mmission of one treacherous or unbecoming action of yours.
The holy rites of hospitality are by you abused and set at naught; and
the very roof which shelters you is desecrated with the marks of your
irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that--(and
the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)--would that your
entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we
might crush you all at a single swoop!

Many, calling themselves philanthropists and Christians, have omitted to
squash a fly when they had an opportunity of so doing; nay, some of
these people have even been known to go the length of writing verses on
the occasion, in which they applaud themselves for their own humane
disposition, and congratulate the object of their mistaken mercy on its
narrow escape from impending fate. There is nothing more wanting than to
propose the establishment of a Royal Humane Society for the
resuscitation of flies apparently drowned or suffocated. Can it possibly
be imagined by the man who has succeeded after infinite pains in
rescuing a greedy and intrusive insect from a gin-and-watery grave in
his own vile potations, that he has thereby consulted the happiness of
his fellow creatures, or promoted the cause of decency, cleanliness,
good order, and domestic comfort? Let him watch the career of the
mischievous little demon which he has thus been the means of restoring
to the world, when he might have arrested its progress for ever. Observe
the stout and respectable gentleman, loved, honoured, and esteemed in
all the various relations of father, husband, friend, citizen, and
Christian, who is on cushioned sofa composing himself for his wonted
nap, after a dinner in substance and quantity of the most satisfactory
description, and not untempered by a modicum of old port. His amiable
partner, with that refined delicacy and sense of decorum peculiar to the
female sex, has already withdrawn with her infant progeny, leaving her
good man, as she fondly imagines, to enjoy the sweets of uninterrupted
repose. At one moment we behold him slumbering softly as an infant--"so
tranquil, helpless, stirless, and unmoved;" in the next, we remark with
surprise sundry violent twitches and contortions of the limbs, as though
the sleeper were under the operation of galvanism, or suffering from the
pangs of a guilty conscience. Of what hidden crime does the memory thus
agitate him--breaking in upon that rest which