Previous Fallacy |
|
|
POPULAR FALLACIES
"Good sir, or madam,
as it may be -- we most willingly embrace the offer of your friendship.
We long have known your excellent qualities. We have wished to
have you nearer to us; to hold you within the very innermost fold
of our heart. We can have no reserve towards a person of your
open and noble nature. The frankness of your humour suits us exactly.
We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick -- let us disburthen
our troubles into each other's bosom -- let us make our single
joys shine by reduplication -- But yap, yap, yap! -- what is this
confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg."
"It is my dog,
sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, Test -- Test -- Test!"
"But he has bitten me."
"Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better
acquainted with him. I have had him three years. He never bites
me."
Yap, yap, yap! -- "He is at it again."
"Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does
not like to he kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all
the respect due to myself" [p 267]
"But do you always take him out with you,
when you go a friendship-hunting?
"Invariably. `Tis the sweetest, prettiest,
best-conditioned animal. I call him my test -- the touchstone
by which I try a friend. No one can properly be said to love me,
who does not love him."
"Excuse us, dear sir -- or madam aforesaid
-- if upon further consideration we are obliged to decline the
otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like
dogs."
"Mighty well, sir -- you know the conditions
-- you may have worse offers. Come along, Test."
The above dialogue is
not so imaginary, but that, in the intercourse of life, we have
had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by
reason of these canine appendages. They do not always come in
the shape of dogs; they sometimes wear the more plausible and
human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend,
his partner, his wife, or his children. We could never yet form
a friendship -- not to speak of more delicate correspondences
-- however much to our taste, without the intervention of some
third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to the relation --
the understood dog in the proverb. The good things of life are
not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's
holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful
companion is **** if he did not always bring his tall cousin with
him! He seems to grow with him; like some of those double births,
which we remember to have read of with such wonder and delight
in the old "Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced
author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him!) upon
Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the brother, with
the little brother peeping out at his shoulder; a species of fraternity,
which we have no name of kin close enough to comprehend. When
**** comes, poking in his head and shoulders into your room, as
if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him to
yourself -- what a three hours' chat we shall have! -but, ever
in the haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well disclosed
in your apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin,
over-peering his modest kinsman, and sure to over-lay the expected
good talk with his insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding
dwarfishness of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. `Tis
hard when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia,
without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother? or know
Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing relations?
my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also? must we be hand
in glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico
printer, because W. S., who is [p 268] neither, but a ripe
wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common parentage
with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and `tis odds but we
will cast him in a pair of our's (we have a superflux) to balance
the concession. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle; and Honorius
dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous establishment of six boys
-- things between boy and manhood -- too ripe for play, too raw
for conversation -- that come impudently staring their father's
old friend out of countenance; will neither aid, nor let alone,
the conference: that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as
we were wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content
with these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this
sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt;
or Ruspina expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister,
whom she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to try stinging
conclusions upon your constancy; they must not complain if the
house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many
excellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all, that
loved her, loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry,
of Della Cruscan memory. In tender youth, he loved and courted
a modest appanage to the Opera, in truth a dancer, who had won
him by the artless contrast between her manners and situation.
She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted
by some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed.
Nor, in truth was she less genuine and sincere than she appeared
to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for appearance' sake,
and for due honour to the bride's relations, she craved that she
might have the attendance of her friends and kindred at the approaching
solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be conceded; and
in this solicitude for conciliating the good will of mere relations
he found a presage of her superior attentions to himself, when
the golden shaft should have "killed the flock of all affections
else The morning came; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond --
the place appointed for the breakfasting -- accompanied with one
English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the
bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had
made. They came in six coaches -- the whole corps du ballet --
French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous pirouetter
of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of
the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first
and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc-----, Signora Ch-----
, and Madame V-----, with a countless cavalcade beside of chorusers,
figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterward [p 269]
declared, that "then for the first time it struck him seriously,
that he was about to marry -- a dancer." But there was no
help for it. Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her
friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was all
very natural. But when the bride -- handing out of the last coach
a still more extraordinary figure than the rest -- presented to
him as her father -- -- the gentleman that was to give her away
-- no less a person than Signor Delpini himself -- with a sort
of pride, as much as to say, See what I have brought to do us
honour! -- the thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame
him; and slipping away under some pretence from the bride and
her motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the back yard
to the nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America,
he shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial match
in the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his intended clown
father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridesmaids.
Return To Menu
Previous Fallacy |
| 
Index |
|
ÿ