"Calling to mind the duty of honorable men, let him never slay one who has broken his weapon, nor one who is afflicted, nor one who has been grievously wounded, nor one who is terrified, nor one who turns his back."
But Asirvadam the Brahmin, like the Thug of seven victims, has tasted the sugar of blood, sweeter upon his tongue than to the lips of an eager babe the pearl-tipped nipple of its mother. Henceforth he must slay, slay, slay, mutilate and ravish, burn and slay, in the name of the queen of horrors.—Karlee, ho!
Now what shall be done with our dangerous friend? Shall he be blown from the mouths of guns? or transported to the heart-breaking Andamans? or lashed to his own churruck-posts, and flayed with cats by stout drummers? or handcuffed with Pariahs in chain-gangs, to work on his knees in foul sewers? or choked to death with raw beefsteaks and the warm blood of cows? or swinged by stout Irish wenches with bridle-ends? or smitten on the mouth with kid gloves by English ladies, his turban trampled under foot by every Feringhee brat in Bengal?—Wanted, a poetical putter-down for Asirvadam the Brahmin.
"Devotion is not in the ragged garment, nor in the staff, nor in ashes, nor in the shaven head, nor in the sounding of horns.
"Numerous Mahomets there have been and multitudes of Brahmas, Vishnus, and Sivas;
"Thousands of seers and prophets, and tens of thousands of saints and holy men:
"But the chief of lords is the one Lord, the true name of God!"
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WHAT ARE WE GOING TO MAKE?
It would be easy to collect a library of lamentations over the mechanical tendency of our age. There are, in fact, a good many people who profess a profound contempt for matter, though they do nevertheless patronize the butcher and the baker to the manifest detriment of the sexton. Matter and material interests, they would have us believe, are beneath the dignity of the soul; and the degree to which these "earthly things" now absorb the attention of mankind, they think, argues degeneracy from the good old times of abstract philosophy and spiritual dogmatism. But what do we better know of the Infinite Spirit than that he is an infinite mechanic? Whence do we get worthier or sublimer conceptions of him than from the machinery with which he works? Are we ourselves less godlike building mills than sitting in pews?—less in the image of our Maker, endeavoring to subdue matter than endeavoring to ignore its existence? Without questioning that the moral nature within us is superior to the mechanical, we think it quite susceptible of proof that the moral condition of the world depends on the mechanical, and that it has advanced and will advance at equal pace with the progress of machinery. To prove this, or anything else, however, is by no means the purpose of this article, but only to take the general reader around a little among mechanical people and ideas, to see what lies ahead.