 | The fiend's delight |  |
2. 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
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
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 hœc 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.
Cœteris paribus, the man who eats much is
a better Christian than the man who eats little, and
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
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
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
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
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
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 expectration,
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 boys 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Night's 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,
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, not 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
aëronauts would sound like the gentle pleting
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
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 Cœsar 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 mantained
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
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
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
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 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
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 antennæ, 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 line frenzy of her lovely
eye as she notes the approach of a woman more
gorgeously arrayed than herself, or the triumphant
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,
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
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 fo our own diversion. For, look you!
there is really a subtle but potent relation between
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
œsophagus 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
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
aftr page upon it. Day and night we have toiled
and perspired over that distressing problem.
Through Summer's sun and Winter's snow, with an
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
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
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. Hœc 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
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.
| The fiend's delight | |