One saw the Virgin soon-peccavi cried- Made fit with saints above to live forever. In coming back, however, let me say, Damning the souls and bodies of the peas; sweat, Deep sympathizing with his groaning feet. "How now," the light-toed, whitewash'd pilgrim broke, "You lazy lubber!" "Odds curse it!" cried the other, " 't is joke; My feet, once hard as any rock, no Are now as soft as any blubber. him. THE ETHICS OF BRAN. I AM sometimes lost in delight as I read the confident and generous directions of some man who has solved the problem of correct living and given his gospel to the world. How much better than any imagined millennium will that be when we conform all our vile bodies to his body; what a sweet uniformity when we all eat and drink and sleep and dress and exercise exactly as he has found it best for The process of natural selection has been carried quite far enough. Let us be of one mind and one diet; bran of one bran, flesh of one flesh. We shall all go to bed at one hour, and that right early, except the editors of morning journals, who will have a dispensation to die early. We shall all rise, like a bed of crocuses in spring, at a very early hour, and all together. Sickness will not excuse us, for there will be no excuse for sickness. At the same moment we shall all be engaged in taking an air bath, a plunge bath, a sponge bath, a dry rub; and then, dressing according to a tabular set of figures, furnished by the central authority, showing the proper weight of each garment according to the temperature indicated by the thermometer, we shall all take a brisk walk of eleven minutes. We shall all saw wood for half an hour, if we have no lifting-machine, and then sit down to breakfast, to consist of half a pint of filtered water (free of all animal substances), and two quarters of a to be eaten with the utmost cheerfulness, dried apple, or any other fruit in season, and even with a little moderate hilarity. avoided. After breakfast, we are to go to A dried apple without hilarity is to be our various occupations with a clear mind and an elastic frame. By twelve o'clock we shall be quite ready for dinner. This meal is to be varied every day in the week,-different kinds of bran-bread, different kinds of cracked wheat, different kinds of dried apples, and other sorts of fruit that do not contain a certain kind A TAILOR of melancholic temperament of acid which is hostile to the standard was sitting on the Canada shore, gazing stomach of the reformer whom we follow, intently at the Horseshoe Fall with its to be eaten with a great deal of merrithick cloud of spray. A reporter stole ment (no matter who has died or who has up unobserved, and heard him mutter-gone into bankruptcy), to be eaten in "What a place to sponge a coat!" large quantities. In fact, we are to eat your toes? Whilst I, just like a snail, am crawling, Now swearing, now on saints devoutly bawling, Whilst not a rascal comes to ease my woes? "How is 't that you can like a greyhound go, Merry, as if nought had happen'd, burn ye?" "Why," cried the other, grinning, "you That, just before I ventured on my journey, JOHN WOLCOTT ("Peter Pindar "), 1738-1819. all we want at this king meal, with one restriction. We are to leave off hungry and extremely hilarious. The dinner is to cost not over eight cents, except you dine with a friend, and he pays the bill, in which case you may take sugar on your fruit. After dinner you may take a siesta of twenty minutes and a nap in your chair; but do not lie down; and sleep with your mouth shut in fly-time, for animal food is absolutely prohibited. These directions may seem unimportant; but nothing is trivial to an immortal man, as you will feel when you go to your business with a springing step, a sparkling eye, glowing cheeks, fire in every limb, exultant blood in every muscle, and the consciousness that you have no butcher's bill, grocer's bill, or milkman's, that you owe no man a dollar, and can keep all the commandments just as easy as you can wink. As you walk along the street, you occasionally jump into the air four or five feet, or leap over the boundary fence and back, and laugh aloud. At supper it is best for you to eat nothing, excepting your own cheerfulness. But, if nature will have something, try a little brown-bread, raised without yeast, slowly masticating it, thinking about butter, and being careful to call up no image of excessive laughter; for this is the time to begin to tranquillize the mind and prepare for self-satisfied slumber. Of course, it must be understood that all you eat must be carefully weighed. This not only guards against excess, but it induces a careful and methodical habit of mind. When you go out to dinner, you will carry your scales with you, and weigh your own food at the table. It is important to notice that beans, uncontaminated by pork, may be eaten on Sundays and the Fourth of July. CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, b. 1829, A SHOCKING MIXTURE. IT devolved on a certain newspaper reporter, to write for the same edition an account of the gift of a gold-headed cane to Rev. Dr. Janes, the clergyman of the place, and a description of a patent hog-killing and sausage-making machine, which had just gone into operation. When VOL. I.-W. H. the foreman of the composing room received the two locals, he cut them into small pieces, as usual, for distribution among the type-setters. A mistake must have been made in numbering the "copy,' for when the paper went to press the two reports were mixed in such a frightful manner, that the following, or something like it, was the result: "Several of Rev. Dr. Janes' friends called upon him yesterday, and after a brief conversation the unsuspicious hog was seized by the hind legs and slid along a beam till he reached the hot water tank. His friends explained the object of their visit and presented him with a very handsome goldheaded butcher, who grabbed him by the tail, swung him around, slit his throat from ear to ear, and in less than a minute the carcase was in the water. Thereupon he came forward and said that there were times when the feelings overpowered one, and for that reason he would not attempt to do more than thank those around him for the manner in which such a huge animal was cut into fragments was simply astonishing. The doctor concluded his remarks, when the machine seized him and in less time than it takes to write it, the hog was cut into pieces and worked up into delicious sausage. The occasion will long be remembered by the Doctor's friends as one of the most delightful of their lives. The best pieces can be procured at fifteen cents a pound, and we are sure that those who have sat so long under his ministry will rejoice that he has been treated so handsomely." The entire congregation of Dr. Janes' church stopped taking the paper immediately. MAX ADELER. "Ah! wait; tell me, has Mr. B-settled his accounts to date?" "Yes, sir. His accounts were settled promptly and cheerfully." "Ah! then you may place,-I have the honor to be your very humble servant." "By the way," said the secretary, "I forgot to tell you that Mr. B- has chartered two new ships, and his ventures are not only brilliant but safe. He is regarded by the knowing ones as a man of remarkable ability." "Ah, ah! Indeed! Place quickly,I have the honor to be, sir, with the highest consideration and respect, your very humble and very obedient servant!" It iz very diffikult for a poor man tew be superior tew hiz fortune, and more diffikult for a rich one. How menny people there iz whose souls hang in them, like the pith in a gooze quill. If you want a true friend, hire him bi the month, and pay him fair wages. In fishing for krabs, use your fingers for bait, you can feel them when they fust bite. If yu want to git a sure krop, and a big yield, sow wild oats. I have alwus notised one thing, when a man gits in a tite spot, he dont never call on hiz friend the Devil tew help him out. I had rather be a seed cowcumber, flung up in a wood pile tew ripen, than tew be an old bachelor. The time tew be karefullest iz when we have a hand full ov trumps. Tew learn yure offspring to steal, make them beg hard for all that yu give them. In fishing for musketoze, dont wait for them tew bite a seckond time. If a man haint got a well-balanced head, i like tew see him part hiz hair in the middle. Keep a cow, and then the milk wont WIT AND WISDOM FROM JOSH hav tew be watered but once. BILLINGS.1 FLATTERY iz like colone water, tew be smelt ov, not swallered. There iz only one good substitute for the endearments of a sister, and that iz the endearments ov sum other phellow's sister. Cheerfull old girls are the brides' maids ov society. About the hardest thing a phellow can do, iz tew spark two girls at onct, and preserve a good average. Old dorgs nuss their grudges, but yung purps fite, and then frolick. A big noze iz sed tew be a sighn ov genius if a man's genius lays in hiz noze, i should say the sighn waz a good one. Medicine haz cost the world more than bread haz, and haz killed more than it haz cured. Marriage tew a coquette iz often "letters ov marque and reprisal." Tew enjoy a good reputashun, giv publickly, and steal privately. A HORSE-TRADE. WHEN Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois, he and a judge got to bantering one another