The ways of getting into debt are multiform. To be involved is patriotic, fashionable, genteel, and sentimental. To pay is vulgar, inconvenient, and unpopular. The man who lives within his means is never considered to have any means. A man in debt possesses an interest and an importance truly pleasurable. It is surely something to know that in your little self a hundred are subject to hopes, fears, anxieties, speculations, aspirations, and a world of such like poetry. The greater the number of creditors, the greater must be the sensation produced; and the production of a sensation is every thing in fashionable society.
The old proverb was, "Out of debt out of danger;" but modern arithmetic teaches, "In debt out of danger;" the law of debtor and creditor being fashioned according to this maxim, which is now the Lex Scripta of the courts. To be over head and ears in debt, is the best security; "debt is the safest helmet." To be not worth powder and shot, or to make believe you are not, is the best method of keeping on the wing. It requires, however, some curious evolutions to enable an empty sack to stand upright.
LOVE EVOLUTION, OR GETTING IN LOVE.
This is an involuntary process, and an entanglement equally powerful with the meshes of the law. In this case, however, the pleasure increases with the entanglement, as the fly said in the honey-pot. The arms of a fair lady are the softest bonds; the poison of a maiden's lip the sweetest poison. To be in love is to be entangled in a cobweb of ten thousand ecstasies, where every string is bliss, and every mesh is beauty. In this web, Cupid sits as an angel in one corner, and Hymen on the other; thus bound with sighs, tied with kisses, linked by embraces, chained by tears, lovers disport themselves; till Hymen, in fear that they should die of ecstasy, tightens the web, and binds them hand and foot in the true lover's knot of matrimony.
PARLIAMENTARY EVOLUTION.
| Rule 1. | Make up your mind to "go the whole hog" with your party. |
| 2. | Flatter, gammon, and gloze all parties. |
| 3. | Humbug your opponents, and cheat your supporters. |
| 4. | Make love to every prevailing vagary of the day, and coquet with Mother Church, and her fantastical daughter, Miss Dissent. |
| 5. | Promise every thing, perform nothing, and be the last year of your parliamentary term a contradiction of the six preceding years, so as to ensure another return. |
HOW TO GET INTO PARLIAMENT.
Supposing yourself to be a green yokel, just raw from school, with little wit, little money, and little influence, act as follows:—
1. Marry for the sake of respectability and a little more money.
2. Give away soup to the poor, flannel petticoats, trusses, and baby linen.