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ALL FOOLS' DAY
THE compliments of the
season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us
all!
Many happy returns
of this day to you -- and you --and you, Sir -- nay, never frown,
man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another?
what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that
same -- you understand me -- a speck of the motley. Beshrew the
man who on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect
to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the
corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the
forest to-day, shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus
sum. Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself
for your pains. What, man, we have four quarters of the globe
on our side, at the least computation.
Fill us a cup of that
sparkling gooseberry -- we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic
port on this day -- and let us troll the catch of Amiens -- duc
ad me -- duc ad me -- how goes it?
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he.
Now would I give a
trifle to know historically and authentically, who was the greatest
fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper.
Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much difficulty
name you the party.
Remove your cap a little
further, if you please; it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride
his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I
will give you, for my part,
_______The crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.
Good master Empedocles,
you are welcome. It is long since you went a salamander gathering
down Aetna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. `Tis a mercy
your worship did not singe your mustachios.
Ha! Cleombrotus! and
what salads in faith did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean?
You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the
Calenturists.
Gebir, my old free-mason,
and prince of plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most
Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat at my right hand, as patron
of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus
correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above
the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have
pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on the low
grounds of Sennaar. Or did you send up your garlick and onions
by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our
Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think
it somewhat.
What, the magnanimous
Alexander in tears ? -- cry, baby, put its finger in its eye,
it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet!
Mister Adams -- 'odso,
I honour your coat -- pray do us the favour to read to us that
sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop -- the twenty and
second in your portmanteau there -- on Female Incontinence --
the same -- it will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently
seasonable to the time of the day.
Go Master Raymund Lully,
you look wise. Pray correct that error. -
Duns, spare your definitions.
I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said
or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms,
waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension
stumbling across them.
Master Stephen, you
are late. -- Ha! Cokes, is it you ? -- Ague-cheek, my dear knight,
let me pay my devoir to you. -- Master Shallow, your worship's
poor servant to command. -- Master Silence, I will use few words
with you. -- Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere.
-- You six will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day.
-- I know it, I know it.
Ha! honest R--, my fine
old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again?
Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories
-- what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate ? -- Thy
customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long
ago. -- Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure,
thou canst hawk a volume or two. -- Good Granville S---, thy last
patron, is flown.
King Pandion, he is dead,
All thy friends are lapt in lead. -
Nevertheless, noble
R --, come in, and take your seat here, between Armado and Quisada:
for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself,
in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-apparelled
speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou art nothing
inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry
forsake me for ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath,
which declares that he might be happy with either, situated between
those two ancient spinsters -- when I forget the inimitable formal
love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to
the other, with that Malvolian smile -- as if Cervantes, not Gay,
had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of periods must
revolve, before the minor of courtesy could have given his invidious
preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal
damsels. . . . . .
To descend from these
altitudes, and not to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate
day, -- for I fear the second of April is not many hours distant
-- in sober verity I will confess a Truth to thee, reader. I love
a Fool -- as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When
a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the
surface of the matter, I read those Parables -- not guessing at
their involved wisdom -- I had more yearnings towards that simple
architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained
for his more cautious neighbour; I grudged at the hard censure
pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent; and -- prizing
their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension,
somewhat unfeminine wariness of their competitors -- I felt a
kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those five thoughtless
virgins. -- I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted;
or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some tincture
of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity
of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit
in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not
betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination
warrants; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And
take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if
you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture,
hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition. It is observed,
that "the foolisher the fowl or fish, -- woodcocks, -- dotterels,
-- cod's-heads, &c. the finer the flesh thereof," and
what are commonly the world's received fools, but such whereof
the world is not worthy? and what have been some of the kindliest
patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absurdity, minions
of the goddess, and her white boys? -- Reader, if you wrest my
words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that
are the April Fool.
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