Finally, one very intelligent friend said to him with much solemnity: “Rash man, forbear! Stop while there is time in a course that may bring down ruin on the State and on yourself, and for the doing of which you can have, as a rational being, no temptation whatever. I grant you you may be right, and the rest all wrong; but what then? We can know nothing of the matter, and _you may be wrong_. Now, anyhow, _we are on the safe side of the hedge_. If the anchor be a devil he may do you harm, and if he be only a bit of rusty iron, you will be none the worse for a bow and a grimace.”
The rash man was immovable. Doomed by the infernal gods to pay the penalty of having lit his Promethean torch at Woolwich dockyard, armed with a mighty hammer, and followed by an awe-struck crowd, he fell upon the anchor, and with one mighty blow, struck off the other fluke. It was his last! Inspired by religious zeal, the Koussa Kaffirs rushed upon him, and in the sight of the outraged anchor beat his brains out on the beach. It was observed that his friend who liked to be “on the safe side” threw the first stone, and the advocate of public morals was the next; after that they rained too thick to tell who did the most.
Meantime the anchor of Koussa Kaffir will be worshipped for a thousand years, for has it not slain the only two men who dared to question its authority?
I HAD been to the theatre, swallowed a play, Seen bright Marie Wilton, and cried with the best O’er the poor parting lovers; then laugh’d and was gay At the plump roly-poly, the puns, and the rest.
So into the streets, warmly muffled, I came, And turn’d my steps homeward, three miles in the fog; When, threading a court (I can’t tell you its name), I tripp’d against something I thought was a dog,
For it moan’d. I stoop’d down, half-expecting a bite; But the thing never moved; then I look’d, and behold, A baby, wrapt up in brown paper and night, Half-dying with hunger, half-frozen with cold.
I return’d to the Foundling, and ringing the bell, Gave Baby in charge; then, retracing my way, I mused upon this which had happen’d, and fell From my comedy-mood to a tragedy-play.
I had seen the first act—now the second began. Night lifted her curtain; and, here in the street, A minute City Arab, the least of his clan, Patter’d past on the pavement,—no shoes to his feet;