She did but one good thing, and that was
+to teach the Siamese Twins how to die. After they shall have taken the
+hint, we hope to have no more foolish experiments in double folks born
+that way. Married couples are sufficiently unpleasing.
+
+.... The head biblesharp of the New York _Independent_ resigned his
+position, because the worldly proprietor would insist upon running the
+commercial column of that sheet in a secular manner, with an eye to the
+goods that perish. The godly party wished him to ignore the filthy
+lucre of this world, and lay up for himself treasures in heaven; but
+the sordid wretch would seize every covert opportunity to reach out his
+little muckrake after the gold of the gentile, to the neglect of the
+things that appertain unto salvation. Therefore did the conscientious
+driver of the piety-quill betake himself to some new field.
+
+Will the editors of all similar sheets do likewise? or have they more
+elastic consciences? For, behold, the muckrake is likewise visible in
+all.
+
+.... Some of the Red Indians on the plains have discarded the songs of
+their fathers, and adopted certain of Dr. Watts’s hymns, which they
+howl at their scalp-dances with much satisfaction.
+
+This is encouraging, certainly, but we dare not counsel the good
+missionaries to pack up their libraries and go home with the impression
+that the noble red is thoroughly converted. There yet remains a work to
+do; he must be taught to mortify, instead of paint, his countenance,
+and induced to abandon the savage vice of stealing for the Christian
+virtue of cheating. Likewise he must be made to understand that
+although conjugal fidelity is highly commendable, all civilized nations
+are distinguished by a faithful adherence to the opposite practice.
+
+.... Some raving maniac sends us a mass of stuff, which savours
+strongly of Walt Whitman, and which, probably for that reason, he calls
+poetry. We have room for but a single bit of description, which we
+print as an illustration of the depth of literary depravity which may
+be attained by a “poet” in love:—
+
+“Behold, thou art fair, my love: behold, thou art fair; thou hast
+dove’s eyes within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats that
+appear from Mt. Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are
+even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear
+twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of
+scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of
+pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is a tower of ivory; thine eyes
+like the fishpools of Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is
+as the tower of Lebanon looking towards Damascus.”
+
+Really, we think that will do for one instalment. What the mischief
+this “poet” means, with his goat’s hair, sheep’s teeth, and temples
+like a piece of pomegranate, is quite beyond our mental reach. We would
+suggest that the ignorance of English grammar displayed in the phrase
+“every one bear twins,” is not atoned for by comparing his mistress’s
+eyes to a duck pond, and her nose to the “tower of Lebanon looking
+towards Damascus.” The latter simile is suggestive of unpleasant
+consequences to the inhabitants of that village in case the young lady
+should decide to blow that astounding feature! Our very young
+contributor will consider himself dismissed with such ignominy as is
+implied by our frantic indifference.
+
+.... A liberal reward will be paid by the writer for a suitably
+vituperative epithet to be applied to the ordinary street preacher. The
+writer has himself laboured with so unflagging a zeal in the pursuit of
+the proper word, has expended the midnight oil with so lavish and
+matchless a prodigality, has kneaded his brain with such a singular
+forgetfulness of self—that he is gone clean daft. And all, without
+adequate result! From the profoundest deep of his teeming invention he
+succeeded in evolving only such utterly unsatisfying results as
+“rhinoceros,” “polypus,” and “sheeptick” in the animal kingdom, and
+“rhubarb,” “snakeroot,” and “smartweed” in the vegetable. The mineral
+world was ransacked, but gave forth only “old red sandstone,” which is
+tolerably severe, but had been previously used to stigmatize a member
+of the Academy of Sciences.
+
+Now, what we wish to secure is a word that shall contain within itself
+all the essential principles of downright abuse; the mere pronouncing
+of which in the public street would subject one to the inconvenience of
+being rent asunder by an infuriated populace—something so atrociously
+apt and so exquisitely diabolical that any person to whom it should be
+applied would go right away out and kick himself to death with a
+jackass. We covenant that the inventor shall be slain the moment we are
+in possession of his infernal secret, as life would of course be a
+miserable burden to him ever afterward.
+
+With a calm reliance upon the fertile scurrility of our readers, we
+leave the matter in their hands, commending their souls to the merciful
+God who contrived them.
+
+.... We have received from a prominent clergyman a long letter of
+earnest remonstrance against what he is pleased to term our “unprovoked
+attacks upon God’s elect.”
+
+We emphatically deny that we have ever made any unprovoked attacks upon
+them. “God’s elect” are always irritating us. They are eternally lying
+in wait with some monstrous absurdity, to spring it upon us at the very
+moment when we are least prepared. They take a fiendish delight in
+torturing us with tantrums, galling us with gammon, and pelting us with
+platitudes. Whenever we disguise ourself in the seemly toggery of the
+godly, and enter meekly into the tabernacle, hoping to pass unobserved,
+the parson is sure to detect us and explode a bombful of bosh upon our
+devoted head. No sooner do we pick up a religious weekly than we
+stumble and sprawl through a bewildering succession of inanities,
+manufactured expressly to ensnare our simple feet. If we take up a
+tract we are laid out cold by an apostolic knock straight from the
+clerical shoulder. We cannot walk out of a pleasant Sunday without
+being keeled over by a stroke of pious lightning flashed from the
+tempestuous eye of an irate churchman at our secular attire. Should we
+cast our thoughtless glance upon the demure Methodist Rachel we are
+paralysed by a scowl of disapprobation, which prostrates like the shock
+of a gymnotus; and any of our mild pleasantry at the expense of young
+Squaretoes is cut short by a Bible rebuke, shot out of his mouth like a
+rock from a catapult.
+
+Is it any wonder that we wax gently facetious in conversing of “the
+elect?”—that in our weak way we seek to get even? Now, good clergyman,
+go thou to the devil, and leave us to our own devices; or an offended
+journalist shall skewer thee upon his spit, and roast thee in a blaze
+of righteous indignation.
+
+.... The New York _Tribune_, descanting upon the recent national
+misfortune by which the writer’s red right hand was quietly chewed by
+an envious bear, says it cannot commend the writer’s example, but hopes
+“his next appearance in print may edify his readers on the dangers of
+such a practice.”
