SYLLOGISTIC EXERCISE FOR THE LITTLE-GO MEN.
No cat has two tails.
A cat has one tail more than no cat.
Ergo—A cat has three tails.
The following song (in the true spirit of a non-reading man) is from the pen of a learned seceding Cantab, the late Dr. John Disney, who, after graduating at Peter-House, Cambridge, LL.B., and for some time officiating as a minister of the Established Church, resigned a living “for conscience sake,” and closed his career as Minister of the Unitarian Chapel, in Essex-street, Strand:—
Come, my good College lads! and attend to my lays,
I’ll show you the folly of poring o’er books;
For all you get by it is mere empty praise,
Or a poor meagre fellowship, and sour looks.
Chorus.
Then lay by your books, lads, and never repine;
And cram not your attics,
With dry mathematics,
But moisten your clay with a bumper of wine.
The first of mechanics was old Archimedes,
Who play’d with Rome’s ships as we’d play cup and ball,
To play the same game I can’t see where the need is,
Or why we should fag mathematics at all.
Then lay by your books, lads, &c.
Great Newton found out the binomial law,
To raise X -|- Y to the power of B;
Found the distance of planets that he never saw,
And we most probably never shall see.
Then lay by your books, lads, &c.
Let Whiston and Ditton star-gazing enjoy,
And taste all the sweets mathematics can give;
Let us for our time find a better employ,
And knowing life’s sweets, let us learn how to live.
Then lay by your books, lads, &c.
These men ex absurdo, conclusions may draw,
Perpetual motion they never could find;
Not one of the set, lads, can balance a straw,
And longitude seeking is hunting the wind.
Then lay by your books, lads, &c.
If we study at all, let us study the means
To make ourselves friends, and to keep them when made;
Learn to value the blessings kind heaven ordains,
To make others happy, let that be our trade.
Finale.
Let each day be better than each day before,
Without pain or sorrow,
To-day or to-morrow,
May we live, my good lads, to see many days more.