A---- said the boys had received great provocation from B----. He was constantly threatening them with a horsewhip which he carried in his hand [the boy did not say what had passed to induce him to take such a weapon], and he had repeatedly insulted the master, which the boys could not stand. B---- had in his own drawing-room told him (A----) that he had drawn his sword against the master and thrown away the scabbard. B---- knew well that if he came to the college he would catch it, and then he went off through a side door--which was no sign of pluck; and then he brought Mrs. B---- with him, thinking that her presence would protect him.
My readers may expect a word on Mr. Thom's sermons, after my account of his queer doings about 666. He is evidently an honest and devout man, much wanting in discrimination. He has a sermon about private _judgment_, in which he halts between the logical and legal meanings of the word. He loathes those who apply their private judgment to the word of God: here he means those who decide what it _ought to be_. He seems in other places aware that the theological phrase means taking right to determine what it _is_. He uses his own private judgment very freely, and is strong in the conclusion that others ought not to use theirs except as he tells them how; he leaves all the rest of mankind free to think with him. In this he is not original: his fame must rest on his senary tripod. { 241}
Mr. James Smith's procedures are not caricature of reasoning; they are caricature of blundering. The old way of proving that 2 = 1 is solemn earnest compared with his demonstrations. As follows:[388]
Let x = 1 Then x^2 = x And x^2 - 1 = x - 1 Divide both sides by x - 1; then x + 1 = 1; but x = 1, whence 2 = 1.
When a man is regularly snubbed, bullied, blown up, walked into, and put down, there is usually some reaction in his favor, a kind of deostracism, which cannot bear to hear him always called the blunderer. I hope it will be so in this case. There is nothing I more desire than to see _sects_ of paradoxers. There are fully five thousand adults in England who ought to be the followers of some one false quadrature. And I have most hope of 3-1/8, because I think Mr. James Smith better fitted to be the leader of an organized infatuation than any one I know of. He wants no pity, and will get none. He has energy, means, good humor, strong conviction, character, and popularity in his own circle. And, most indispensable point of all, he sticks at nothing;