+
+We had not hitherto deemed it necessary to raise a warning voice to a
+universe not much given to fooling with bears anyhow, but embrace this
+opportunity to declare ourself firmly and unalterably opposed to the
+whole business. We plant our ample feet squarely upon the platform of
+non-intervention, so far as affects the social economy and individual
+idiosyncrasies of bears. But if the _Tribune_ man expects a homily upon
+the sin of feeding oneself in courses to wild animals, he is informed
+that we waste no words upon the senseless wretch who is given to that
+species of iniquity. We regard him with ineffable self-contempt.
+
+.... A young girl in Grass Valley having died, her father wrote some
+verses upon the occasion, in which she is made to discourse thus:—
+
+“Then do not detain me, for why should I stay
+When cherubs in heaven call me away?
+Earth has no pleasure, no joys that compare,
+With the joys that await us in heaven so fair.”
+
+
+As the little darling was only two years and a fraction of age it is
+tolerably impossible to divine upon what authority she sought to throw
+discredit upon the joys of earth: her observation having been limited
+to mother’s milk and treacle toffy. But that’s just the way with
+professing Christians; they are always disparaging the delights which
+they are unfitted to enjoy.
+
+.... The Rev. Dr. Cunningham instructs his congregation that it is not
+enough to give to the Church what they can spare, but to give and keep
+giving until they feel it to be a burden and a sacrifice. These,
+brethren, are the inspired words of one who has a deep and abiding
+pecuniary interest in what he is talking about. Such a man cannot err,
+except by asking too little; and empires have risen and perished,
+islands have sprung from the sea, mountains have burnt their bowels
+out, and rivers have run dry, since a man of God has committed this
+error.
+
+
+
+
+OBITUARY NOTICES
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIANS
+
+
+.... It is with a feeling of professional regret that we record the
+death of Mr. Jacob Pigwidgeon. Deceased was one of our earliest
+pioneers, who came to this State long before he was needed. His age is
+a matter of mere conjecture; probably he was less advanced in years
+than Methuselah would have been had he practised a reasonable
+temperance in eating and drinking. Mr. Pigwidgeon was a gentleman of
+sincere but modest piety, profoundly respected by all who fancied
+themselves like him. Probably no man of his day exercised so peculiar
+an influence upon society. Ever, foremost in every good work out of
+which there was anything to be made, an unstinted dispenser of every
+species of charity that paid a commission to the disburser, Mr.
+Pigwidgeon was a model of generosity; but so modestly did he lavish his
+favours that his left hand seldom knew what pocket his right hand was
+relieving. During the troubles of ’56 he was closely identified with
+the Vigilance Committee, being entrusted by that body with the
+important mission of going into Nevada and remaining there. In 1863 he
+was elected an honorary member of the Society for the Prevention of
+Humanity to the Chinese, and there is little doubt but he might have
+been anything, so active was the esteem with which he inspired those
+for whom it was desired that he should vote.
+
+Originally born in Massachusetts, but for twenty-one years a native of
+California and partially bald, possessing a cosmopolitan nature that
+loved an English shilling as well, in proportion to its value, as a
+Mexican dollar, the subject of our memoir was one whom it was an honour
+to know, and whose close friendship was a luxury that only the affluent
+could afford. It shall even be the writer’s proudest boast that he
+enjoyed it at less than half the usual rates.
+
+The circumstances attending his taking off were most mournful. He had
+been for some time very much depressed in spirits of one kind and
+another, and on last Wednesday morning was observed to be foaming at
+the mouth. No attention was paid to this; his family believing it to be
+a symptom of hydrophobia, with which he had been afflicted from the
+cradle. Suddenly a dark-eyed stranger entered the house, took the
+patient’s neck between his thumb and forefinger, threw the body across
+his shoulder, winked respectfully to the bereaved widow, and withdrew
+by way of the kitchen cellar. Farewell, pure soul! we shall meet again.
+
+.... We are reluctantly compelled to relate the untimely death of Mrs.
+Margaret Ann Picklefinch, which occurred about one o’clock yesterday
+morning. The circumstances attending the melancholy event were these:—
+
+Just before the hour named, her husband, the well-known temperance
+lecturer, and less generally known temperance lecturee, came home from
+an adjourned meeting of the Cold-Water Legion, and retired very drunk.
+His estimable lady got up and pulled off his boots, as usual. He got
+into bed and she lay down beside him. She uttered a mild preliminary
+oath of endearment and suddenly ceased speaking. It must have been
+about this time she died. About daylight he invited her to get up and
+make a fire. Detecting no movement in her body he enforced family
+discipline. The peculiar hard sound of his wife striking the floor
+first aroused his suspicions of the bereavement he had sustained, and
+upon rising later in the day he found his first fears realized; the
+lady had waived her claim to his further protection.
+
+We extend to Mr. P. our sincere sympathy in the greatest calamity that
+can befall an unmarriageable man. The inconsolable survivor called at
+our office last evening, conversed feelingly some moments about the
+virtues of the dear departed, and left with the air of a dog that has
+had his tail abbreviated and is forced to begin life anew. Truly the
+decrees of Providence appear sometimes absurd.
+
+.... Mr. Bildad Gorcas, whose death has cast a wet blanket of gloom
+over our community, was a man comparatively unknown, but his life
+furnishes an instructive lesson to fast livers. Mr. Gorcas never in his
+life tasted ardent spirits, ate spiced meats, or sat up later than nine
+o’clock in the evening. He rose, summer and winter, at two A. M., and
+passed an hour and three quarters immersed in ice water. For the last
+twenty years he has walked fifteen miles daily before breakfast, and
+then gone without breakfast. During his waking hours he was never a
+moment idle; when not hard at work he was trying to think. Up to the
+time of his death, which occurred last Sunday, he had never spoken to a
+doctor, never had occasion to curse a dentist, had a luxurious growth
+of variegated hair, and there was not a wrinkle upon any part of his
+body. If he had not been cut off by falling across a circular saw at
+the early age of thirty-two, there is no telling how long he might have
+weathered it through.
+
+A life like his is so bright and shining an example that we are almost
+sorry he died.
+
+.... During the week just rolled into eternity, our city has been
+plunged into the deepest grief. He who doeth all things well, though to
+our weak human understanding His acts may sometimes seen to savour of
+injustice, has seen fit to remove from amongst us one whose genius and
+blameless life had endeared him to friend and foe alike.
