No More Learning

I remember his insisting very
especially (among other things) upon the idea that the principle
source of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of
the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an
object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity. "To estimate
properly, for example," he said, "the influence to be exercised on
mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of Democracy, the distance
of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly be accomplished should
not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can you tell me one writer
on the subject of government who has ever thought this particular branch
of the subject worthy of discussion at all? "

He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth
one of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to
exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine
print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the
book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.

"But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the
monster, I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you
what it was. In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy
account of the genus Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order
Lepidoptera, of the class of Insecta--or insects. The account runs thus:

"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation
of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of
mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior
by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic;
abdomen pointed, The Death's--headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror
among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it
utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon its corslet. '"

He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing
himself accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of
beholding "the monster. "

"Ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed--"it is reascending the face
of the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be.
Still, it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it,--for
the fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some
spider has wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the
sixteenth of an inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth
of an inch distant from the pupil of my eye. "




HOP-FROG

I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed
to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to
tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened that
his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers.
They all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men,
as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or
whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I
have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean
joker is a rara avis in terris.

About the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghost' of wit, the
king troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for
breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake
of it. Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais'
'Gargantua' to the 'Zadig' of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical
jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.

At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone
out of fashion at court. Several of the great continental 'powers' still
retain their 'fools,' who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were
expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment's notice,
in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.

Our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool. ' The fact is, he
required something in the way of folly--if only to counterbalance
the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers--not to
mention himself.

His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His
value was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also
a dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days,
as fools; and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through
their days (days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both
a jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already
observed, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat,
round, and unwieldy--so that it was no small source of self-gratulation
with our king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool's name), he possessed
a triplicate treasure in one person.

I believe the name 'Hop-Frog' was not that given to the dwarf by his
sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent
of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as
other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of
interjectional gait--something between a leap and a wriggle--a movement
that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to
the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a
constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was
accounted a capital figure.