“A man superior to his accidents!”
You will think that you know more than anybody else, are better than anybody else, and are alike superior to the restraints of decency, morality, religion and law. This is true independence! This is unbounded liberty. If, the next day, you feel the horrors—take a little more of me. A little more and a little more—is the true way to keep it up. Walk up, gentlemen and ladies! now’s your time. Who’s for King Alcohol and independence! Who’ll enlist under my banner, for time and eternity?
[1] The substance of this was delivered by a youth at a temperance celebration, on the Fourth July last.
Clean Clothes.—Purity of vesture seems to be a principal precept of nature, and observable throughout the animal creation. Fishes, from the nature of the element in which they reside, can contract but little impurity. Birds are unceasingly attentive to neatness and lustration of their plumage. All the slug race, though covered with slimy matter, calculated to collect extraneous things, and reptiles are perfectly free from soil. The fur and hair of beasts, in a state of liberty and health, is never filthy, or sullied with dirt.
Some birds roll themselves in dust, and occasionally particular beasts cover themselves with mire; but this is not from any liking or inclination for such things, but to free themselves from annoyances, or prevent the bites of minute insects. Whether birds in pluming, or beasts in dressing themselves, be directed by any instinctive faculty, we know not, but they evidently derive pleasure from the operation, and thus the feeling of enjoyment, even if the sole motive, becomes to them an essential source of comfort and of health.
Subserviency.—A farmer in Surrey, England, being asked for whom he intended to vote at the next election, naively replied, “Can’t tell; ha’n’t heard from master yet.”
