One acre, two roods, eight perches, Twenty-one sq.
plus three square inches, inches,
plus seventy-eight square inches, plus
plus three hundred and fifty-eight three and a quarter
square inches. sq. inches.
My young informant adds that the evil, if represented in square inches,
is 6,273,079, and is in proportion to the good as 258,683 to 1.
The moral would seem to be, that sufficient ink may make an acre and a
half of white paper black, but will never make those two sides balance.
These be thy gods, O Israel.
Our ancestors built up and handed down to us a noble game: be it our
aim to keep it undefiled. The task is difficult.
Facilis descensus Averni est,
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hic labor, hoc opus est.
An ordinary mind might withstand the philosophy of losing its money
on principle; it might resist the blandishments—not to say fallacies
in this connection—of the first part of algebra; American leads will
never trouble it; but a system which absolves Mrs. Juggins and her
constituents (a most numerous and important body, where noses are
counted and not weighed) from any necessity for drawing an inference,
and at the same time assures them, that not only is it the concentrated
wisdom of all the ages, but that they are its hierophants, is a great
power.
Yet, how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?
And if the modern iconoclast will scatter those ashes, and will destroy
those temples, we can at any rate dree out our weird, in the proud
consciousness that we have done our best to prevent him.