QUESTION AND ANSWER.
- Q. My good child, tell me what you believe in?
- A. Money.
- Q. What is money?
- A. The all-ruling and all-powerful; the fountain of worldly wisdom and power.
- Q. How is it worshipped?
- A. By the daily sacrifice of time, talents, health, and virtue.
- Q. What is this worship called?
- A. Mammon.
- Q. What is its chief rite?
- A. Gammon.
- Q. What is the chief ceremony?
- A. Deceit.
- Q. What are its principal festivals?
- A. Dividend-days.
- Q. What are its days of penance or fasting?
- A. Days when no business is done.
- Q. What are its feast-days?
- A. City "Feeds."
- Q. Where are its principal temples?
- A. The Treasury, the 'Change, and the Bank.
- Q. Who are its priests?
- A. Whitewashed "black-legs."[3]
- Q. What is virtue?
- A. A name.
- Q. What is Orthodoxy?
- A. Cash.
- Q. What is Heterodoxy?
- A. Bills.
- Q. What is Heresy?
- A. "No effects."
- Q. What is Schism?
- A. "Call again to-morrow."
- Q. What is Respectability?
- A. Plenty of trade.
- Q. What is Roguery?
- A. Being in debt.
- Q. What is Vice?
- A. Misfortune.
- Q. What is the greatest sin?
- A. Poverty.
- Q. What is the principal virtue?
- A. Prompt payment.
- Q. What are the principal blessings?
- A. Loans.
- Q. What should be our continual desire?
- A. Good luck.
- Q. For what our rejoicings?
- A. Success.
- Q. What is Morality?
- A. Cent. per cent. profits.
- Q. What is the Origin of evil?
- A. A returned bill.
- Q. What is the greatest evil?
- A. Bankruptcy.
- Q. What is our chance of escape from perdition?
- A. "Taking the benefit."
- Q. What is the Devil?
- A. To be without money.
- Q. Who are the chosen children of Mammon?
- A. Those born with a "silver spoon."
- Q. What is the true definition of good?
- A. Solvency.
- Q. What is the true definition of bad?
- A. Insolvency.
- Q. What is your duty to your friend?
- A. To cheat him.
- Q. What to the stranger?
- A. To "take him in."
- Q. What is Experimental Philosophy?
- A. Going a borrowing.
- Q. What is practical philosophy?
- A. Being refused.
- Q. What should be your chief consolation in old age?
- A. Dying rich.
- Q. What is the chief maxim of this creed?
- A. Doing every one, but suffering no one to do you.
RULE X.
BILLS.
When goods are bought or work is done, a bill is to be made out and delivered. In some cases the bill may be made out before the work is done, and work charged in prospective; and therefore the making out of bills is an art and mystery known only to the professional man or the tradesman. It comprehends the mystery of mystification, and impudence and assurance are its two first rules. The milkman is not only allowed by parliament to water his milk, but to cut a notch in his chalk and mark double. The baker thinks it legitimate, and part of his vested rights, to put in "dead uns;" the butcher to "hang on Jemmy;" but the birds noted for the longest bills are the carpenter woodpecker, (who undertakes to take you under) the gallipot crane, the red-tape snipe, and the heron. The bills of each of these bipeds are as long as from this to the paying of the National Debt, and as unfathomable as the Bay of Biscay—or the lowest pit of——
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