The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834Various
History
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It would require a volume to enumerate all the advantages which have
resulted from the discovery of this science. But even these are about
to be quadrupled by the successful experiments recently made in the
immortal and euphoniously titled science of phrenodontology, by which a
man's _grinders_ are regarded as the unerring indices of his habits,
manners and propensities; and should these last be of an evil nature,
they can be entirely eradicated by the extraction of such of the
_incissores_ as indicate their existence. There is no necessity
whatever of inculcating self denial, regular habits, fortitude and
virtue, to correct the depravity and vice of any individual. Only knock
out his teeth, (or as that method is somewhat too summary,) have them
extracted _secundum artem_ by a dentist, and you instantly metamorphose
him into a paragon of moral purity!
But one of the principal benefits of the "March of Mind," is the
salutary reformation effected in the opinions of mankind, in relation
to numerous important subjects. All those low and grovelling ideas
which once tenanted the crania of our honest yeomanry as to the
education of their children, have now evaporated into thin air. Instead
of tying their sons to a vulgar plough, bronzing their visages to the
complexion of an Indian, as was formerly the absurd practice, they are
now transplanted into the genial hothouse of a town life, where they
are soon installed in all the fashionable paraphernalia of tights,
dickey, and safety chain; and astonish their honest old dads by the
dexterity with which they flourish a yardstick, and by the surprising
volubility with which they can chatter nonsense, _a la mode du bon
ton_. I have often been enraptured with the incontrovertible evidence
of the "March of Mind," when I saw one of these praiseworthy
youngsters, with his crural appendages, cased in a pair of eelskin
inexpressibles, and his nasal adjunct inflamed to that rubicund
complexion which Shakspeare has immortalized in the jovial Bardolph,
quiz a country greenhorn, and _cul_, in the genuine Brummel style, some
vulgar, lowborn, mechanic acquaintance, who insolently aspired to the
honor of a nod! The improvement too, in the education of our young
ladies, is "confirmation strong as proof of holy writ," of the rapid
and resistless march of science and intellect. With a precocity of
talent which would have absolutely dumbfoundered a belle of the olden
time, they now arrive at full maturity at the age of thirteen; when
"My dukedom to a beggarly denier,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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