tinual jar--a jar
of sour and offensive things, like one of GOLDNER'S preserves. How it
swaggers! One would imagine the whole street belonged to it. It cannot
sneeze like other people, but makes ten times more noise than any sneeze
demands. It coughs to give notice of its arrival at any place--it bangs
the door to give notice of its departure. Its insolence insists upon the
best of everything--the seat nearest the fire, the best bedroom, the
best cuts at dinner, and the best attention from everybody. It always
takes the wall--it never gives way to anybody, not even to a lady. If
she wants more room, let her go into the mud! It keeps its hat on in the
presence of its superiors; but this is done more from ignorance than
bravado, for it never suspects for a moment that it has any superiors.
It stops contentedly in the middle of the room, arranges its two locks
of japanned hair, that descend like two pitcher-handles on each side of
its stony face; opens its legs, and admires its trousers with an air of
the most supreme satisfaction. The Trouser Mind rarely looks upward. The
head is to it a matter of very secondary importance, excepting as being
a block that carries so much hair. Its thoughts are all downward; and if
a person is introduced to it, the first survey is always to his boots
and trousers. It measures mankind by its nether garments. The other half
of the body is quite superfluous. In fact, the human body would, in the
opinion of the Trouser Mind, be greatly improved, if it could be so
contrived as to wear two pairs of trousers--one above and one below--and
each pair to be totally different. In the upper regions, a thunderstorm
of a pattern--in the lower, an earthquake.
* * * * *
A Confounded Bully.
Did NICHOLAS mean, say, ye schoolmen so clever,
To entreat he might not be confounded for ever;
Or, did he intend, with presumption unbounded,
To prefer a request to be never confounded?
The former supposed to have been his petition,
There is hope for him yet in unfeigned contrition;
The latter's past praying for--merely delusion:
Old NICK has already been put to confusion.
* * * * *
A CITY PROVERB.
(_To be imbibed whilst eating Turtle._)
"SPARE THE BIRCH (in Cornhill), and you'll spoil the Alderman."
* * * * *
THE MARCH OF INTELLECT.--Everybody walking into everybody else!
*
|