of equanimity found in perfection at a Quakers' meeting; above par, when
floundering about in champagne; and below par, when cooling down on
water gruel and Seidlitz.
Examples of discount at the present moment are too numerous to mention.
Every thing seems at a discount; _radicals, dissenters, theatricals,
fine arts, scientificks, trade, commerce, manufactures_. Asses' heads
alone are looking up.
RULE XV.
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION.
Involution and Evolution are two rules of arithmetic which signify
getting _in_ and getting _out_. Involution signifies such matters as
getting in love, getting into a lawsuit, or getting into debt. It is the
rule of entanglement, and is represented by a fly in a spider's web.
Evolution comprehends all the tricks, shifts, schemes, and stratagems,
by which we get out of our various difficulties; but it may be observed
that it is much easier to become involved in any matter, than to get
disentangled: whatever may be our evolutions, it is a difficult matter
to get out of love, out of a law-suit, or out of debt.
LAW EVOLUTION--GETTING INTO A LAW-SUIT.
"Will you walk into my office," said the lawyer, Mr. Sly,
"'Tis the prettiest little office that ever you did spy.
The way into my office is by a winding stair,
And I've a many funny things to show you when you're there."
"But I have heard," the client said, "you sport a web and chain,
And he who in your office gets comes not out clear again."
"I'm sure you must be weary, friend, of everlasting dunning;
Come, rest upon my legal wit, my gammon, and my cunning.
I'll get your debt at little cost, so only let me do it;
Or else perhaps the chap will break, and you will have to rue it."
"I'd rather not--I'd rather not," the wary client said;
"For I did never like to throw 'good money after bad.'"
"Leave all to me," the lawyer now with eloquence replied;
"A fig for costs, your case is clear, and you have _me_ beside;
I'll take the case at any odds, and rather be dependent
Upon the issue of the whole--that is, on the defendant."
"Well, try it on," the client said, "you are a lad of wax;
So stick to him with tape and string--succeeding, we'll go snacks."
Then in the legal mesh and web of cunning Mr. Sly,
The client now was fairly caught as any little fly;
And round him twined all legal quirks, and briefs a dozen quire,
Writ, declaration, cognovit, bail, habeas, præmunire.
"You've lost the cause!" the client cried--"the loss to you, not me."
"Hum, ha--but stop a bit," said Sly--"stop, stop, and we shall see."
The lawyer mended now his web, and thread by thread he lengthened;
Made closer every mesh and hole, and every corner strengthened.
"The cause is lost, and you must pay--_I bargained if I gained it_;
You cannot think on other terms that I could have sustained it."
So round the hapless wretch he threw a law cord strong and good;
And thus he held it, hard and fast, and sucked his client's blood.
GETTING INVOLVED, OR IN DEBT.
The ways of getting into debt are multiform. To be _involved_ is
_patriotic_, _fashionable_, _genteel_, and _sentimental_. To pay is
_vulgar_, _inconvenient_, and _unpopular_. The man who lives within his
_means_ is never considered to have any _means_. A man in debt possesses
an interest and an importance truly pleasurable. It is surely something
to know that in your little self a hundred are subject to hopes, fears,
anxieties, speculations, aspirations, and a world of such like poetry.
The greater the number of creditors, the greater must be the sensation
produced; and the production of a sensation is every thing in
fashionable society.
The old proverb was, "Out of debt out of danger;" but modern arithmetic
teaches, "_In_ debt _out_ of danger;" the law of debtor and creditor
being fashioned according to this maxim, which is now the Lex Scripta of
the courts. To be over head and ears in debt, is the best security;
"debt is the safest helmet." To be not worth powder and shot, or to make
believe you are not, is the best method of keeping on the wing. It
requires, however, some curious _evolutions_ to enable an empty sack to
stand upright.
LOVE EVOLUTION, OR GETTING IN LOVE.
