Affairs being thus miserably situated, I left the place in disgust, and now appeal for aid to all lovers of correct time and fine kraut. Let us proceed in a body to the borough, and restore the ancient order of things in Vondervotteimittiss by ejecting that little fellow from the steeple.
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LIONIZING
-------- all people went Upon their ten toes in wild wonderment.
—_ Bishop Hall’s Satires_.
I am — that is to say I was — a great man; but I am neither the author of Junius nor the man in the mask; for my name, I believe, is Robert Jones, and I was born somewhere in the city of Fum-Fudge.
The first action of my life was the taking hold of my nose with both hands. My mother saw this and called me a genius: my father wept for joy and presented me with a treatise on Nosology. This I mastered before I was breeched.
I now began to feel my way in the science, and soon came to understand that, provided a man had a nose sufficiently conspicuous he might, by merely following it, arrive at a Lionship. But my attention was not confined to theories alone. Every morning I gave my proboscis a couple of pulls and swallowed a half dozen of drams.
When I came of age my father asked me, one day, If I would step with him into his study.
“My son,” said he, when we were seated, “what is the chief end of your existence?”
“My father,” I answered, “it is the study of Nosology.”
“And what, Robert,” he inquired, “is Nosology?”
“Sir,” I said, “it is the Science of Noses.”
“And can you tell me,” he demanded, “what is the meaning of a nose?”
“A nose, my father;” I replied, greatly softened, “has been variously defined by about a thousand different authors.” [Here I pulled out my watch.] “It is now noon or thereabouts — we shall have time enough to get through with them all before midnight. To commence then: — The nose, according to Bartholinus, is that protuberance — that bump — that excrescence — that — "