+
+In saying that Mr. Jowler was a dog of preeminent abilities and
+exceptional virtues, we but faintly echo the verdict of a bereaved
+Universe. Endowed with a gigantic intellect and a warm heart, modest in
+his demeanour genial in his intercourse with friends and acquaintances,
+and forbearing towards strangers (with whom he ever maintained the most
+cordial relations, unmarred by the gross familiarity—too common among
+dogs of inferior breeds), inoffensive in his daily walk and
+conversation, the deceased was universally respected and his loss will
+be even more generally deplored.
+
+It would be a work of supererogation to give a _résumé_ of the public
+career of one so well known—one whose name has become a household word.
+In private life his character was equally estimable. He had ever a wag
+of encouragement for the young, the ill-favoured, the belaboured, and
+the mangy. Though his gentle spirit has passed away, he has left with
+us the record of his virtues as a shining example for all puppies; and
+the writer is pleased to admit that so far as in him lay he has himself
+endeavoured to profit by it.
+
+
+
+
+PAGANS
+
+
+.... Yo Hop is dead! He was last seen alive about three o’clock
+yesterday morning by a white labourer who was returning home after an
+elongated orgie at a Barbary Coast inn, and at the time seemed to be in
+undisputed possession of all his faculties; the remainder of his
+personal property having been transferred to the white labourer
+aforesaid. At the moment alluded to, Mr. Hop was in the act of throwing
+up his arms, as if to ward off some impending danger in the hands of
+the sole spectator. An instant later he experienced one of those sudden
+deaths which have made this city popularly famous and surgically
+interesting.
+
+The lamented was forty years of age; how much longer he might have
+lived, in his own country, it is impossible to determine; but it is to
+be remarked that the climate of California is a very trying one to
+people of his peculiar organization. The body was kindly taken in
+charge by a resident of the vicinity, and now lies in state in his back
+yard, where it is being carefully prepared for burial by those skilful
+meathounds, Messrs. Lassirator, Mangler, and Chure, whose names are a
+sufficient guarantee that the mournful rites will be attended to in a
+manner befitting the solemn occasion.
+
+We tender the bereaved widow our sincere sympathy at the regular rates.
+The cause of Mr. Hop’s demise is unknown. It is unimportant.
+
+.... A dead Asian was recently found in a ditch in Nevada county. His
+head, like that of a toad, had a precious jewel imbedded in it, about
+the size of an ordinary watermelon, and a clear majority of his
+fingers, toes, and features had received Christian burial in the
+stomachs of several contiguous hogs with roving commissions. As he
+seemed unwilling to state who he was, or how he got his deserts, he was
+tenderly replaced in his last ditch, and his discoverers proceeded
+leisurely for the coroner. Upon the arrival of that public functionary
+some days later, a pile of nice clean bones was discovered, with this
+touching epitaph inscribed with a lead pencil upon a segment of the
+skull:
+
+“Yur lize wot cant be chawd of Chineece jaik; xekewted bi me fur a
+plitikle awfens, and et bi mi starven hogs, wich aint hed nuthin afore
+sence jaix boss stoal mi korn. BIL ROPER, and ov sich is Kingdem cum.”
+
+.... The following report of an autopsy is of peculiar interest to
+physicians and Christians:—Case 81st.—_Felo de se_. Yow Kow, yellow,
+male, Chinese, aged 94; found dead on the street; addicted to opium.
+_Autopsy_—sixteen hours after death. Slobbering at the mouth; head
+caved in; immense rigor mortis; eyes dilated and gouged out; abdomen
+lacerated; hemorrhage from left ear. _Head_. Water on the brain; scalp
+congested, rather; when burst with a mallet interior of head resembled
+a war map. _Thorax_. Charge of buckshot in left lung; diaphragm
+suffused; heart wanting—finger marks in that vicinity; traces of
+hobnails outside. _Abdomen_. Lacerated as aforesaid; small intestines
+cumbered with brick dust; slingshot in duodenum; boot-heel imbedded in
+pelvis; butcher’s knife fixed rigidly in right kidney.
+
+_Remarks:_ Chinese immigration will ruin any country in the world.
+
+
+
+
+MUSINGS, PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
+
+
+.... Seated in his den, in the chill gloom of a winter twilight,
+comforting his stomach with hoarded bits of cheese and broad biscuits,
+Mr. Grile thinketh unto himself after this fashion of thought:
+
+I.
+
+To eat biscuits and cheese before dining is to confess that you do not
+expect to dine.
+
+II.
+
+“Once bit, twice shy,” is a homely saying, but singularly true. A man
+who has been swindled will be very cautious the second time, and the
+third. The fourth time he may be swindled again more easily and
+completely than before.
+
+III.
+
+A four-footed beast walks by lifting one foot at a time, but a
+four-horse team does not walk by lifting one horse at a time. And yet
+you cannot readily explain why this is so.
+
+IV.
+
+If a jackass were to describe the Deity he would represent Him with
+long ears and a tail. Man’s ideal is the higher and truer one; he
+pictures Him as somewhat resembling a man.
+
+V.
+
+The bald head of a man is a very common spectacle. You have never seen
+the bald head of a woman.
+
+VI.
+
+Baldheaded women are a very common spectacle.
+
+VII.
+
+Piety, like small-pox, comes by infection. Robinson Crusoe, however,
+caught it alone on his island. It is probable that he had it in his
+blood.
+
+VIII.
+
+The doctrine of foreknowledge does not imply the truth of
+foreordination. Foreordination is a cause antedating an event.
+Foreknowledge is an effect, not of something that is going to occur,
+which would be absurd, but the effect of its being going to occur.
+
+IX.
+
+Those who cherish the opposite opinion may be very good citizens.
+
+X.
+
+Old shoes are easiest, because they have accommodated themselves to the
+feet. Old friends are least intolerable because they have adapted
+themselves to the inferior parts of our character.
+
+XI.
+
+Between old friends and old shoes there are other points of
+resemblance.
+
+XII.
+
+Everybody professes to know that it would be difficult to find a needle
+in a haystack, but very few reflect that this is because haystacks
+seldom contain needles.
+
+XIII.
+
+A man with but one leg is a better man than a man with two legs, for
+the reason that there is less of him.
+
+XIV.
+
+A man without any legs is better than a man with one leg; not because
+there is less of him, but because he cannot get about to enact so much
+wickedness.
+
+XV.
+
+When an ostrich is pursued he conceals his head in a bush; when a man
+is pursued he conceals his property. By instinct each knows his enemy’s
+design.
+
+XVI.
+
+There are two things that should be avoided; the deadly upas tree and
+soda water. The latter will make you puffy and poddy.
