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 set- fust bite. "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. Bhas 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!" 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 worst of it in a horse trade." Carleton & Co., New York. 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 force of his genius, found out upwards university of the whole planet, and by the 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, osopher, than a great mathematician.choosing rather to be an indifferent philAbout 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 volved him in some trouble: the mufti of he composed a curious treatise, which inthe 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 the spot, an exceeding good observer, and I have no mind to contradict any man. Be that as it will, after many windings and turnings, he arrived at the planet Saturn, and accustomed as he was to the sight of novelties, he could not for his life repress that supercilious and conceited smile which often escapes the wisest philosopher when he perceives the smallness of that globe, and the diminutive size of its inhabitants: for really Saturn is but about nine hundred times larger 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. like a gallery of pictures, the strokes of certain, being fain to return to matter of "without which we believe that this our fact, "To what age do you commonly globe could not subsist, we reckon in all live?" said the Sirian. "Lack-a-day! a mere trifle," replied the little gentleman. "It is the very same case with us," resumed the other, "the shortness of life is our daily complaint, so that this must be a universal law in nature." "Alas!" cried the Saturnian, "few, very few, on this globe, outlive five hundred great revolutions of the sun; (these, according to our way of reckoning amount to about fifteen thousand years.) So, you see, we in a manner begin to die the moment we are born: our existence is no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an atom. Scarce do we begin to learn a little, when death intervenes, before we can profit by experience: for my own part, I am deterred from laying schemes, when I consider myself as a single drop in an immense ocean. I am particularly ashamed, in your presence, of the ridiculous figure I make among my fellow-creatures." three hundred, such as extent, impenetrability, motion, gravitation, divisibility, et cætera." "That small number," replied the traveller, "probably answers the views of the creator on this your narrow sphere. I adore his wisdom in all his works. I see infinite variety, but everywhere proportion. Your globe is small; so are the inhabitants; you have few sensations; because your matter is endued with few properties: these are the works of unerring providence. Of what color does your sun appear when accurately examined?" "Of a yellowish white," answered the Saturnian; "and in separating one of his rays, we find it to contain seven colors." "Our sun," saith the Sirian, "is of a reddish hue, and we have no less than thirtynine original colors. Among all the suns I have seen, there is no sort of resemblance; and in this sphere of yours there is not one face like another." After divers questions of this nature, he asked how many substances essentially different they counted in the world of Saturn; and understood that they numbered but thirty; such as God; space; matter; beings endued with sense and extension; beings that have extension, sense, and reflection; thinking beings that have no extension; those that are penetrable; those that are impenetrable, and the rest. But the Saturnian philosopher was prodigiously astonished when the Sirian told him they had no less than three hundred, and that he himself had discovered three thousand more in the course of his travels. In short, after having communicated to each other. what they knew, and even what they did not know, and argued during a whole revolution of the sun, they resolved to set out together on a small philosophical tour. To this declaration, Micromegas replied, "If you were not a philosopher, I should be afraid of mortifying your pride, by telling you that the term of our lives is seven hundred times longer than the date of your existence: but, you are very sensible, that when the texture of the body is resolved, in order to reanimate nature in another form, which is the consequence of what we call death; when that moment of change arrives there is not the least difference between having lived a whole eternity or a single day. I have been in some countries where the people live a thousand times longer than with us, and yet they murmured at the shortness of their time: but one will find everywhere, some few persons of good sense, who know how to make the best of their portion, and thank the author of nature for his bounty. There is a profusion of variety scattered through the universe, and yet there is an admirable vein of uniformity that runs through the whole; for example, all thinking beings are different among themselves, though at bottom they resemble one another, in the powers and passions of the soul: matter, though interminable, hath different Our two philosophers were just ready properties in every sphere. How many to embark for the atmosphere of Saturn, principal attributes do you reckon in the with a jolly provision of mathematical matter of this world?" "If you mean instruments, when the Saturnian's misthose properties," said the Saturnian,tress having got an inkling of their de CHAPTER III. THE VOYAGE OF THOSE TWO INHABITANTS sign, came all in tears to make her remonstrances. She was a little handsome brunette, not above six hundred and threescore fathom high; but her agreeable attractions made amends for the smallness of stature. "Oh! cruel man," cried she, "after a resistance of fitteen hundred years, when at length I have surrendered, and scarce have passed two hundred in thy embrace, to leave me thus, before the honey-moon is over, and go a rambling with a giant of another world! go, go, thou art a mere virtuoso, devoid of tenderness and love! if thou wert a true Saturnian, thou wouldst be faithful and invariable. Ah! whither art thou going? what is thy design? our five moons are not so inconstant, nor our ring so changeable as thee! but take this along with you, henceforth I ne'er shall love another man." The little gentleman embraced and wept over her, notwithstanding his philosophy: and the lady, after having swooned with great decency, went to console herself with the conversation of a certain beau. one hundred millions of leagues, and coasting along the planet Mars, which is well known to be five times smaller than our little earth, they descried two moons subservient to that orb, which have escaped the observation of all our astronomers. I know father Castel will write, and that pleasantly enough, against the existence of these two moons; but I entirely refer myself to those who reason by analogy: those worthy philosophers are very sensible that Mars, which is at such a distance from the sun, must be in a very uncomfortable situation, without the benefit of a couple of moons: be that as it may, our gentlemen found the planet so small, that they were afraid they should not find room to take a little repose; so they pursued their journey like two travellers who despise the paltry accommodation of a village, and push forward to the next market town. But the Sirian and his companion soon repented of their delicacy; for, they journeyed a long time, without finding a resting place, till at length they discovered a small speck which was the Earth. Coming from Jupiter, they could not but be moved with compassion at sight of this miserable spot, upon which, however, they resolved to land, lest they should be a second time disappointed. They accordingly moved towards the tail of the comet, where finding an Aurora Borealis ready to set sail they embarked, and arrived on the northern coast of the Baltic on the fifth day of July, O. S., in the year 1737. CHAPTER IV. Meanwhile our two virtuosi set out, and at one jump leaped upon the ring, which they found pretty flat, according to the ingenious guess of an illustrious inhabitant of our little earth; from thence they easily slipped from moon to moon; and a comet chancing to pass, they sprung upon it with all their servants and apparatus. Thus carried about one hundred and fifty million of leagues, they met with the satellites of Jupiter, and arrived upon the body of the planet itself, where they continued a whole year; during which they learned some very curious secrets, which would actually be sent to the press, were it not for fear of the gentlemen inquisitors, who have found among them some corollaries very hard of digestion. Nevertheless, I have read the Having taken some repose, and being manuscript in the library of the illus- desirous of reconnoitering the narrow field trous archbishop of who has in which they were, they traversed it at granted me permission to peruse his once from north to south. Every step of books with that generosity and goodness the Sirian and his attendants measured which can never be enough commended: about thirty thousand royal feet: whereas wherefore I promise that he shall have a the dwarf of Saturn, whose stature did long article in the next edition of Moreri, not exceed a thousand fathoms, followed where I shall not forget the young gentle- at a distance quite out of breath; because, men his sons, who give us such pleasing hopes of seeing perpetuated the race of their illustrious father. But to return to our travellers. When they took leave of Jupiter, they traversed a space of about WHAT BEFEL THEM UPON THIS OUR GLOBE. for every single stride of his companion, he was obliged to make twelve good steps at least. The reader may figure to himself (if we are allowed to make such comparisons) a very little rough spaniel |