This is an involuntary process, and an entanglement equally powerful
with the meshes of the law. In this case, however, the pleasure
increases with the entanglement, as the fly said in the honey-pot. The
arms of a fair lady are the softest bonds; the poison of a maiden's lip
the sweetest poison. To be in love is to be entangled in a cobweb of ten
thousand ecstasies, where every string is bliss, and every mesh is
beauty. In this web, Cupid sits as an angel in one corner, and Hymen on
the other; thus bound with sighs, tied with kisses, linked by embraces,
chained by tears, lovers disport themselves; till Hymen, in fear that
they should die of ecstasy, tightens the web, and binds them hand and
foot in the true lover's knot of matrimony.
PARLIAMENTARY EVOLUTION.
RULE 1. Make up your mind to "go the whole hog" with your party.
2. Flatter, gammon, and gloze all parties.
3. Humbug your opponents, and cheat your supporters.
4. Make love to every prevailing vagary of the day, and coquet
with Mother Church, and her fantastical daughter,
Miss Dissent.
5. Promise every thing, perform nothing, and be the last year of
your parliamentary term a contradiction of the six preceding
years, so as to ensure another return.
HOW TO GET INTO PARLIAMENT.
Supposing yourself to be a green yokel, just raw from school, with
little wit, little money, and little influence, act as follows:--
1. Marry for the sake of respectability and a little more money.
2. Give away soup to the poor, flannel petticoats, trusses, and baby
linen.
3. Set up schools on the free system, "every boy his own archbishop:"
Free-trade in religion, and no walloping.
4. Get into a squabble with your Rector, about free grace and
non-election.
5. Write once a week in the dissenters' "slop pail," against clerical
intolerance, tithe pigs, "red noses," round paunches, lawn sleeves.
6. Attend the jawy jobations of Exeter hall, as a "flowery speaker," and
advocate various Jew, Gipsy, Voluntary Church, Anti-pseudo-baptistical
Societies, till you are black in the face.
7. Join the Society for the Diffusion of Useless Knowledge, the Donkey
Protecting Society, and other congenial "Institutes."
8. Build a chapel, and bribe a congregation to come to it. Become a
teetotaller; be a betwixt and betweenish, half-and-half, out-and-out
radical. Defeat the imposition of a Church rate--rave against the
taxes--pledge yourself to support triangular parliaments, universal
suffering--blindfold voting--and confusion to all order.
And thus get in, get in,
By clamour, bawl, and shout;
To tax 'em then begin;
Oh then get out, get out.
Get in, get in, get in,
Give place to sneak and lout,
And don't forget your kin;
Oh then get out, get out.
Get in, get in, get in,
Get jolly fat and stout,
And grind the people thin;
Oh then get out, get out.
Get in, get in, get in,
And turn and twist about,
Until some precious _shin_--
_Dy_--says, "Get out, get out."
[Illustration: MEASURING BY THE "YARD"--TRUE FIT.]
RULE XVI.
DUODECIMALS;
OR,
THE MEASURING OF PAINTING, PLASTERING, JOINING, GLAZING, GLOZING, AND
OTHER FLAT WORK.
Duodecimals teach us to find the superficial contents of any "thing." A
thing is properly something, neither woman nor man; possessing all the
superficial of either, and the substantials of neither: such as
numbsculls, lordlings, quacks, empirics, &c.
Duodecimals also teach the mensuration of plastering, painting and
glazing; which comprehend the arts of palaver and gammon, and the
science of _Flattery_ in general.
This is, above all others, a "superficial age," and the mensuration of
superficies is characteristic of the modern era--the age of meretricious
flummery. Our science is superficial thinking; our morality, superficial
blinking. Every thing is made now-a-days for the "surface," which, like
the gilded wooden organ pipes, placed in front of that instrument, are
not made to blow, but for the sake of show. In learning, we get a
smattering instead of the real thing; and we drop the meat for the sake
of the shadow. The deep and the solid have long ago been discarded: in
short, this is the age of gammon, and society is like a quire of
"outsides foolscap."