+
+XVII.
+
+This list of things to be avoided is necessarily incomplete.
+
+XVIII.
+
+In calling a man a hog, it is the man who gets angry, but it is the hog
+who is insulted. Men are always taking up the quarrels of others.
+
+XIX.
+
+Give an American a newspaper and a pie and he will make himself
+comfortable anywhere.
+
+XX.
+
+The world of mind will be divided upon the question of baptism so long
+as there are two simple and effective methods of baptising, and they
+are equally disagreeable.
+
+XXI.
+
+They are not equally disagreeable, but each is disagreeable enough to
+attract disciples.
+
+XXII.
+
+The face of a pig is a more handsome face than the face of a man—in the
+pig’s opinion.
+
+XXIII.
+
+A pig’s opinion upon this question is as likely to be correct as is a
+man’s opinion.
+
+XXIV.
+
+It is better not to take a wife than to take one belonging to some
+other man: for if she has been a good wife to him, she has adapted her
+nature to his, and will therefore be unsuited to yours. If she has not
+been a good wife to him she will not be to you.
+
+XXV.
+
+The most gifted people are not always the most favoured: a man with
+twelve legs can derive no benefit from ten of them without crawling
+like a centipede.
+
+XXVI.
+
+A woman and a cow are the two most beautiful creatures in the world.
+For proof of the beauty of a cow, the reader is referred to an ox; for
+proof of the beauty of a woman, an ox is referred to the reader.
+
+XXVII.
+
+There is reason to believe that a baby is less comely than a calf, for
+the reason that all kine esteem the calf the more comely beast, and
+there is one man who does not esteem the baby the more comely beast.
+
+XXVIII.
+
+To judge of the wisdom of an act by its result is a very shallow plan.
+An action is wise or unwise the moment it is decided upon.
+
+XXIX.
+
+If the wisdom of an action may not be determined by the result, it is
+very difficult to determine it.
+
+XXX.
+
+It is impossible.
+
+XXXI.
+
+The moon always presents the same side to the earth because she is
+heaviest on that side. The opposite side, however, is more private and
+secluded.
+
+XXXII.
+
+Camels and Christians receive their burdens kneeling.
+
+XXXIII.
+
+It was never intended that men should be saints in heaven until they
+are dead and good for nothing else. On earth they are mostly
+
+XXXIV.
+
+Fools.
+
+I, Grile, have arranged these primal truths in the order of their
+importance, in the hope that some patient investigator may amplify and
+codify them into a coherent body of doctrine, and so establish a new
+religion. I would do it myself were it not that a very corpulent and
+most unexpected pudding is claiming my present attention.
+
+O, steaming enigma! O, savoury mountain of hidden mysteries! too long
+neglected for too long a sermon. Engaging problem, let me reveal the
+secrets latent in thy breast, and unfold thine occult philosophy!
+[_Cutting into the pudding_.] Ah! here, and here alone is—[_Eating
+it_].
+
+
+
+
+LAUGHORISMS
+
+
+.... When a favourite dog has an incurable pain, you “put him out of
+his misery” with a bullet or an axe. A favourite child similarly
+afflicted is preserved as long as possible, in torment. I do not say
+that this is not right; I claim only that it is not consistent. There
+are two sorts of kindness; one for dogs, and another for children. A
+very dear friend, wallowing about in the red mud of a battle-field,
+once asked me for some of the dog sort. I suspect, if no one had been
+looking, he would have got it.
+
+.... It is to be feared that to most men the sky is but a concave
+mirror, showing nothing behind, and in looking into which they see only
+their own distorted images, like the reflection of a face in a spoon.
+Hence it needs not surprise that they are not very devout worshippers;
+it is a great wonder they do not openly scoff.
+
+.... The influence of climate upon civilization has been more
+exhaustively treated than studied. Otherwise, we should know how it is
+that some countries that have so much climate have no civilization.
+
+.... Whoso shall insist upon holding your attention while he expounds
+to you things that you have always thriven without knowing resembles
+one who should go about with a hammer, cracking nuts upon other
+people’s heads and eating the kernels himself.
+
+.... There are but two kinds of temporary insanity, and each has but a
+single symptom. The one was discovered by a coroner, the other by a
+lawyer. The one induces you to kill yourself when you are unwell of
+life; the other persuades you to kill somebody else when you are
+fatigued of seeing him about.
+
+.... People who honour their fathers and their mothers have the
+comforting promise that their days shall be long in the land. They are
+not sufficiently numerous to make the life assurance companies think it
+worth their while to offer them special rates.
+
+.... There are people who dislike to die, for apparently no better
+reason than that there are a few vices they have not had the time to
+try; but it must be confessed that the fewer there are of these
+untasted sweets, the more loth are they to leave them.
+
+.... Men ought to sin less in petty details, and more in the lump; that
+they might the more conveniently be brought to repentance when they are
+ready. They should imitate the touching solicitude of the lady for the
+burglar, whom she spares much trouble by keeping her jewels well
+together in a box.
+
+.... I once knew a man who made me a map of the opposite hemisphere of
+the moon. He was crazy. I knew another who taught me what country lay
+upon the other side of the grave. He was a most acute thinker—as he had
+need to be.
+
+.... Those who are horrified at Mr. Darwin’s theory, may comfort
+themselves with the assurance that, if we are descended from the ape,
+we have not descended so far as to preclude all hope of return.
+
+.... There is more poison in aphorisms than in painted candy; but it is
+of a less seductive kind.
+
+.... If it were as easy to invent a credible falsehood as it is to
+believe one, we should have little else in print. The mechanical
+construction of a falsehood is a matter of the gravest import.
+
+.... There is just as much true pleasure in walloping one’s own wife as
+in the sinful enjoyment of another man’s right. Heaven gives to each
+man a wife, and intends that he shall cleave to her alone. To cleave is
+either to “split” or to “stick.” To cleave to your wife is to split her
+with a stick.
+
+.... A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak one: you shall
+not as readily convince a fool that you are a philosopher, as a
+philosopher that you are a fool.
+
+.... In our intercourse with men, their national peculiarities and
+customs are entitled to consideration. In addressing the common
+Frenchman take off your hat; in addressing the common Irishman make him
+take off his.
+
+.... It is nearly always untrue to say of a man that he wishes to leave
+a great property behind him when he dies. Usually he would like to take
+it along.
