"AMBITIOUS LEARNER," Oakland.--Yes; you are right America was not
discovered by Alexander Selkirk.
"DISCARDED LOVER."--"I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha
Howard, and intended to marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence
at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones. Is my happiness to
be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?"
Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on your side.
The intention and not the act constitutes crime--in other words,
constitutes the deed. If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend
it for an insult, it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and
meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge a pistol
accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no
murder; but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him,
but fail utterly to do it, the law still holds that the intention
constituted the crime, and you are guilty of murder. Ergo, if you had
married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending to do it, you
would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of marriage
could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict
spirit of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and
didn't do it, you are married to her all the same--because, as I said
before, the intention constitutes the crime. It is as clear as day that
Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in taking a club and
mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a right to
protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have
another alternative--you were married to Edwitha first, because of your
deliberate intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in
subsequently marrying Jones. But there is another phase in this
complicated case: You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently,
according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but
she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not
her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of
bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all
very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other
husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of
bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a
spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the
same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had
any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had
been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you
have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a
wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have
been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia
in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have
got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case
that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might
get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up
the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,
perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed
at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the
faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any
comfort.
"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you
will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down,
take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever
pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving
immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,
from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very
reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just
after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of
Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the
atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,
it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course
that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the
target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as
you don't try to knock her down with it.
"YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks
the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly,
but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all
honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the
home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I
come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the
correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.
A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded
as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short
years, no baby is competent to be a joy "forever." It pains me thus to
demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but
the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to
deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech.
I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot
hold out as a "joy" twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "forever."
And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character
and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here
a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and earned
out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance from its mother or
any one else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be
substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.
It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then
it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on
its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment
and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work
--smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass.
Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen
tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no
more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay
down on its back, and shoved five or six, inches of a silver-headed
whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its
mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of
the child with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up
several wine glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments,
not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,
salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a
spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches
at each mouthful. (I will remark here that this thing of beauty likes
painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but she
prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home
manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one
who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and
water, and afterward ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the
suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow
familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head. At odd times
during the day, when this joy forever happened to have nothing particular
on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down
off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation. As young as she
is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plain spoken in
other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all
strangers, male or female, with the same formula, "How do, Jim?"
Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have
been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any
one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing. However, I
cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of
this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it,
I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour
anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude
anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated
(merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall
be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high
enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction). But I find
I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will
reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys
forever.
"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"I am an enthusiastic student of
mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress
constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities.
Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and
conchology?"
Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am
suffering death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the
expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was
instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured
looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that
disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing to do
with mathematics; it relates only to shells. At the same time, however,
a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks
eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist-a fine stroke of sarcasm
that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now
compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the
difference is, and your question will be answered. But don't torture me
with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold. I
feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment-bothering me in
this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort
pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose now
I would blow your brains out.