Baled Hay: A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves o' Grass"Nye, Bill
General
Baled Hay: A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves o' Grass"
Nye, Bill
American wit and humor
|THE London _Lancet_ upsets the popular theory that abundant hair is
a sign of bodily or mental strength. The fact is, it says, that
notwithstanding the Samson precedent, the Chinese, who are the most
enduring of all races, are mostly bald; and as to the supposition that
long and thick hair is a sign of intellectuality, all antiquity, all
madhouses and all common observation are against it. The easily-wheedled
Esau was hairy. The mighty Caesar was bald. Long haired men are
generally weak and fanatical, and men with scant hair are the
philosophers, and soldiers, and statesmen, of the world. Oscar Wilde,
Theodore Tilton, and others of the long-haired fraternity, should read
these statements with soulful and heart-yearning delight.
Will the editor of the _Lancet_ please step over to the saloon, opposite
the royal palace, and take something at our expense? Pard, we shake
with you. Count us in also. Reckon us along with Cæsar, and Elijah, and
Aristotle, please. Though young, we can show more polished intellect to
the superficial foot than many who have lived longer than we have.
Will the editor of the _Lancet_ please put our name on his list of
subscribers and send the bill to us? What we want is a good, live paper
that knows something, and isn't afraid to say it.
|WE were pained to see a large mule brought into town yesterday with
his side worn away until it looked very thin. It looked as though the
pensive mule had laid down to think over his past life, and being in the
company of seven other able-bodied mules, all of whom were attached to a
government freight wagon going down a mountain, this, particular animal,
while wrapped in a brown study, had been pulled several miles with so
much unction, as it were, that when the train stopped it was found that
this large and highly accomplished mule had worn his side off so thin
that you could see his inmost thoughts.
FIRMNESS.
|WHEN we saw him, he looked as though, if he had his life to live over
again, he would select a different time to ponder over his previous
history. Sometimes a mule's firmness causes his teetotal and everlasting
overthrow.
Firmness is a good thing in its place, but we should early learn that to
be firm, we need not stand up against a cyclone till our eternal economy
is blown into the tops of the neighboring trees. Moral courage is a good
thing, but it is useless unless you have a liver to go along with it.
Sometimes a man is required to lay down his life for his principles, but
the cases where he is expected to lay down his digester on the altar of
his belief, are comparatively seldom.
We may often learn a valuable lesson from the stubborn mule, and guard
against the too protruberant use of our own ideas in opposition to other
powers against which it is useless to contend. It may be wrong for giant
powder to blow the top of a man's head off without cause, but repealed
contests have proved that even when giant powder is in the wrong, it is
eventually victorious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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