The Yahoo; a satirical rhapsody ...

10 PREAMBI E. es us for our wickedness, and the devil for our goodt qualities Br avo This is beino between anvil and hammer 1with a vengeance But if all's for the best, and everyth[lloi r ight, why should we grumble? If we are to be bultldled into hell, let us eat our pudding, anld hold our tonogues, ardcl make the best of a bad bargain; it's all what pleases the Lord, or it would not be, and we ought to thank God for everything-as an old woman used to be continually telling her unlucly cub of a grandson, who one (lay camle rurnirno in crying, " Don't you say we should thank Go~d for everything, granny?"-" Yes, to be sure, my dear," says she. " Well then," says Dick, "' I've tumbled down xwithl thle basket of eggs you bid me carry to Goody Grump, alnd they're all s mashed."-" You unluckliy brat," Clies poor granny, " I've a good minld to lug your ears.""Whv, I thougti," cries Dick, " we were to tharnk God for everything; but that's not all, for our cow's dead, and is lying on the common; so there's something else to thank God for, besides the broken eggs, granny." " To live in society," says an intelligent writer, " we must sympathize with it; but no sympathy can subsist between the knaves and fools, who are playing the game of' makebelieve,' and quarrelling over the stakes, and the person who sees through their trickery, and despises its objects. There is no disguising from the cool eye of philosophy, that all living creatures exist in a state of natural warfare; and that man (in hostility with all) is at enmity also with his own species-man is the natural enemy of man; aind society, unable to change his nature, succeeds but in establishing a hollow truce, by which fraud is substituted for violence. The honestest and the boldest man must hide a good half of his thoughts, if he would rnot be lodged betwveen four walls, or interdicted ab aqua et igi. He who has not the courage to encounter a mass of evil, must pass through life with a bridle perpetually on his tongue. He must hear with a becoming gravity the words honor and patriotism proceeding from the lips of pollution-he must hold law to be synonymous with justice, persecution with tolerance, general pauperism wvith national prosperity, priestcraft with piety, and plunder with loyalty and religion." Hobbes affirms the state of nature to be a state of war;