“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.