But many folks, I know, like something short.
SO—OH!—LOGICAL SOCIETY.
At the Annual Meeting of the So-oh!-logical Society, the Chairman, in an able speech, which was highly satisfactory to himself and all present, congratulated the members on the prosperous state of the concern. He informed them that their coffers and their dens were yet undrained; that they were still able to raise the wind, though they had very little ventilation; that the shilling orders were on the increase, though the animals were in a decline; and, admitting that some of them had galloped off in a consumption, there was a consolation in the old adage, that living asses were far better than dead lions,—a truth of which they must all feel a full conviction.
He stated that 15,073 pennyworths of apples, 10,732 gingerbread cakes, and 6,532 half-pints of nuts had been sold during the year by the old lady who sits at the bear-pit; that a Sunday school had been established in the Gardens, under the superintendence of a committee of noblemen, for the purpose of instructing the apes and monkeys in the art of smoking cigars, and other usages of fashionable life; but that the throngs of ladies who crowded round them during school-hours had greatly retarded their improvement, by staring them out of countenance.
He thought it right to mention to the Meeting that the Council, in the choice of the Society's servants, had borne in mind that mere experience is but empiricism, and they had discovered that whoever could wash a coach-wheel could water a rhinoceros; that an over-grown Tiger was a proper person to feed a Lion, and the offsprings of their darlings were doubtless best qualified to fodder their deers. He congratulated the Meeting, that while common show-men were confined by their capabilities to merely exhibiting their animals alive, this collection presented exclusively the additional advantage of a speedy opportunity of dissection. He concluded by an announcement, for which he trusted they would ever prove grateful, that his Majesty had granted to the Society permission to appear at Court with long ears and a tail, and to distinguish themselves by the appendage of any letters not exceeding three to their names, but ending with an S. At this intimation the delighted Ear-ers trotted away to give orders to their tail-ers, and to search their dictionaries. They all returned suit-ed before they got far into the alphabet.
The President then read an interesting letter from a member detailing new facts in the history of the domestic cat (felis communis). The writer's housekeeper had been making her annual brewing of elder wine, which was left in the barrel, unstopped, secundum artem, to ferment. Hearing an extraordinary noise in the cellar, she ventured to peep through the key-hole, and to her consternation beheld about twenty strange cats, assembled, apparently on the invitation of the Tortoise-shell of the family. They were engaged in springing in succession on the barrel, plunging their tails through the bung-hole into the delicious liquid till saturated, and then sucking them dry. The old lady distinctly heard her pet grimalkin say to a grave tabby gentleman, who seemed tasting, with an air of connoisseurship, "How! How!" to which he replied, in sounds which seemed to her very like "More brandy." The worthy dame fell down in a swoon, and was found by some of the servants in a state of insensibility, with an empty brandy bottle in her hand, and she had only sufficiently recovered to narrate the above remarkable occurrence. The letter was ordered to be published in their Annual Report, and many other tails of cats formed subjects of conversation during the evening.
A learned member offered a shrewd conjecture that the common shrew was the connecting link between quadrupeds and a certain variety of woman-kind, and that the universal chain might again be traced from man to the feathered race, through the medium of the human thief, especially when he was a-robbin!
The secretary informed the society that in consequence of the discoveries of the British Association, the giraffes had been lately fed on lettuce leaves, which had so far imparted to their necks the properties of caoutchouc, that they now possessed the capability of indefinite extension. At this period of the proceedings one of the animals stretched his neck from his stable to the council room, and as the president was proceeding to offer some consolation on the head of the dead lion, by descanting on the spur in his tail, put his face into the midst of the company, and, for the first time in his life, cried out, "Bah!" which had the effect of breaking up the assembly.
| NOVEMBER. |  | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| The night comes on, when, braving civic law, | |||
| The little savage burns his man of straw; | |||
| Admires the hero as the crackers fly, | |||
| And fires, to emulate the glorious Guy. | |||
| With artless art he plans his victim's fall, | |||
| Some apple-woman dozing at her stall, | |||
| Who, waking, cries—half conscious of the fray— | |||
| "How very odd my pairs is blow'd away!" | |||
| D. | Great Events and Odd Matters. | Prognostifications. | |
| 1 | All Saints. Duke of Cumberland, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Melbourne, Crockford, Joseph Hume, Dan. O'Connell. | duly | |
| 2 | First Day of Term. | Nervous epidemic among sundry idle gents, who expect to be raised to the Bench, and who are pressed to "man the Fleet." | concocted |
 | |||
| 3 | according | ||
| 4 | to art, | ||
| 5 | Gunpowder Plot. Guy Vaux blows up the House of Lords. | ♀ ⚹ ♏ ☽ | |
| 6 | FIFTH OF NOVEMBER. | ||
| to the | |||
| 7 | What a pity 'tis this glorious fun day | ||
| Should chance, this year, to fall on Sunday; | fulfilment | ||
| 8 | And leave us thus without the hope | ||
| Of burning Guy Fawkes and the Pope; | whereof | ||
| 9 | Balking the little blackguard boys | ||
| Of all their pretty, simple joys! | |||
| 10 | I'm sure 'twill grieve them very sadly, | ☿ ♊ ☽ | |
| And other innocents as badly, | |||
| 11 | Whose pious hate to warm and cherish, | I, | |
| The Pope, at all events, should perish; | |||
| 12 | For fires have always been the test | Rigdum | |
| For proving orthodoxy best. | |||
| 13 | But stay!—perhaps, on application, | Funnidos, | |
| His Holiness a dispensation | |||
| 14 | May grant, and, merely for this one day, | do | |
| Consent to burn with Guy on Monday. | |||
| 15 | hereby | ||
| 16 | pledge my | ||
| 17 | asstrological | ||
| 18 | reputation, | ||
| 19 | ♃ ⊕ ♒ ☉ | ||
| 20 | viz. | ||
| 21 | The doom | ||
| 22 | of Turkey | ||
| 23 | may be | ||
| 24 | looked for | ||
| 25 | ♈ ☍ | ||
| 26 | First night of Tom and Jerry. Larks in season. | as fixed | |
| 27 | |||
| ☽ ♂ ♀ ♈ | |||
| 28 | |||
| at | |||
| 29 | |||
| ♓ ♑ | |||
| 30 | Insurrection of the Poles, 1830. Ladies at the Treadmill refuse to have their hair cropped. | Christmas! | |
