'Tis a bad plan to fight, whatever be
The provocation—just attend to me,
And you'll ne'er rue it;
Although with rage you find your fingers burn,
As obstinate as Grissel's masons turn,
Only instead of _striking_—never do it.
Even when struck, never _return_ the blow;—
_Blow the return!_ your independence show;
_Put up_ with a _put down_—let no regards
For empty honour tempt you to exchange
Your pasteboard challenges, however strange,
But _cut_ the cards,
Then _shuffle_ off yourself; declare no war;
And, recollect, 'tis always better, far,
For your assailant to turn up _his_ nose,
Than you _your_ toes!
Words beget blows—from blows contusions rise,
Which, cutting off your lachrymal supplies,
May _dam_ your eyes—
At least their conduits; tempt no further brawl;
For though "black eyes most dazzle at a ball,"
You'd find, in spite of all you'd thought before,
A _ball_ would dazzle your _black eyes_ much more.
Think of your challenger, _bent straight_ on fight,
With purpose cruel,
Arising from his bed, at day's first light,
To _do ill_.
True to the _moments_, see his _seconds first_,
Who for your heart's best blood already thirst,
Like murd'rous Thugs;
With you yourself—pale as a taper's light—
"Creeping, like _snail_, unwillingly" to fight
With _slugs_!
Think of the morning _fog_, by whose assistance
All may be _mist_, unless, defying distance,
His vision, at such moment far too clear,
Cutting all chaff,
May lay you, by his _barrel_, on your _bier_,
'Twixt life and death, or, rather, _half and half_!
[Illustration:
Blood-Heat and Freezing-Point.
]
SOCIETY FOR THE CONFUSION OF USELESS
KNOWLEDGE.
AUGUST, 1841.—At the Annual Meeting of the British Fill-us-off-ical and
Feeding Association, at Ply-mouth, the following ingenious plan was
promulgated—for a Company for the Confusion of Useless Knowledge. It is
needless to say that so praiseworthy a project met with the unbounded
sympathy and concurrence of all the members present.
It is intended by the Company to supply the present enormous mental
appetite of the public with a full feed of science and literature in a
series of sixpenny bits, or bites. To prevent the appetite from becoming
cloyed by too continuous a fare of any one kind, the bits will be so
intermingled and diversified as to keep the biters always expecting and
never satisfied. Thus, the biography of Bacon will be relieved by a bit
of the history of Greece; a bit of Astronomy, by a bit of Brewing; a bit
of Roman History, by a bit of Algebra; a bit of Chemistry, by a bit of
Commerce; a bit of the History of the Church, by a bit of Sir
Christopher Wren. Vegetable Physiology, bit I., will be probably
followed by a Treatise on Probability; from the study of which the
reader may, if he please, try to find out when he is likely to see
Vegetable Physiology, bit II. The whole will thus form, in the mind of
the student, a most desirable complication of the Novum Organon, Athens,
Malting and Mash-tubs, the Cæsars, Logarithms, Oxygen, Tariffs,
Telescopes, the Arian Controversy, the building of St. Paul's, Cellular
Tissues, and Reversionary Interests.
The success of various topographical works, which, in their periodical
production, illustrate perhaps a description of Northumberland, with
views in Norfolk or Middlesex; and of the Encyclopædias, which accompany
the article Entomology, with probably the plates of Clockwork, or
Geometry, justify the Company in adopting a similar mode of arrangement.
The Company propose, in order to insure the greatest possible degree of
ultimate perfection, to commence some of the subjects with bits,
developing the present notions of the scientific world, and to keep them
incomplete till they can conclude them with the discoveries of the next
generation on the same topics; so that the statements in bit No. 1 will
probably be corrected by the subsequent discoveries in bit No. 2 of the
same subject, to be produced ten years hence; but, considering the
philanthropic views of the Company, they will consider themselves quite
at liberty to abandon, incomplete, any of the subjects which it may not
be very easy for them to finish; considering it to be fully in
accordance with their general object to leave to their followers that
glorious desideratum of the aspiring and energetic mind—
"The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties."