Sketches New and Old eBook

Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing.  However, I cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of this baby’s performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it, I can produce the child.  I will further engage that she will devour anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated (merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction).  But I find I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys forever.

“ARITHMETICUS.”  Virginia, Nevada.—­“I am an enthusiastic student of mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities.  Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and conchology?”

Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am suffering death with a cold in the head.  If you could have seen the expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that disgraceful question.  Conchology is a science which has nothing to do with mathematics; it relates only to shells.  At the same time, however, a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist-a fine stroke of sarcasm that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you.  Now compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the difference is, and your question will be answered.  But don’t torture me with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold.  I feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment-bothering me in this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms.  If I had you in range of my nose now I would blow your brains out.

TO RAISE POULTRY

—­[Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a complimentary membership upon the author.  Written about 1870.]