* * * * *
_Of Flat Surfaces._--A plane or flat surface has length and breadth
without thickness. Flat surfaces are often made, by some peculiar
property of polarized light, to reflect rays which do not belong to
them. Thus, flats pass for solids, and "shallows" for "deep-uns."
RULE XVII.
BOOK-KEEPING AND ACCOUNTS.
Book-keeping is not to be understood only as the art of
"Book-borrowing," a very good science in its way, but as the highest
branch of the science of _leger_demain, invented for the express purpose
of enabling the speculative to conceal their accounts, just as the use
of speech is given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.
We have excellent directions given us on this head from very high
authority, which is to be understood according to the Benthamite
Philosophy. "How much owest thou my lord? And he said, A hundred
measures of oil. Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty."
Hence the children of the philosophers are wiser than the children of
light.
In "keeping books" it is not only indispensable that you should keep
_them_, but that they also should "keep you." This is in accordance
with the free-trade reciprocity system; and to enable them to do it
requires but little tact. For instance, you open a shop--not for the
purpose of doing _business_, but for _doing some unfortunate flat_, in
the very spirit of a "_Good-will_;" so that when _your business is
done_, your client may find _his business done too_, and when you have
taken yourself _off_, he may find himself taken _in_. This example may
be repeated any number of times.
Upon entering life, every young man must consider that it will be quite
impossible to live without some "cash in hand;"--that he will, at times,
be inevitably called upon to "_fork out_," "_dub up_," or "_come
down_;"--and that in all transactions, such as swelling and dashing,
cutting and flashing, it will be necessary to keep a sharp look-out upon
the "blunt," tin, or pewter, as it is variously termed; if not for your
own satisfaction, at least for your beloved father's, whom you are in
duty bound to bamboozle. There are certain items which never need come
into this account; namely, board, lodging, tailor's bills, boots, shoes,
linen, horses, and such like necessaries; these belong religiously to
the _old boy_, or are fit and proper matters for "whitewashing."
To fulfil this purpose, open a cash account, putting Dr. in the left
hand corner, which signifies Dear Father, in honour of your respected
parent, or in testimony that everything is dear; and Cr. on the right
hand, which may signify "cruel little I have to spend." This is called
the Waste Book. The items introduced are merely hints for the getting
and disbursement of CASH.
WASTE-BOOK
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SIMON SAPSCULL CLUTCHINGS, IN ACCOUNT
----------------------------------------------------------------------
_Dr._
_May 1._
£ _s._ _d._
Out of the old chap, by wheedling and bullying 50 0 0
Out of the schoolmaster, after being in
Whitecross-street two hours 0 3 8
Out of mother, by way of bonus on "good nature." 10 0 0
Out of father, for charitable purposes. 20 0 0
Out of sister, to lend a friend in distress 20 0 0
Out of mother, another 20_l._--having lost the first
when carried home drowned, (good idea this,)
_Mem._ to be repeated. 20 0 0
_May 2._
Out of father, for divinity books, (sorry didn't get
more, as the old chap is so pleased to think I am
"preserved") 40 0 0
_May 3._
Out of mother, to invest on the sly in the 3½ per
cents. for herself 40 0 0
Borrowed of Jem 3 0 0
Balance due to me 56 3 0
-------------
£259 6 8
=============
