The instinct with which our bore finds out another bore, and closes with
him, is amazing. We have seen him pick his man out of fifty men, in a
couple of minutes. They love to go (which they do naturally) into a slow
argument on a previously exhausted subject, and to contradict each other,
and to wear the hearers out, without impairing their own perennial
freshness as bores. It improves the good understanding between them, and
they get together afterwards, and bore each other amicably. Whenever we
see our bore behind a door with another bore, we know that when he comes
forth, he will praise the other bore as one of the most intelligent men
he ever met. And this bringing us to the close of what we had to say
about our bore, we are anxious to have it understood that he never
bestowed this praise on us.
A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY
IT was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common
Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are a
frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes.
We are credibly informed, in reference to the nation whom this choice
spirit so happily disposed of, that the caricatures and stage
representations which were current in England some half a century ago,
exactly depict their present condition. For example, we understand that
every Frenchman, without exception, wears a pigtail and curl-papers.
That he is extremely sallow, thin, long-faced, and lantern-jawed. That
the calves of his legs are invariably undeveloped; that his legs fail at
the knees, and that his shoulders are always higher than his ears. We
are likewise assured that he rarely tastes any food but soup maigre, and
an onion; that he always says, ‘By Gar! Aha! Vat you tell me, sare?’ at
the end of every sentence he utters; and that the true generic name of
his race is the Mounseers, or the Parly-voos. If he be not a
dancing-master, or a barber, he must be a cook; since no other trades but
those three are congenial to the tastes of the people, or permitted by
the Institutions of the country. He is a slave, of course. The ladies
of France (who are also slaves) invariably have their heads tied up in
Belcher handkerchiefs, wear long earrings, carry tambourines, and beguile
the weariness of their yoke by singing in head voices through their
noses—principally to barrel-organs.
It may be generally summed up, of this inferior people, that they have no
idea of anything.
Of a great Institution like Smithfield, they are unable to form the least
conception. A Beast Market in the heart of Paris would be regarded an
impossible nuisance. Nor have they any notion of slaughter-houses in the
midst of a city. One of these benighted frog-eaters would scarcely
understand your meaning, if you told him of the existence of such a
British bulwark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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