66 A DOMESTIC DIAGNOSIS. " Jones (who has come with his Wife to call on the new Neighbours). "WONDER IF THEY'VE BEEN MARRIED LONG HYPATIA?" Mrs. Jones. "DRAWING-ROOM SMELLS OF TOBACCO-SMOKE!" THE IDLE AND THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE. (An Old-fashioned Apologue with a Modern Application.) GRANDOLPH and ARTHUR were two young Apprentices, bound betimes to the ingenious and estimable Art or Craft of CabinetMaking. Both of them were youths of a Sprightly Genius, and of an Alert Apprehension, attended, in the case of GRANDOLPH, with a mighty heat and ebullition of Fancy, which led early to a certain frothiness or ventosity in speech. ARTHUR, on the other hand, though possessed of excellent Parts, appeared to be of a more phlegmatic temperament, and took on a more languorous, not to say saturnine demeanour. So it came about that for the time GRANDOLPH seemed to carry it over his fellow Apprentice, who indeed, amongst superficial observers, incurred the reproach of indolence and lackadaisical indifference, and although both were of creditable repute in the Craft, yet did GRANDOLPH shine the more prominently and give the greater promise of pre-eminence, ARTHUR seeming content, as men say, to play second fiddle to the more pushing Performer. 'Tis, however, within the purview of the Wise and the common observation of the Judicious, that things are not always as they seem! GRANDOLPH, at an early epoch in his Apprenticeship, did found a sort of Comradeny or Free Company, which, from the number of its constituent items, came to be intituled The Fourth Party, in the which ARTHUR modestly took subordinate place, with unobtrusive ease and languid resignation. This Party did push matters in the Craft with a high hand and a talkative tongue. For as the ingenious Earl of SHAFTESBURY saith in his Soliloquy, "Company is an extreme provocative to Fancy, and, like a hot bed in gardening, is apt to make our Imaginations sprout too fast." That GRANDOLPH was obnoxious to this charge of "sprouting too fast" may seem made manifest by the sequel. He indeed pushed himself into the front place by dint of copious verbosity, and militant oppugnancy. But (as the same SHAFTESBURY saith) where, instead of Controul, Debate, or Argument, the chief exercise of the wit consists in uncontroulable Harangues and Reasonings, which must neither be questioned nor contradicted; there is great danger lest the Party, thro' this habit, shou'd suffer much by Cruditys, Indigestions, Choler, bile, and particularly by a certain tumour, or flatulency, which renders him, of all men, the least liable to apply the wholesome regimen of self-practice. 'Tis no wonder if such quaint practitioners grow to an enormous size of Absurdity, whilst they continue the reverse of that practice, by which alone we correct the Redundancy of Humours, and chasten the exuberance of Conceit and Fancy. 66 Whether this particular "quaint practitioner" (our Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH plagued the Party" too much with his Cruditys, Choler," &c., or whether he found himself unable to correct his own "Redundancy of Humours," certain it is that, at the very Pinnacle of Promise, and Height of Achievement, GRANDOLPH broke his indentures of Apprenticeship, and ran away! And now, indeed, came the Opportunity of the true Industrious Apprentice, the hitherto calm and languid-looking, but, in verity, valorous, and vigilant, and virile ARTHUR. Whereof, to be sure, he made abundant use, burgeoning forth into full blossom with astonishing suddenness, seizing Opportunity by the forelock with manly promptitude, and gaining golden opinions from all sorts of people; so that, after brief probation, he slipped, by general acclaim, into that very premier place so strangely, suddenly, and intempestively abdicated by the Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH. Concerning the latter, the latest reports are not reassuring. Like his celebrated prototype of fable, the ill-fated "Don't Care," he runneth a chance of being "devoured by lions"! At least he appears to have sought the company of those parlous beasts in their native Afric wilds. We hear that "the lions kept him tucked up one night," which same news (-gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannesberg Star-) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is-for the time at least-in every sense tucked up," is only too obviously true. Peradventure he may yet think the better of it, correct his Frothy Distemper and Vagrant Disposition, and (as the agonising advertisements have it) return to his friends that all may be forgiven and much forgotten! 66 But the last accounts of him picture him as lying languidly asprawl |