+
+.... Benevolence is as purely selfish as greed. No one would do a
+benevolent action if he knew it would entail remorse.
+
+.... If cleanliness is next to godliness, it is a matter of unceasing
+wonder that, having gone to the extreme limit of the former, so many
+people manage to stop short exactly at the line of demarcation.
+
+.... Most people have no more definite idea of liberty than that it
+consists in being compelled by law to do as they like.
+
+.... Every man is at heart a brute, and the greatest injury you can put
+upon any one is to provoke him into displaying his nature. No gentleman
+ever forgives the man who makes him let out his beast.
+
+.... The Psalmist never saw the seed of the righteous begging bread. In
+our day they sometimes request pennies for keeping the street-crossings
+in order.
+
+.... When two wholly irreconcilable propositions are presented to the
+mind, the safest way is to thank Heaven that we are not like the
+unreasoning brutes, and believe both.
+
+.... If every malefactor in the church were known by his face it would
+be necessary to prohibit the secular tongue from crying “stop thief.”
+Otherwise the church bells could not be heard of a pleasant Sunday.
+
+.... Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, because it is commonly
+employed by those from whom we do not expect it, and so passes for what
+it is not.
+
+.... “If people only knew how foolish it is” to take their wine with a
+dash of prussic acid, it is probable that they would—prefer to take it
+with that addition.
+
+.... “A man’s honour,” says a philosopher, “is the best protection he
+can have.” Then most men might find a heartless oppressor in the
+predatory oyster.
+
+.... The canary gets his name from the dog, an animal whom he looks
+down upon. We get a good many worse things than names from those
+beneath us; and they give us a bad name too.
+
+.... Faith is the best evidence in the world; it reconciles
+contradictions and proves impossibilities. It is wonderfully developed
+in the blind.
+
+.... He who undertakes an “Account of Idiots in All Ages” will find
+himself committed to the task of compiling most known biographies. Some
+future publisher will affix a life of the compiler.
+
+.... Gratitude is regarded as a precious virtue, because tendered as a
+fair equivalent for any conceivable service.
+
+.... A bad marriage is like an electric machine: it makes you dance,
+but you can’t let go.
+
+.... The symbol of Charity should be a circle. It usually ends exactly
+where it begins—at home.
+
+.... Most people redeem a promise as an angler takes in a trout; by
+first playing it with a good deal of line.
+
+.... It is a grave mistake to suppose defaulters have no consciences.
+Some of them have been known, under favourable circumstances, to
+restore as much as ten per cent. of their plunder.
+
+.... There is nothing so progressive as grief, and nothing so
+infectious as progress. I have seen an acre of cemetery infected by a
+single innovation in spelling cut upon a tombstone.
+
+.... It is wicked to cheat on Sunday. The law recognises this truth,
+and shuts up the shops.
+
+.... In the infancy of our language to be “foolish” signified to be
+affectionate; to be “fond” was to be silly. We have altered that now:
+to be “foolish” is to be silly, to be “fond” is to be affectionate. But
+that the change could ever have been made is significant.
+
+.... If you meet a man on the narrow crossing of a muddy street, stand
+quite still. He will turn out and go round you, bowing his apologies.
+It is courtesy to accept them.
+
+.... If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg at
+noon to-day, the country might be successfully invaded at one o’clock
+by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.
+
+.... To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of
+Evil; and to pictures of the latter it has appended a tail, to
+represent the note of interrogation.
+
+.... We speak of the affections as originating in instinct. This is a
+miserable subterfuge to shift the obloquy from the judgment.
+
+.... What we call decency is custom; what we term indecency is merely
+customary.
+
+.... The noblest pursuit of Man is the pursuit of Woman.
+
+.... “Immoral” is the solemn judgment of the stalled ox upon the
+sun-inspired lamb.
+
+
+
+
+“ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA.
+
+
+.... A little bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the
+monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of
+this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud
+Springs with a young wife. He is said to be very fond of her, and the
+way he came to get her was this:
+
+Some time ago we courted her, but finding she was “on the make,” threw
+her off, after shooting her brother and two cousins. She vowed revenge,
+and promised to marry any man who would horsewhip us. This Sam agreed
+to undertake, and she married him on that promise.
+
+We shall call on Sam to-morrow with our new shot-gun, and present our
+congratulations in the usual form.—_Hangtown “Gibbet.”_
+
+.... The purposeless old party with the boiled shirt, who has for some
+days been loafing about the town peddling hymn-books at merely nominal
+prices (a clear proof that he stole them), has been disposed of in a
+cheap and satisfactory manner. His lode petered out about six o’clock
+yesterday afternoon; our evening edition being delayed until that time,
+by request. The cause of his death, as nearly as could be ascertained
+by a single physician—Dr. Duffer being too drunk to attend—was Whisky
+Sam, who, it will be remembered, delivered a lecture some weeks ago
+entitled “Dan’l in the Lion’s Den; and How They’d aEt ’Im ef He’d Ever
+ben Ther”—in which he triumphantly overthrew revealed religion.
+
+His course yesterday proves that he can act as well as talk.—_Devil
+Gully “Expositor.”_
+
+.... There was considerable excitement, in the street yesterday, owing
+to the arrival of Bust-Head Dave, formerly of this place, who came over
+on the stage from Pudding Springs. He was met at the hotel by Sheriff
+Knogg, who leaves a large family, and whose loss will be universally
+deplored. Dave walked down the street to the bridge, and it reminded
+one of old times to see the people go away as he heaved in view. It was
+not through any fear of the man, but from the knowledge that he had
+made a threat (first published in this paper) to clean out the town.
+Before leaving the place Dave called at our office to settle for a
+year’s subscription (invariably in advance) and was informed, through a
+chink in the logs, that he might leave his dust in the tin cup at the
+well.
+
+Dave is looking very much larger than at his last visit just previous
+to the funeral of Judge Dawson. He left for Injun Hill at five o’clock,
+amidst a good deal of shooting at rather long range, and there will be
+an election for Sheriff as soon as a stranger can be found who will
+accept the honour.—_Yankee Flat “Advertiser.”_
+
+.... It is to be hoped the people will all turn out to-morrow,
+according to advertisement in another column. The men deserve hanging,
+no end, but at the same time they are human, and entitled to some
+respect; and we shall print the name of every adult male who does not
+grace the occasion with his presence. We make this threat simply
+because there have been some indications of apathy; and any man who
+will stay away when Bob Bolton and Sam Buxter are to be hanged, is
+probably either an accomplice or a relation. Old Blanket-Mouth Dick was
+not the only blood relation these fellows have in this vicinity; and
+the fate that befell _him_ when they could not be found ought to be a
+warning to the rest.
