Is enough as good as a feast, if the former is enough of walloping and the latter is composed of pheasant and champagne? (i.e.: Is real pain as good as champagne?) TOM ALLEN evidently got enough in his late fight, but I'm inclined to think that he would rather strain his jaws at a feast than at a fisticuff. The Young Democracy once got enough staying out in the cold, but, when some of them were admitted to the feast, they did not appear to be at all satisfied, but grabbed at the choicest titbits.
Is one bird in the hand worth two in the bush, if the one in the hand is the Police Board, and those in the bush are the Supervisorship and the Health Board? And suppose you've succeeded in getting your fingers on those in the bush, wouldn't you try to make a haul? Why, I can imagine a man who might have the Governor's place in hand, and yet consider one bird in the bush better, if that bird could sing an old tune called White House.
How can it be possible that this world is all a fleeting show? I've visited a great many shows, and have found that all of them are conducted on the same principle. You pay your money at the door, sit undisturbed through the performance, unless some junk-man should take to junketing, and get out easily, the proprietor in fact seeming rather glad to get rid of you. But when you enter the world, you pay nothing, on your way through it you pay constantly, and getting out of it--at the present prices of coffins and bombazines--is one of the most expensive things on record.
Why mustn't you look a gift horse in the mouth, if you are prudent enough to do it on the sly? Besides, don't everybody look in the horse's mouth, as soon as the giver has departed? Suppose you're patriotic, and offer your son to Uncle SAM as a gift, to use in his civil service, isn't Mr. JENCKES's bill designed as a means of looking into your son's mouth? Maybe it's to find out if he's a public cribber. What I want to know is, does this prohibition apply to donkeys?
What possible connection can there be between doing handsome and being handsome? Now there's BROWN, who persuaded me, on or about black Friday, to buy his gold at the highest figures, and thus did a very handsome thing (for himself), but he is still the ugliest looking man in our street.
If it be true, as stated in "The Gates Ajar," that there will be pianos in heaven, haven't the men who learned harp-making, on the theory that it was a permanent business, been grossly deceived, and haven't they an action for damages against somebody, if they can find out who it is?
If all the world's a stage, what are cars? I admit that all Broadway is a stage, but is it at all probable that GOV. HOFFMAN vetoed the Arcade railroad bill on that account? Besides, if all the world's a stage, why should the men who carry passengers care about the duty on steel rails?
Is it true that a man must not laugh at his own jokes? Don't you suppose that the man who invented the canard about the Jews in Roumania is laughing at the squabble which he has raised between the Associated Press and the American Press Association, by means of his little joke? And don't you suppose, when the returns of the last election came in, that Mr. TWEED laughed very vigorously at his little joke, called the new election law? If Congress should keep on joking for the rest of the session, and, as a result, the Republican party should be turned out of power, don't you suppose that the members will laugh--on the other side of their mouths?
There is a certain saying, which everybody retails, about the kind of people who tell the truth. Now I always tell the truth. I'm exactly like GEORGE WASHINGTON. If I had cut down the cherry tree, and my stern parent had appeared upon the scene with a rawhide and asked me who did it, I should have instantly replied, the hatchet. But I am not a child. Can it be that I am the other thing?
Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, can you do those sums? I have tried them in every possible way. I have let X equal the unknown quantity, but I don't know Y. If you can solve the problems, will you send me the answers by the first post?