He was always at sixes, and now he's at sevens.
To understand this fully the reader must know that the greater part of Apocalyptic interpretation has long been condensed, in my mind, into the Turkish street-cry—In the
name of the Prophet! figs! I make a few extracts. The reader will observe that Dr. Thorn grumbles at his private letters being publicly ridiculed. A man was summoned for a glutolactic assault; he complained of the publication of his proceeding: I kicked etc. in confidence, he said.
"After reading your last, which tries in every way to hold me up to public ridicule for daring to write you privately ['that you would be d——d,' omitted by accident] one would say, Why have anything to do with such a testy person? [Wrong word; no testy person can manage cool and consecutive ridicule. Quære, what is this word? Is it anything but a corruption of the obsolete word tetchy of the same meaning? Some think touchy is our modern form of tetchy, which I greatly doubt]. My answer is, the poor man is lamentably ignorant; he is not only so, but 'out of the way' [quite true; my readers know me by this time for an out-of-the-way person. What other could tackle my squad of paradoxers? What other would undertake the job?] Can he be brought back and form one of those who in Ezekiel 37 ch. have the Spirit breathed into them and live.... Have I any other feeling towards you except that of peace and goodwill? [Not to your distinct knowledge; but in all those who send people to 'the other place' for contempt of their interpretations, there is a lurking wish which is father to the thought; 'you will be d——d' and 'you be d—d' are Siamese twins]. Of course your sneer at 666 brought plain words; but when men meddle with what they do not understand (not having the double Vahu) they must be dealt with faithfully by those who do.... [They must; which justifies the Budget of Paradoxes: but no occasion to send them anywhere; no preachee and floggee too, as the negro said]. Many will find the text Prov. i. 26 fully realized. [All this contains distinct assumption of a right 'of course' to declare accursed those who do not respect the writer's vagary].... If I could but get the
א
, the Ox-head, which in Old Hebrew was just the Latin Digamma, F, out
of your name, and could then Thau you with the Thau of Ezekiel ix, 4, the χ, then you would bear the number of a man! But this is too hard for me, although not so for the Lord! Jer. xxxii. 17.... And now a word: is ridicule the right thing in so solemn a matter as the discussion of Holy Writ? [Is food for ridicule the right thing? Did I discuss Holy Writ? I did not: I concussed profane scribble. Even the Doctor did not discuss; he only enunciated and denunciated out of the mass of inferences which a mystical head has found premises for in the Bible]."
| M | 40 |
| O | 70 |
| R | 100 |
| G | 6 |
| N | 50 |
| —— | |
| 266 | |
| ת= | χ 400 |
[That ill opinions are near relations of ill wishes, will be detected by those who are on the look out. The following was taken down in a Scotch Church by Mr. Cobden,[[358]] who handed it to a Roman friend of mine, for his delectation (in 1855): "Lord, we thank thee that thou hast brought the Pope into trouble; and we pray that thou wouldst be mercifully pleased to increase the same.">[
Here is a martyr who quarrels with his crown; a missionary who reviles his persecutor: send him to New Zealand, and he would disagree with the Maoris who ate him. Man of unilateral reciprocity! have you, who write to a stranger with hints that that stranger and his wife are children of perdition, the bad taste to complain of a facer in return? As James Smith[[359]]—the Attorney-wit, not the Dock-cyclometer—said, or nearly said,