+
+We hope to see a full attendance. The bar is just in rear of the
+gibbet, and will be run by a brother of ours. Gentlemen who shrink from
+publicity will patronize that bar.—_San Louis Jones “Gazette.”_
+
+.... A painful accident occurred in Frog Gulch yesterday which has cast
+a good deal of gloom over a hitherto joyous and whisky loving
+community. Dan Spigger—or as he was familiarly called, Murderer Dan—got
+drunk at his usual hour yesterday, and as is his custom took down his
+gun, and started after the fellow who went home with his girl the night
+before. He found him at breakfast with his wife and thirteen children.
+After killing them he started out to return, but being weary, stumbled
+and broke his leg. Dr. Bill found him in that condition, and having no
+waggon at hand to convey him to town, shot him to put him out of his
+misery.
+
+Dan was dearly loved by all who knew him, and his loss is a Democratic
+gain. He seldom disagreed with any but Democrats, and would have
+materially reduced the vote of that party had he not been so untimely
+cut off.—_Jackass Gap “Bulletin.”_
+
+.... The dance-house at the corner of Moll Duncan Street and Fish-trap
+Avenue has been broken up. Our friend, the editor of the _Jamboree_,
+succeeded in getting his cock-eyed sister in there as a beer-slinger,
+and the hurdy-gurdy girls all swore they would not stand her society;
+and they got up and got. The light fantastic is not tripped there any
+more, except when the _Jamboree_ man sneaks in and dances a jig for his
+morning pizen.—_Murderburg “Herald.”_
+
+.... The Superintendent of the Mag Davis Mine requests us to state that
+the custom of pitching Chinamen and Injins down the shaft will have to
+be stopped, as he has resumed work in the mine. The old well, back of
+Jo Bowman’s, is just as good, and is more centrally located.—_New
+Jerusalem “Courier.”_
+
+.... Three women while amusing themselves in Calaveras county met with
+a serious accident. They were jumping across a hole eight hundred feet
+deep and ten wide. One of them couldn’t quite make it, succeeding only
+in grasping a sage-bush on the opposite edge, where she hung suspended.
+Her companions, who had just stepped into an adjacent saloon, saw her
+peril, and as soon as they had finished drinking went to her
+assistance. Previously to liberating her, one of them by way of a joke
+uprooted the bush. This exasperated the other, and she, threw her
+companion half-way across the shaft. She then attempted to cross over
+to the other side in two jumps.
+
+The affair has made considerable talk.—_Red Head “Tribune.”_
+
+.... A family who for fifteen years have lived at the bottom of a mine
+shaft in Siskiyou county, were all drowned by a rain-storm last
+Wednesday night. They had neglected their usual precaution of putting
+an umbrella over the mouth of the shaft. The man—who had always been
+vacillating in politics—was taken out a stiff Radical.—_Dog Valley
+“Howl.”_
+
+.... There is a fellow in town who claims to be the man that murdered
+Sheriff White some months ago. We consider him an impostor, seeking
+admission into society above his level, and hope people will stop
+inviting him to their houses.—_Nigger Hill “Patriot.”_
+
+.... A stranger wearing a stovepipe hat arrived in town yesterday,
+putting up at the Nugget House. The boys are having a good time with
+that hat this morning, and the funeral will take place at two
+o’clock.—_Spanish Camp “Flag.”_
+
+.... The scoundrel who tipped over our office last month will be hung
+to-morrow, and no paper will be issued next day.—_Sierra
+“Fire-cracker.”_
+
+.... The old grey-headed party who lost his life last Friday at the
+jewelled hands of our wife, deserves more than a passing notice at
+ours. He came to this city last summer, and started a weekly Methodist
+prayer meeting, but being warned by the Police, who was formerly a
+Presbyterian, gave up the swindle. He afterward undertook to introduce
+Bibles and hymn-books, and, it is said, on one occasion attempted to
+preach. This was a little more than an outraged community could be
+expected to endure, and at our suggestion he was tarred and feathered.
+
+For a time this treatment seemed to work a reform, but the heart of a
+Methodist is, above all things, deceitful and desperately wicked, and
+he was soon after caught in the very act of presenting a spelling-book
+to old Ben Spoffer’s youngest daughter, Ragged Moll, since hung. The
+Vigilance Committee _pro tem_. waited upon him, when he was decently
+shot and left for dead, as was recorded in this paper, with an obituary
+notice for which we have never received a cent. Last Friday, however,
+he was discovered sneaking into the potato patch connected with this
+paper, and our wife, God bless her, got an axe and finished him then
+and there.
+
+His name was John Bucknor, and it is reported (we do not know with how
+much truth) that at one time there was an improper intimacy between him
+and the lady who despatched him. If so, we pity Sal.—_Coyote
+“Trapper.”_
+
+.... Our readers may have noticed in yesterday’s issue an editorial
+article in which we charged Judge Black with having murdered his
+father, beaten his wife, and stolen seven mules from Jo Gorman. The
+facts are substantially true, though somewhat different from what we
+stated. The killing was done by a Dutchman named Moriarty, and the
+bruises we happened to see on the face of the Judge’s wife were caused
+by a fall—she being, doubtless, drunk at the time. The mules had only
+strayed into the mountains, and have returned all right.
+
+We consider the Judge’s anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous
+and insulting, and shall shoot him the first time he comes to town. An
+Independent Press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old buffer with a
+crooked nose, and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife.
+Not as long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary
+with buck shot.—_Lone Tree “Sockdolager.”_
+
+.... Yesterday, as Job Wheeler was returning from a clean-up at the
+Buttermilk Flume, he stopped at Hell Tunnel to have a chat with the
+boys. John Tooley took a fancy to Job’s watch, and asked for it. Being
+refused, he slipped away, and going to Job’s shanty, killed his three
+half-breed children and a valuable pig. This is the third time John has
+played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the Superintendent
+discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking
+amongst the boys, and it will lead to trouble yet.—_Nugget Hill
+“Pickaxe of Freedom.”_
+
+.... The stranger from Frisco with the claw-hammer coat, who put up at
+the Gag House last Thursday, and was looking for a chance to invest,
+was robbed the other night of three hundred ounces of clean dust. We
+know who did it, but don’t be frightened, John Lowry; we’ll never tell,
+though we are awful hard up, owing to our subscribers going back on
+us.—_Choketown “Rocker.”_
+
+.... Old Mother Gooly, who works a ranch on shares near Whiskyville,
+was married last Sunday to the new Episcopalian preacher from Dogburg.