about trading horses, and it was agreed that the next morning at nine o'clock they should make a trade, the horses to be unseen up to that hour, and no backing out under a forfeiture of $25. At the hour appointed the judge came up, leading the sorriest looking specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts. In a few minutes Lincoln was seen approaching, with a wooden sawhorse upon his shoulder. Great were the shouts and the laughter of the crowd, and both were greatly increased when Mr. Lincoln, on surveying the judge's animal, set down his sawhorse and exclaimed: "Well, 1 The works of Josh Billings are published by G. w. judge, this is the first time I ever got the Carleton & Co., New York. worst of it in a horse trade." VOLTAIRE'S MICROMEGAS. CHAPTER I. A VOYAGE TO THE planet SaturN, BY AN INHABITANT OF THE STAR SIRIUS. IN one of the planets that revolve around the star known by the name of Sirius, was a certain young gentleman of promising parts, whom I had the honor to be acquainted with, in his last voyage to this our little ant-hill. His name was Micromegas, an appellation admirably suited to all great men, and his stature amounted to eight leagues in length, that is, four and twenty thousand geometrical paces, five feet in each. Some of your mathematicians, a set of people always useful to the public, will perhaps instantly seize the pen, and calculate that Mr. Micromegas, inhabitant of the country of Sirius, being from head to foot four and twenty thousand paces in length, making one hundred and twenty thousand royal feet; that we, denizens of this earth, being at a medium little more than five feet high and our globe nine thousand leagues in circumference: these things being premised, I say, they will conclude, that the periphery of the globe which produced him, must be exactly one hundred and twenty millions six hundred thousand times greater than that of this our tiny ball. Nothing in nature is more simple and common. The dominions of some sovereigns of Germany or Italy which may be compassed in half an hour, when compared with the empires of Ottoman, Muscovy, or China are no other than faint instances of the prodigious difference which nature hath made in the scale of beings. The stature of his excellency being of these extraordinary dimensions, all our painters and statuaries will easily agree that the round of his belly might amount to fifty thousand royal feet: a very agreeable and just proportion. His nose being equal in length to onethird of his face, and his jolly countenance engrossing one-seventh part of his length, it must be owned that the nose of this famous Sirian was six thousand 1 A name compounded of two Greek words, signify ing little and great. three hundred and thirty-three royal feet to a hair; which was to be demonstrated. With regard to his understanding, it is one of the best cultivated I have known; he is perfectly well acquainted with abundance of things, some of which are of his own invention: for when his age did not exceed two hundred and fifty years, he, according to the custom of his country, studied at the most celebrated university of the whole planet, and by the force of his genius, found out upwards of fifty propositions of Euclid, having the advantage by more than eighteen of Blaise Paschal, who (as we are told by his own sister,) demonstrated two and thirty for his amusement, and then left off, choosing rather to be an indifferent philosopher, than a great mathematician.About the four hundred and fiftieth year of his age, or the latter part of his childhood, he dissected a great number of small insects, not more than one hundred feet in diameter, which are not perceivable by ordinary microscopes, of which he composed a curious treatise, which involved him in some trouble: the mufti of the nation, though very old and very ignorant, made shift to discover in his book certain lemmas that were suspicious, unseemly, rash, heretic and unsound; and prosecuted him with great animosity, for the subject of the author's inquiry was whether, in the world of Sirius, there was any difference between the substantial forms of a flea and a snail. Micromegas defended his philosophy with such spirit as made all the female sex his proselytes; and the process lasted two hundred and twenty years; at the end of which, in consequence of the mufti's interest, the book was condemned by judges who had never read it, and the author expelled from court, for the term of eight hundred years. Not much afflicted at this banishment from a court that teemed with nothing but turmoils and trifles, he made a very himself no trouble about the matter, and humorous song upon the