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WITH HIS FATHER, FROM MAY 1 TO MAY 3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
_Cr._
_May 1._
£ _s._ _d._
Paid at Shooting Gallery, and at the Fives' Court 4 16 0
For cigars, riding whip, Sporting Calendar, and Life
in London 2 10 0
For salve for the dog's tail, (burnt some time since) 1 10 0
Spent at Divan, Coal Hole, and at various places on
stroll 3 0 0
For Covent Garden Oyster Rooms, cigars, brandy,
champagne, and various other matters indistinctly
remembered 20 0 0
Relief to a poor young widow, soda water, and
restorative cordial to the dog 5 0 0
Paid Duncombe for books, according to father's
direction; Flash Lexicon, ditto Songster, ditto
Anecdotes, ditto Morality, ditto Divinity 4 0 0
_May 2._
Paid at Westminster pit, and loss on dog Billy 10 0 0
Cigars and coachman, for a turn with the ribbands 3 0 0
Turn out in post, breaking horses' knees, paid
horsekeeper 15 0 0
Cigars, sandwich, heavy wet, negus, brandy,
brandy-and-water, Welsh-rabbit, port, sherry,
waiters 5 0 0
At the Lowther--gloves, pumps, supper, bursting
waiter's tights, breaking glasses, negus, wine,
supper, brandy, soda water, brandy, wine, whisky,
brandy, claret 10 0 0
Tearing ladies' dress, spoiling gentleman's watch,
damaging ladies' false teeth, smashing fiddle, &c. 26 0 0
To a destitute mantua-maker 3 0 0
Worm pills for the dog 1 10 0
_May 3._
To soda water and brandy, brandy solus, Seidlitz,
vinegar and water, cab to Park, ditto to Colonnade 1 15 0
To rouge et noir, bagatelle, breaking cue, and losses
on learning French and Hebrew 50 10 9
To "Drury"--cigars, saloon, cab, brandy, Falstaff
Drawing Room, music, oysters, champagne, brandy,
damaging lady's bonnet, ditto gentleman's glass
eye, ditto whiskers, ditto lady's curls, ditto
curtains, ditto windows, ditto policeman's nose 76 14 10
Relief to a poor servant girl out of place 1 0 0
To Mrs. H. for her motherly care for next three days 15 0 0
To the pew-opener at church on Sunday 0 0 1
-------------
£259 6 8
=============
Having been thus initiated in the making out of personal accounts, the
pupil must now turn his attention to the methods of Book-keeping adopted
by "gentlemen in difficulties," connected with that peculiar process of
law which professes to put new wind into a collapsed bladder, and enable
an empty sack to stand upright. The example is called taking the
"Benefit;" the principal part of which is making out a Schedule, which
may be done as follows:--
STATEMENT OF MY PERSONAL AND GENERAL EXPENDITURE, VERIFIED BY OATH.
£ _s._ _d._
Paid for twinkling a bed-post 1 5 0
Spouting the tea-kettle 1 15 0
New teething the hair comb 1 10 0
Stopping holes in cullender 1 5 6
Pulling the gray hairs from hearth broom 0 15 0
Whitewashing inside of chimney 1 15 0
A Newgate-Calendar-novel, to soften
hard-hearted cabbages before boiling 1 11 6
Pectoral lozenges for short-winded bellows 0 8 6
1000 cigars, to smoke for cure of corns 12 10 0
Pigeons'-milk on the 1st of April 0 10 0
A leather saw 0 10 0
A worsted hatchet 0 10 0
New vamping and welting India-rubber
conscience 5 5 0
Loan to Thimble-Rig, Esq. 15 0 0
Ditto to Billy Blackleg 20 0 0
Ditto to Richard Roe 25 0 0
Ditto to John Doe 15 0 0
Ditto to Jack Noakes 40 0 0
Ditto to Tom Styles[7] 60 0 0
-------------
£204 10 6
=============
Notwithstanding the copious examples above given, there is one other
kind of Book-keeping which can only be thoroughly understood by the
first accountants, and is only practised by the first of practitioners.
This is making up a book for the _St. Leger_, which is
LEGERDEMAIN COMPLETE.
[7] These loans are of course fictitious, but their signatures
may be valuable to get clear out.