+It seems that he laboured more faithfully to convert her soul than to
+save the crop, and the bride protested against his misdirected
+industry, with a crowbar. The citizens are very much grieved to lose
+one whose abilities they never fairly appreciated until his brain was
+scraped off the iron and weighed. It was found to be considerably
+heavier than the average.
+
+But the verdict of the people is unanimously given. He ought not to
+have fooled with Mother Gooly’s immortal part, to the neglect of the
+wheat crop. That kind of thing is not popular at Whiskyville. It is not
+business.—“_Bullwhacker’s Own.”_
+
+.... The railroad from this city north-west will be commenced as soon
+as the citizens get tired of killing the Chinamen brought up to do the
+work, which will probably be within three or four weeks. The carcases
+are accumulating about town and begin to become unpleasant.—_Gravel
+Hill “Thunderbolt.”_
+
+.... The man who was shot last week at the Gulch will be buried next
+Thursday. He is not yet dead, but his physician wishes to visit a
+mother-in-law at Lard Springs, and is therefore very anxious to get the
+case off his hands. The undertaker describes the patient as “the
+longest cuss in that section.”—_Santa Peggie “Times.”_
+
+.... There is some dispute about land titles at Little Bilk Bar. About
+half a dozen cases were temporarily decided on Wednesday, but it is
+supposed the widows will renew the litigation. The only proper way to
+prevent these vexatious lawsuits is to hang the Judge of the County
+Court.—_Cow-County “Outcropper.”_
+
+
+
+
+POESY
+
+
+
+
+Ye Idyll of Ye Hippopopotamus
+
+
+    With a Methodist hymn in his musical throat,
+    The Sun was emitting his ultimate note;
+    His quivering larynx enwrinkled the sea
+    Like an Ichthyosaurian blowing his tea;
+    When sweetly and pensively rattled and rang
+    This plaint which an Hippopopotamus sang:
+
+    “O, Camomile, Calabash, Cartilage-pie,
+    Spread for my spirit a peppermint fry;
+    Crown me with doughnuts, and drape me with cheese,
+    Settle my soul with a codliver sneeze.
+    Lo, how I stand on my head and repine—
+    Lollipop Lumpkin can never be mine!”
+
+    Down sank the Sun with a kick and a plunge,
+    Up from the wave rose the head of a Sponge;
+    Ropes in his ringlets, eggs in his eyes,
+    Tip-tilted nose in a way to surprise.
+    These the conundrums he flung to the breeze,
+    The answers that Echo returned to him these:
+
+        “Cobblestone, Cobblestone, why do you sigh—
+            Why do you turn on the tears?”
+        “My mother is crazy on strawberry jam,
+            And my father has petrified ears.”
+
+        “Liverwort, Liverwort, why do you droop—
+            Why do you snuffle and scowl?”
+        “My brother has cockle-burs into his eyes,
+            And my sister has married an owl.”
+
+        “Simia, Simia, why do you laugh—
+            Why do you cackle and quake?”
+        “My son has a pollywog stuck in his throat,
+            And my daughter has bitten a snake.”
+
+    Slow sank the head of the Sponge out of sight,
+    Soaken with sea-water—then it was night.
+
+    The Moon had now risen for dinner to dress,
+    When sweetly the Pachyderm sang from his nest;
+    He sang through a pestle of silvery shape,
+    Encrusted with custard—empurpled with crape;
+    And this was the burden he bore on his lips,
+    And blew to the listening Sturgeon that sips
+    From the fountain of opium under the lobes
+    Of the mountain whose summit in buffalo robes
+    The winter envelops, as Venus adorns
+    An elephant’s trunk with a chaplet of thorns:
+
+    “Chasing mastodons through marshes upon stilts of light ratan,
+    Hunting spiders with a shotgun and mosquitoes with an axe,
+    Plucking peanuts ready roasted from the branches of the oak,
+    Waking echoes in the forest with our hymns of blessed bosh,
+    We roamed—my love and I.
+
+    By the margin of the fountain spouting thick with clabbered milk,
+    Under spreading boughs of bass-wood all alive with cooing toads,
+    Loafing listlessly on bowlders of octagonal design,
+    Standing gracefully inverted with our toes together knit,
+    We loved—my love and I.”
+
+    Hippopopotamus comforts his heart
+    Biting half—moons out of strawberry tart.
+
+
+
+
+
+Epitaph on George Francis Train
+
+
+    (Inscribed on a Pork-barrel.)
+
+
+    Beneath this casket rots unknown
+    A Thing that merits not a stone,
+        Save that by passing urchin cast;
+    Whose fame and virtues we express
+    By transient urn of emptiness,
+        With apt inscription (to its past
+    Relating—and to his): “Prime Mess.”
+
+    No honour had this infidel,
+    That doth not appertain, as well,
+        To haltered caitiff on the drop;
+    No wit that would not likewise pass
+    For wisdom in the famished ass
+        Who breaks his neck a weed to crop,
+    When tethered in the luscious grass.
+
+    And now, thank God, his hateful name
+    Shall never rescued be from shame,
+        Though seas of venal ink be shed;
+    No sophistry shall reconcile
+    With sympathy for Erin’s Isle,
+        Or sorrow for her patriot dead,
+    The weeping of this crocodile.
+
+    Life’s incongruity is past,
+    And dirt to dirt is seen at last,
+        The worm of worm afoul doth fall.
+    The sexton tolls his solemn bell
+    For scoundrel dead and gone to—well,
+        It matters not, it can’t recall
+    This convict from his final cell.
+
+
+
+
+Jerusalem, Old and New
+
+
+    Didymus Dunkleton Doty Don John
+        Is a parson of high degree;
+    He holds forth of Sundays to marvelling crowds
+        Who wonder how vice can still be
+    When smitten so stoutly by Didymus Don—
+        Disciple of Calvin is he.
+    But sinners still laugh at his talk of the New
+        Jerusalem—ha-ha, te-he!
