ing the taxes, and selecting candidates for
trusts of a responsible nature. The suggestion was well received by the
king's cousin, more especially those parts that alluded to sedition and
the revenue.

This essay was also perfectly well received by the savans, for I
afterwards found very little came amiss to the academy; and the members
named a committee forthwith, to examine into "the facts concerning
invisible and unknown fluids, their agency, importance, and relations to
monikin happiness."

We were next favored with a discussion on the different significations
of the word gorstchwzyb; which, rendered into English, means "eh!"
The celebrated philologist who treated the subject, discovered amazing
ingenuity in expatiating on its ramifications and deductions. First he
tried the letters by transpositions, by which he triumphantly proved
that it was derived from all the languages of the ancients; the same
process showed that it possessed four thousand and two different
significations; he next reasoned most ably and comprehensively for ten
minutes, backwards and forwards, using no other word but this, applied
in its various senses; after which, he incontrovertibly established that
this important part of speech was so useful as to be useless, and
he concluded by a proposition, in which the academy coincided by
acclamation, that it should be forever and incontinently expunged from
the Leaphigh vocabulary. As the vote was carried by acclamation, the
king's cousin arose, and declared that the writer who should so far
offend against good taste, as hereafter to make use of the condemned
word, should have two inches cut off the extremity of his tail. A
shudder among the ladies, who, I afterwards ascertained, loved to carry
their caudae as high as our women like to carry their heads, proved the
severity of the decree.

An experienced and seemingly much respected member now arose to make the
following proposal. He said it was known that the monikin species were
fast approaching perfection; that the increase of mind and the decrease
of matter were so very apparent as to admit of no denial; that, in his
own case, he found his physical powers diminish daily, while his mental
acquired new distinctness and force; that he could no longer see without
spectacles, hear without a tube, or taste without high seasoning; from
all this he inferred that they were drawing near to some important
change, and he wished that portion of the science