STATEMENT OF MY PERSONAL AND GENERAL EXPENDITURE, VERIFIED BY OATH.

£s.d.
Paid fortwinkling a bed-post150
Spouting the tea-kettle1150
New teething the hair comb1100
Stopping holes in cullender156
Pulling the gray hairs from hearth broom0150
Whitewashing inside of chimney1150
A Newgate-Calendar-novel, to soften hard-hearted cabbages before boiling1116
Pectoral lozenges for short-winded bellows086
1000 cigars, to smoke for cure of corns12100
Pigeons'-milk on the 1st of April0100
A leather saw0100
A worsted hatchet0100
New vamping and welting India-rubber conscience550
Loan to Thimble-Rig, Esq.1500
Ditto to Billy Blackleg2000
Ditto to Richard Roe2500
Ditto to John Doe2500
Ditto to Jack Noakes4000
Ditto to Tom Styles[7]6000
£204106

Notwithstanding the copious examples above given, there is one other kind of Book-keeping which can only be thoroughly understood by the first accountants, and is only practised by the first of practitioners. This is making up a book for the St. Leger, which is

LEGERDEMAIN COMPLETE.

An Account of the Expenditure of the "Secret Service Money," from 1825 to 1841.
£s.d.
Paidto Colonel Queerum, for a series of Tricknometrical admeasurements of the length and breadth of public credulity1,00000
To Captain Audacity, for endeavouring to determine the "heights" of "impudence" in Whig Radicalism1,00000
To Colonel Feel-your-way, for surveying the Terra Incognita of ways and means, per session1,50000
To Dr. Sapscull, for instructions in sapping and mining the constitution2,00000
To Dr. Gammon, for moonlight lessons in the art of Mystification and Jack-o'-Lanternism50000
To Dr. Lardner, for horizontal sections of the broadest latitude of latitudinarian policy1,00000
To Lord Bumfiddle, for a series of impracticable experiments in the House of Lords5,00000
To Lord Bumfiddle, for his project to light both houses with "cats' eyes," to facilitate legislation in the dark2,00000
To expenses of a tour to the Devil's Ace-à-Peak, to discover the polarity of political consistency3,00000
To Dr. Bubblejock, for a new plan of making long speeches out of soap bubbles1,00000
To Jack Pudding, for the sale of nostrums, "pitch plasters," and hocusses2,50000
To Döbler, for instructions in legerdemain, sleight of hand, and hocus pocus1,00000
To J. H. for his chemical extraction of the blunderful from the public accounts1,50000
To a cargo of soap and soft sawder, to unite the dissenters50000
To various sops thrown to the Irish hound "Cerberus," on going into the Tartarus of a new session17,00000
To Mesmerizing a Whig Lord, at stated intervals, and for dust to throw into the eyes of the Church3,00000
To Oliver Hill, for his plan of buying and selling, and living by the loss10000
To Pawnbroker's interest on pawning the crown and keeping the Queen in check5,00000
To pepper, mustard, Congreve rockets, and Spanish flies, for seasoning speeches at public meetings2,00000
To 150 yards of new spouting for Exeter Hall, and for the repair of weathercocks at St. Stephen's1,00000
For putting a new bottom to the fundamental maxims of English law, (paid by Sheriffs)5,00000
To a constant supply of "hot water" for both Houses, and for the use of "cold water" to throw on petitions5,00000
To Dr. Shuttlecock Casey, for his plan of "water grueling" the poor, and "blowing up" schoolmasters with "small beer" science000¼
To "Hogs' Wittles," of various kinds, in the shape of pamphlets, addressed to the swinish multitude3,00000
To Daniel O'Connell, for pulling the wires of the political Punch and Judy, seven sessions150,00000
To Scott the diver, for going to the bottom of the Exchequer bills affair, and reporting unsound1,00000
To Colonel Common Sense, for blowing up the wreck of the "Impracticable," and reporting "safe anchorage" (unpaid)000
£215,60000¼

CHARLES I.—A BLOCK-HEAD.

RULE XVIII.
SOLID MEASURE.

We have already treated on "superficial measurement;" we now come to "Solid Measure." Solids are, in general, what are termed "blockheads," or "thickheads," or "bumbleheads," or "numbsculls," exemplified in "senior wranglers," "tripos," "professors of Greek," and teachers of Latin. The advantages of a thick scull are great. It was found upon the gauging of Porson's head, by the heads of his college, that his scull was so thick that it became the subject of marvel how knowledge could get in—once in, it was held impossible to get out. The case is the same with most of our schoolmen.

Solid Measure has been applied with great success to the measure of blockheads by Messrs. Gull and Spuzzy, Epps, Ham and Co. The measure is now principally performed by a Scotch "Combe," consisting of four "bushel-heads" in one. This instrument, the length and breadth and thickness of a head being given, will work out the solid contents and capacity of the understanding, to the fraction of a fraction.

The science so formed upon the measure of wooden heads was invented by Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century and made a wooden man with a wooden head, dividing it into sixty-eight orders or ratios. Gull and Spuzzy, however, finding this large number bother them, took away thirty-three, sans cérémonie, observing, "Organum botheratio sive ambarum rationum mistura fortuita effervescens, bullas gignens." But the whole scull is now mapped out into thirty-six compartments, and subjected to a trigonometrical survey, and a barometrical admeasurement of comparative heights and hollows.

These divisions are so delightfully situated, that from Combativeness, the organ of fighting, we enter Friendship, (Adhesiveness,) without a turnpike between. Acquisitiveness, the love of money, is next-door neighbour to Ideality, the quality of poets, who generally show so much contempt for it. Constructiveness, the organ of building, lies as a foundation for that of Music, and handy for the grating of saws, the knocking of hammers, and the squeaking of wheelbarrows, as accompaniments to Haydn's symphonies. Metaphysics are also handy for wit. Ideality is a parallelopiped, Hope is a square, Cautiousness a circle, Eventuality a semicircle; then we have cones, rhomboids, trapeziums, polygons, hexagons, decagons; while Language, like the science itself, is all my eye.[8]

Thick-heads, block-heads, bumble-heads, or basket-heads, which used in former days to be symbols of obesity, and gave rise to the maxim, "Great head, little wit," are now the indications of intellectual superiority. "The bigger the head the greater the genius," as the mushroom said to the cucumber; and to have a head as big as a baker's basket, or the bustle of a lady mayoress, is perfection.

To fumble these heads is the business of the Feelosophers; so called from feel, to fumble, os, a bone, and pher, far from the truth. This science being at our fingers' ends, a great advantage is felt in all the transactions of life, as the most tender ideas maybe expressed with mathematical certainty, numerically, figuratively, and arithmetically, as follows:—