+    And biting their thumbs at the doughty Don John—
+        This parson of high degree—
+    They think of the streets of a village they know,
+        Where horses still sink to the knee,
+    Contrasting its muck with the pavement of gold
+        That’s laid in the other citee.
+    They think of the sign that still swings, uneffaced
+        By winds from the salt, salt sea,
+    Which tells where he trafficked in tipple, of yore—
+        Don Dunkleton Johnny, D. D.
+    Didymus Dunkleton Doty Don John
+        Still plays on his fiddle-D. D.,
+    His lambkins still bleat in full psalmody sweet,
+        And the devil still pitches the key.
+
+
+
+
+Communing with Nature
+
+
+    One evening I sat on a heavenward hill,
+    The winds were asleep and all nature was still,
+    Wee children came round me to play at my knee,
+    As my mind floated rudderless over the sea.
+    I put out one hand to caress them, but held
+    With the other my nose, for these cherubim smelled.
+    I cast a few glances upon the old sun;
+    He was red in the face from the race he had run,
+    But he seemed to be doing, for aught I could see,
+    Quite well without any assistance from me.
+    And so I directed my wandering eye
+    Around to the opposite side of the sky,
+    And the rapture that ever with ecstasy thrills
+    Through the heart as the moon rises bright from the hills,
+    Would in this case have been most exceedingly rare,
+    Except for the fact that the moon was not there.
+    But the stars looked right lovingly down in the sea,
+    And, by Jupiter, Venus was winking at me!
+    The gas in the city was flaring up bright,
+    Montgomery Street was resplendent with light;
+    But I did not exactly appear to advance
+    A sentiment proper to that circumstance.
+    So it only remains to explain to the town
+    That a rainstorm came up before I could come down.
+    As the boots I had on were uncommonly thin
+    My fancy leaked out as the water leaked in.
+    Though dampened my ardour, though slackened my strain,
+    I’ll “strike the wild lyre” who sings the sweet rain!
+
+
+
+
+Conservatism and Progress
+
+
+    Old Zephyr, dawdling in the West,
+    Looked down upon the sea,
+    Which slept unfretted at his feet,
+    And balanced on its breast a fleet
+    That seemed almost to be
+    Suspended in the middle air,
+    As if a magnet held it there,
+    Eternally at rest.
+    Then, one by one, the ships released
+    Their folded sails, and strove
+    Against the empty calm to press
+    North, South, or West, or East,
+    In vain; the subtle nothingness
+    Was impotent to move.
+    Ten Zephyr laughed aloud to see:—
+    “No vessel moves except by me,
+    And, heigh—ho! I shall sleep.”
+     But lo! from out the troubled North
+    A tempest strode impatient forth,
+    And trampled white the deep;
+    The sloping ships flew glad away,
+    Laving their heated sides in spray.
+    The West then turned him red with wrath,
+    And to the North he shouted:
+    “Hold there! How dare you cross my path,
+    As now you are about it?”
+     The North replied with laboured breath—
+    His speed no moment slowing:—
+    “My friend, you’ll never have a path,
+    Unless you take to blowing.”
+
+
+
+
+Inter Arma Silent Leges
+
+
+    (An Election Incident.)
+
+
+    About the polls the freedmen drew,
+        To vote the freemen down;
+    And merrily their caps up-flew
+        As Grant rode through the town.
+
+    From votes to staves they next did turn,
+        And beat the freemen down;
+    Full bravely did their valour burn
+        As Grant rode through the town.
+
+    Then staves for muskets they forsook,
+        And shot the freemen down;
+    Right royally their banners shook
+        As Grant rode through the town.
+
+    Hail, final triumph of our cause!
+        Hail, chief of mute renown!
+    Grim Magistrate of Silent Laws,
+        A-riding freedom down!
+
+
+
+
+Quintessence
+
+
+“To produce these spicy paragraphs, which have been unsuccessfully
+imitated by every newspaper in the State, requires the combined efforts
+of five able-bodied persons associated on the editorial staff of this
+journal.”—_New York Herald_.
+
+    Sir Muscle speaks, and nations bend the ear:
+    “Hark ye these Notes—our wit quintuple hear;
+    Five able-bodied editors combine
+    Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!”
+
+     O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task
+    To bung these drainings in a single cask;
+    The riddle’s read—five leathern skins contain
+    The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain.
+
+    Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease?
+    A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese!
+    Upon one Rosinante five stout knights
+    Ride fiercely into visionary fights!
+
+    A cap and bells five sturdy fools adorn,
+    Five porkers battle for a grain of corn,
+    Five donkeys squeeze into a narrow stall,
+    Five tumble-bugs propel a single ball!
+
+
+
+
+Resurgam
+
+
+Dawns dread and red the fateful morn—
+Lo, Resurrection’s Day is born!
+The striding sea no longer strides,
+No longer knows the trick of tides;
+The land is breathless, winds relent,
+All nature waits the dread event.
+
+From wassail rising rather late,
+Awarding Jove arrives in state;
+O’er yawning graves looks many a league,
+Then yawns himself from sheer fatigue.
+Lifting its finger to the sky,
+A marble shaft arrests his eye—
+This epitaph, in pompous pride,
+Engraven on its polished side:
+“Perfection of Creation’s plan,
+Here resteth Universal Man,
+Who virtues, segregated wide,
+Collated, classed, and codified,
+Reduced to practice, taught, explained,
+And strict morality maintained.
+Anticipating death, his pelf
+    He lavished on this monolith;
+    Because he leaves nor kin nor kith
+He rears this tribute to himself,
+That Virtue’s fame may never cease.
+_Hic jacet_—let him rest in peace!”
+
+With sober eye Jove scanned the shaft,
+Then turned away and lightly laughed
+“Poor Man! since I have careless been
+In keeping books to note thy sin,
+And thou hast left upon the earth
+This faithful record of thy worth,
+Thy final prayer shall now be heard:
+    Of life I’ll not renew thy lease,
+But take thee at thy carven word,
+    And let thee rest in solemn peace!”
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+“For my own part, I must confess to bear a very singular respect to
+this animal, by whom I take human nature to be most admirably held
+forth in all its qualities as well as operations; and, therefore,
+whatever in my small reading occurs concerning this, our fellow
+creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace; and
+when I have occasion to write upon human reason, politics, eloquence or
+knowledge, I lay my memorandums before me, and insert them with a
+wonderful facility of application.”—SWIFT.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIEND’S DELIGHT ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
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