mufti, who gave set out on his travels from planet to planet, in order (as the saying is) to improve his mind and finish his education. Those who never travel but in a post chaise or berlin, will doubtless be astonished at the equipage used above: for we that strut upon this little mole hill, are at a loss to conceive anything that sur passes our own customs. But our traveller was a wonderful adept in the laws of CHAPTER II. gravitation, together with the whole force THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN MICROMEGAS AND THE INHABITANT OF SATURN. of attraction and repulsion; and made such reasonable use of his knowledge, that sometimes by the help of a sunbeam, His excellency having laid himself and sometimes by the convenience of a down, and the secretary approached his comet, he and his retinue glided from nose, "It must be confessed," said Microsphere to sphere, as a bird hops from one megas, "that nature is full of variety,"bough to another. He in a very little "Yes," replied the Saturnian, "nature time posted through the milky way; and is like a parterre whose flowers-" I am obliged to own, he saw not a twin- "Pshaw!" cried the other, "truce with kle of those stars supposed to adorn that your parterres."- "It is," resumed the fair empyrean, which the illustrious doc- secretary, "like an assembly of fair and tor Derham brags to have observed brown women whose dresses-" "What through his telescope. Not that I pre- a plague have I to do with your brutend to say the doctor was mistaken. nettes?" said our traveller. "Then it is God forbid! but Micromegas was upon like a gallery of pictures, the strokes of the spot, an exceeding good observer, and which" Not at all," answered MiI have no mind to contradict any man. cromegas. I will tell you once for all, Be that as it will, after many windings that nature is like nature, and comand turnings, he arrived at the planet parisons are odorous." "Well, to please Saturn, and accustomed as he was to the you "said the secretary-"I won't be sight of novelties, he could not for his pleased," replied the Sirian, "I want to life repress that supercilious and con- be instructed: begin therefore, without ceited smile which often escapes the further preamble, tell me how many wisest philosopher when he perceives the senses the people of this world enjoy."smallness of that globe, and the diminu-"We have seventy and two," said the tive size of its inhabitants: for really academician, "but we are daily complainSaturn is but about nine hundred times ing of the small number: as our imaginalarger than this our earth, and the people of that country are mere dwarfs, about a thousand fathoms high. In short, he at first derided those poor pigmies, just as an Italian fiddler laughs at the music of Lully, at his first arrival in Paris; but as this Sirian was a person of good sense, he soon perceived that a thinking being may not be altogether ridiculous, even though he is not quite six thousand feet high; and therefore he became familiar with them, after they had ceased to wonder at his extraordinary appearance. In particular he contracted an intimate friendship with the secretary of the academy of Saturn, a man of good understanding, who, though in truth he had invented nothing of his own, gave a very good account of the inventions of others, and enjoyed, in peace, the reputation of a little poet and great calculator. And here, for the edification of the reader, I will repeat a very singular conversation that one day passed between Mr. Secretary and Micromegas. tion transcends our wants; for with these seventy-two senses, our five moons and ring, we find ourselves very much restricted; and notwithstanding our curiosity, and the no small number of those passions that result from these few senses, we have still time enough to be tired of idleness." "I sincerely believe what you say," cried Micromegas, "for, though we Sirians have near a thousand different senses, there still remains a certain vague desire, an unaccountable inquietude, incessantly advertising us of our own unimportance, and giving us to understand that there are other beings who are much our superiors in point of perfection. I have travelled a little, and seen mortals both above and below myself in the scale of being: but I have met with none who had not more desire than necessity, and more want than gratification: perhaps I shall one day arrive in some country where nought is wanting: but hitherto I have had no certain information of such a happy land." The Saturnian and his guest exhausted themselves in conjectures upon this subject, and after abundance of argumentation equally ingenious and un |