_An Account of the Expenditure of the "Secret Service Money," from
1825 to 1841._
=======================================================================
£ _s._ _d._
Paid to Colonel Queerum, for a series of
Tricknometrical admeasurements of the length and
breadth of public credulity 1,000 0 0
To Captain Audacity, for endeavouring to determine
the "heights" of "impudence" in Whig Radicalism 1,000 0 0
To Colonel Feel-your-way, for surveying the Terra
Incognita of ways and means, per session 1,500 0 0
To Dr. Sapscull, for instructions in sapping and
mining the constitution 2,000 0 0
To Dr. Gammon, for moonlight lessons in the art of
Mystification and Jack-o'-Lanternism 500 0 0
To Dr. Lardner, for horizontal sections of the
broadest latitude of latitudinarian policy 1,000 0 0
To Lord Bumfiddle, for a series of impracticable
experiments in the House of Lords 5,000 0 0
To Lord Bumfiddle, for his project to light both
houses with "cats' eyes," to facilitate
legislation in the dark 2,000 0 0
To expenses of a tour to the Devil's Ace-à-Peak, to
discover the polarity of political consistency 3,000 0 0
To Dr. Bubblejock, for a new plan of making long
speeches out of soap bubbles 1,000 0 0
To Jack Pudding, for the sale of nostrums, "pitch
plasters," and hocusses 2,500 0 0
To Döbler, for instructions in legerdemain, sleight
of hand, and hocus pocus 1,000 0 0
To J. H. for his chemical extraction of the
blunderful from the public accounts 1,500 0 0
To a cargo of soap and soft sawder, to unite the
dissenters 500 0 0
To various sops thrown to the Irish hound
"Cerberus," on going into the Tartarus of a new
session 17,000 0 0
To Mesmerizing a Whig Lord, at stated intervals,
and for dust to throw into the eyes of the
Church 3,000 0 0
To Oliver Hill, for his plan of buying and selling,
and living by the loss 100 0 0
To Pawnbroker's interest on pawning the crown and
keeping the Queen in check 5,000 0 0
To pepper, mustard, Congreve rockets, and Spanish
flies, for seasoning speeches at public meetings 2,000 0 0
To 150 yards of new _spouting_ for Exeter Hall, and
for the repair of weathercocks at St. Stephen's 1,000 0 0
For putting a new bottom to the fundamental maxims
of English law, (paid by Sheriffs) 5,000 0 0
To a constant supply of "hot water" for both Houses,
and for the use of "cold water" to throw on
petitions 5,000 0 0
To Dr. Shuttlecock Casey, for his plan of "water
grueling" the poor, and "blowing up" schoolmasters
with "small beer" science 0 0 0¼
To "Hogs' Wittles," of various kinds, in the shape
of pamphlets, addressed to the swinish multitude 3,000 0 0
To Daniel O'Connell, for pulling the wires of the
political Punch and Judy, seven sessions 150,000 0 0
To Scott the diver, for going to the bottom of the
Exchequer bills affair, and reporting unsound 1,000 0 0
To Colonel Common Sense, for blowing up the wreck
of the "Impracticable," and reporting "safe
anchorage" (unpaid) 0 0 0
-----------------
£215,600 0 0¼
=================
[Illustration: CHARLES I.--A BLOCK-HEAD.]
RULE XVIII.
SOLID MEASURE.
We have already treated on "superficial measurement;" we now come to
"Solid Measure." Solids are, in general, what are termed "blockheads,"
or "thickheads," or "bumbleheads," or "numbsculls," exemplified in
"senior wranglers," "tripos," "professors of Greek," and teachers of
Latin. The advantages of a thick scull are great. It was found upon the
gauging of Porson's head, by the heads of his college, that his scull
was so thick that it became the subject of marvel how knowledge could
get in--once _in_, it was held impossible to get out. The case is the
same with most of our schoolmen.
* * * * *
SOLID MEASURE has been applied with great success to the measure of
blockheads by Messrs. Gull and Spuzzy, Epps, Ham and Co. The measure is
now principally performed by a Scotch "Combe," consisting of four
"bushel-heads" in one. This instrument, the length and breadth and
thickness of a head being given, will work out the solid contents and
capacity of the understanding, to the fraction of a fraction.
The science so formed upon the measure of wooden heads was invented by
Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century and made a
wooden man with a wooden head, dividing it into sixty-eight orders or
ratios. Gull and Spuzzy, however, finding this large number bother them,
took away thirty-three, _sans cérémonie_, observing, "Organum botheratio
sive ambarum rationum mistura fortuita effervescens, bullas gignens."
