_i.e_. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his
brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully
submitted by your committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for
it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance
which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as
Chrysostom and Irenæus."
[Footnote 1: "Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one"--_literally_,
good reader, and no joke at all.]
"Dang Irenæus!" said Toad-in-the-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the
next toast:--"Our Irish friends; and a speedy revolution in their mode of
tooling, as well as everything else connected with the art!"
"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take
up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good, this
is charming, this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a
little farther, before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the
Irish manufacture. Instantly we loath it; we call to the waiter; we say,
Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely
offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a
murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel
himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered, he finds it to be
Cape; or when, taking up what he takes to be a mushroom, it turns out
what children call a toad-stool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in
principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or
Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we
must import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole sat
down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!"
sufficiently showed that he spoke the general feeling.
The next toast was--"The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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