Josh Billings on Ice, and Other ThingsBillings, Josh
General
Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things
Billings, Josh
American wit and humor
I mean now those men or those wimmin whose position in the world gives
them the title tew be listened to, and even beleaved, who spend their
lives like a bumbel bee on the wing, from flower to flower, and from
thistle to thistle, buzzing and whispering.
These kind ov bumbel beeze deal only in sekrets ov the most delikate or
dreadful kind, which they entrust to you with awl the importance and
aimable reserve that distinguishes the intimate frend.
Thare is nothing in the world that would give them more pain or
confusion (if you can beleave them) than to have their buzzes repeated,
and yet, in truth, nothing would giv them more mortifikation if they
were not.
They sow their seed as the husbandman duz his expekting it tew sprout,
and rejoice as he duz in a good crop.
I know not from what ambishun this buzzing springs, unless it is the
vanity ov knowledge, or the skarcity ov news; but one thing is certain,
that no more inveterate workers kan be found--they are emphatikally the
early birds who find the worm; they are the bizzy bees ov thrift, and
they are your provident pissmires who alwus have corn in their cells
against the calamity ov a wet day. Evry citty has a thousand ov them,
evry village a score, and evry naborhood its Aunt Dority, or its Unkle
Darby, who whisper and buzz from Christmas to Christmas agin. These
insekts know evry marriage that is on the ways, and just when it is tew
be launched; they know awl the slips and the slipshods within a circle
of twenty leagues or more; they guess at outrages and divine
bankrupcys; they hear ov elopements in the breath ov the morning, and
see the spektral shaddow ov a domestik brawl stealing on tiptoze amid
the gray ov the evening; they know the crimes ov evrybodys grandfather,
and remember, just like a book, the time when the wife ov esquire Baker
was no better than she should be. I don't know as there is truth enuff
in the world just now to do the bizness with; if there aint, the
buzzers may be in a measure necessary as a circulating medium; but if
this is really so, they stand in the same relation to an honest
circulation that other counterfit munny dus.
I hav searched the musty annals ov primogeniture, and hav dove down
deep into the labarynths of succession, to trace the literal descent ov
these slander-breeding and birth-giving scorpions, and found that about
four thousand years ago, _Envy_ begot _Malice_, _Malice_ begot
_Revenge_, and _Revenge_ had twins--one was a common thief and the
other was a buzzer.
Nature seems, in the production of Buzzers, to hav transgressed one ov
her most aimable laws: I mean, the grate parsimony she generally shows
in inflikting humanity with venemous reptiles.
Stealing is more ancient and more honorable than malishus buzzing, but
it aint quite so safe; the goods are often found on the thief, and this
leads to his detection, while the buzzer is more like the incendiary,
who applys the match and makes good his escape before the flames begin
tew spread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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