A mountain foreigner from Rossshire engages you, for some
unknown insult, in single combat, and, leagued with John Barleycorn,
(let us imagine an impossibility,) floors you by a peg on the gnomon--the
wound is in the front--your snout is broken, but your honour is whole.
Would it be so, were the Gael to allege, that "her nainsell had coupit you
by a pig kick on her preach?" By all the gods, he of the laconic garment,
the "thousand hill man," would have been careering on a cloud after his
"freen" Ossian, with the moon shining through him, within that very
hour.
Still I would not have bothered you; but I know his Most Gracious Majesty
King William, God bless him! (who can forget poor Burns's "Tarry Breeks?")
either has noticed it, or will notice it, the instant he comes to that
part of the Log. Now this, without explanation, is inconvenient, trowsers
being likely to come as high up in these days as pantaloons, and I have
some claim on him, seeing that my uncle, Job Cringle, some
five--and--forty years ago, at Jamaica, in the town of Port Royal, had his
headrails smashed, the neb of his nose (stem) bitten off by a bungo, and
the end of his spine (stern--post), that mysterious point, where man ends,
and monkey begins, grievously shaken in a spree at Kitty Finnans, in
Prince William Henry's company.
"Poo, nonsense." Indeed!--Why, the very devil himself, the author of the
evil, shall be convinced that there is much peril in the transposition of
ends.
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