“I've seen about enough of this world myself. For forty years I've been searching every nook and corner for some pleasant spring of happiness, instead of which I have only found a few flood-swollen streams, bearing upon their surface innumerable bubbles of vanity, and all along by their margins nests of young humbugs are continually being hatched. I have drunk of these waters nigh unto bursting, and have always departed as dry as a cork.
“In fact, I've been kicked about like an old hat, nearly used up by the flagellations of Old Time, and am now feeling the way with my cane down to the silent valley. But, yet, I'm happy—‘happy as a clam at high water.’ I sleep like a top, but I don't eat as much as I used to. Oh! it is a blessed thing to lie down at night with a light stomach, and a lighter conscience! You ought to see me sleep sometimes! The way I ‘take it easy is a caution to children!’ ”
It may not be new, but whether new or not, it is worthy of being repeated to our readers, the beautiful reply of a little lad to an English bishop, who said to him, one day, “If you will tell me where God is, I'll give you an orange.” “If you will tell me where He is not,” promptly responded the little fellow, “I will give you two!” Better than all earthly logic was the simple faith of this trusting child.
Here is an awful “fixed fact” for snuff-takers! Perhaps the “Statistics of Snuff and Sneezing” may yet form a part of some remote census of these United States:
“It has been very exactly calculated, that in forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life are devoted to tickling his nose, and two more to the sonorous and agreeable processes of blowing and wiping it, with other incidental circumstances!”
How about “Statistics of Chewing?”—the time employed in selecting, inserting, rolling, and ejecting the quid?—the length of the yellow lines at the corners of the mouth, in the aggregate?—the lakes of saliva, spirted, squirted, spit, sprinkled, and drizzled? We commend the pregnant theme to some clever American statist. Ah! well would it be if we be stowed half the time in making ourselves agreeable, that we waste in rendering ourselves offensive to our friends!
The late lamented John Sanderson, the witty author of “The American in Paris,” speaking of Père La Chaise, says: “A Frenchman, who enjoys life so well, is, of all creatures, the least concerned at leaving it. He only wishes to be buried in the great Parisian burying-ground; and often selects his marble of the finest tints for his monument, and has his coffin made, and his grave dug in advance.” A lady told the author, with great empressement, that she had rather not die at all, than to die and be buried any where except in Père La Chaise!