"Oh! this is worse than ARGYLL on Political Economy, or a Double
Acrostic!" I grumbled, angrily. "What in the name of Eleusis _have_ you
been up to?"
"_Listen!_" he whispered, placing his lips close to my ears; "listen,
and marvel if you may; aid me if you can. _I have been trying, by a
comparison of the comments thereupon in the various party papers, to
understand the real significance of a_ BYE-ELECTION!!!"
"Miserable man!" I gasped, "that way indeed Madness lies. Know you not
that human imbecility in those identical comments reaches its absolutely
'lowest deep' of abject folly and crazy inconsequence. Know you not that
nothing--positively _nothing_ in the whole history of this crack-brained
world--is so mad and so maddening as a Tory article on a bye-election
won by a Liberal, or a Liberal article on a bye-election gained by a
Tory? Know you not that in these dismally, delirious lucubrations, all
the rules of arithmetic, all the laws of logic, all the palpable
bearings of facts, all the obvious meanings of words, to say nothing of
the dictates of veracity, and the impulse of fairness, are deliberately
inverted, perverted, played moral havoc and intellectual pitch-and-toss
with? Know you not that the gibberings of Bedlam are clear and continent
sense compared with the argufyings of a party-scribe 'explaining away'
an opponent's success, or picturing an ally's crushing defeat as a
'moral victory?' Know you not that the (supposed) necessity of penning
such frantic fustian makes a Tory Thunderer drivel like a drunken
THERSITES, and a Radical RHADAMANTHUS equivocate like a pettifogging
attorney? Know you not----?"
But with a howl of horror the wretched victim of party silliness and
factious sophistry pitched head-first amidst the pile of papers--MAD!!!
* * * * *
Laissez-Faire.
"I believe, if you would let alone this unhappy peasantry, there
would be no difficulty whatever."--Mr. BALFOUR, _on the Irish
Question_.
THE Irish Landlord has lost his tenants,
And doesn't know where to find them;
Let them alone, and they'll come home,
And bring rents (in their pockets) behind them.
* * * * *