But the whole scull is now mapped out into thirty-six compartments, and
subjected to a trigonometrical survey, and a barometrical admeasurement
of comparative heights and hollows.
These divisions are so delightfully situated, that from Combativeness,
the organ of fighting, we enter Friendship, (Adhesiveness,) without a
turnpike between. Acquisitiveness, the love of money, is next-door
neighbour to Ideality, the quality of poets, who generally show so much
contempt for it. Constructiveness, the organ of building, lies as a
foundation for that of Music, and handy for the grating of saws, the
knocking of hammers, and the squeaking of wheelbarrows, as
accompaniments to Haydn's symphonies. Metaphysics are also handy for
wit. Ideality is a parallelopiped, Hope is a square, Cautiousness a
circle, Eventuality a semicircle; then we have cones, rhomboids,
trapeziums, polygons, hexagons, decagons; while Language, like the
science itself, is all my _eye_.[8]
Thick-heads, block-heads, bumble-heads, or basket-heads, which used in
former days to be symbols of obesity, and gave rise to the maxim, "Great
head, little wit," are now the indications of intellectual superiority.
"The bigger the head the greater the genius," as the mushroom said to
the cucumber; and to have a head as big as a baker's basket, or the
bustle of a lady mayoress, is perfection.
To fumble these heads is the business of the Feelosophers; so called
from _feel_, to fumble, _os_, a bone, and _pher_, far from the truth.
This science being at our fingers' ends, a great advantage is felt in
all the transactions of life, as the most tender ideas maybe expressed
with mathematical certainty, numerically, figuratively, and
arithmetically, as follows:--
[8] Sir Walter Scott, in one of his walks, found a turnip,
resembling in some degree the bumble-head of a Scotch
feelosopher. He made a cast of it, and sent it to the
Phrenological Society of Edinburgh, who pronounced a long
dissertation upon it, and gave the moral and intellectual
qualities with extraordinary _correctness_.
A BUMPOLOGICAL LOVE-LETTER.
DIVINE LOUISA,
I need not remind you that last night I felt (not emotions, raptures,
and soul-thrilling transports) but your BUMPS. On returning home I also
felt my own, and I hasten to inform you that while 17 is throbbing like
an earthquake, all my 33 is insufficient to describe my state, on
finding that a kind Providence has ordained that for every _bump_ on
your beloved head, there rises a corresponding bump on mine. I 18 you do
not see them, and in 16 declare that my No. 11 only centres in you.
I do not wish to give a false 26 to what I say, but in the 30 of your
becoming mine, my No. 1 will develop No. 2, and all my No. 3 will be
directed to 14 for your 13. Dearest girl, need I say more? Nos. 2, 3, 4,
are so harmoniously protuberant in both of us, that I can have no doubt
of either a large or a happy home. Your 23 and 24, and the 26 on your
cheeks, are indeed divine. Sweet soul, do allow your 13 to name as soon
as possible your 31 and 27, that no untoward 30's may cross our 17's.
Yours, from 1 to 36,
BOBBY BUMPAS.
17 Hope.
33 Language.
18 Wonder.
16 Conscientiousness.
11 Love of approbation.
26 Colour.
30 Eventuality.
1 Amativeness.
2 Philoprogenitiveness.
3 Concentrativeness.
4 Adhesiveness.
14 Veneration.
13 Benevolence.
23 Form.
24 Size.
31 Time.
27 Place.
[Illustration: "ASSURANCE."]
RULE XIX.
ASSURANCE--INSURANCE.
Assurance or Brass is a rule of the utmost consequence in all monetary
transactions; by it miracles have been performed from the earliest ages.
A good stock of assurance, _i. e._ _impudence_, will carry a man
further than even a stock of money, wit, or learning. The _brazen_ head
of Friar Bacon, by which he is said to have performed such wonders, was
nothing more than a typical personification of the _brass_, _assurance_,
or _impudence_ of the conjuror. The present _prima facie_ economic
method is to wear a brazen face with a wooden head. _Mettle_, it is
true, may be necessary, but "cheek" is indispensable.