But stay! It's time to end this lay; Tho' I could go on rhyming for a year (And think it sport In praise of Beer); But many folks, I know, like _something short_.
At the Annual Meeting of the So-oh!-logical Society, the Chairman, in an able speech, which was highly satisfactory to himself and all present, congratulated the members on the prosperous state of the concern. He informed them that their coffers and their dens were yet undrained; that they were still able to raise the wind, though they had very little ventilation; that the shilling orders were on the increase, though the animals were in a decline; and, admitting that some of them had galloped off in a consumption, there was a consolation in the old adage, that living asses were far better than dead lions,—a truth of which they must all feel a full conviction.
He stated that 15,073 pennyworths of apples, 10,732 gingerbread cakes, and 6,532 half-pints of nuts had been sold during the year by the old lady who sits at the bear-pit; that a Sunday school had been established in the Gardens, under the superintendence of a committee of noblemen, for the purpose of instructing the apes and monkeys in the art of smoking cigars, and other usages of fashionable life; but that the throngs of ladies who crowded round them during school-hours had greatly retarded their improvement, by staring them out of countenance.
He thought it right to mention to the Meeting that the Council, in the choice of the Society's servants, had borne in mind that mere experience is but empiricism, and they had discovered that whoever could wash a coach-wheel could water a rhinoceros; that an over-grown _Tiger_ was a proper person to feed a Lion, and the offsprings of their _darlings_ were doubtless best qualified to fodder their _deers_. He congratulated the Meeting, that while common show-men were confined by their capabilities to merely exhibiting their animals alive, this collection presented exclusively the additional advantage of a speedy opportunity of dissection. He concluded by an announcement, for which he trusted they would ever prove grateful, that his Majesty had granted to the Society permission to appear at Court with long ears and a tail, and to distinguish themselves by the appendage of any letters not exceeding three to their names, but ending with an S. At this intimation the delighted _Ear_-ers trotted away to give orders to their _tail_-ers, and to search their dictionaries. They all returned _suit_-ed before they got far into the alphabet.