The Comic Almanack, Volume 1: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities — David Hume — John Shaqi
The Comic Almanack, Volume 1: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities
David Hume · en
umbel Serv't to command
GREGORY GUDGEON.
No. 9,
Nobody-knows-where Street,
Jericho,
Feb. the 32nd, 1836.
* * * * *
SIR,
A most respectable friend of mine, at the suggestion of a worthy
magistrate of Surrey, felt himself constrained to take steps for his
improvement at that celebrated place of fashionable resort, Brixton
Tread Mill.
For a considerable period he was greatly delighted with this elegant
mode of recreation; and was much struck with the ingenuity of an
invention by which a person might walk fifty or sixty miles a day,
without the inconvenience of changing the scene. But, somehow or
other, being a man of very ardent temperament, he entered so much
into the spirit of the amusement that—but I scarcely know how to
describe it, lest I should be suspected of exaggeration, a fault I
hold in the greatest abhorrence—in short, we have all of us heard of
pedestrians, after a hard day's travel, complain of having nearly
walked their feet off; but my unfortunate friend literally did so;
and so intent was he on his salubrious pastime that he kept walking
on upon his bare stumps; nor would it have been discovered, had not
his feet, on finding that they had no longer the power of motion,
determined that nothing else should have that power; and spitefully
stopped the mill, by getting entangled in the machinery.