Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 3, 1887

by Various

A DOWN-Y PHILOSOPHER;

Or, Memoirs of a Missing Link.

Seal making a Deep Impression.

I've no particular reason to think an account of my life will interest anybody. That being so, I don't know why I write it. But I do. I suppose it's Chance. H-xl-y (who is such fun!) calls my Memoir, because I'm a F.R.S., a case of "Fellow-De-Se."

Talking of Chance, everything that has ever happened to me has been Chance!

For instance, what could have been more a matter of luck than my choosing a house at Down? H-xl-y says something about being "Down on my luck." (What a master of style old H-xl-y is, to be sure!)

Then there was that voyage on the Sea-Mew. If it hadn't been that my Uncle kicked me six times round his garden at Shrewsbury, because I said "I'd be jiggered if I went," I don't believe I should ever have had courage to accept the appointment of Naturalist to the expedition. That voyage gave me an object in life. My nose had made me an object in life before that (vide Portrait), but Natural Selection triumphed over my nose, and so I became in due time famous, and an Ag-nose-tic!