Josh Billings on Ice Part 31

The heart ov a true friend iz like a mirror; if yu look into it yu see yurself thare.

Wisdom that don't make us happier aint worth plowing for.

I am dredful fond ov melody; and a banjo, with a negro hung tew it, will knock more sense out ov me, in one night, than i kan git back in 3 weeks.

It is a good plan tu know menny people, but tu let only a few kno yu.

I have no more respekt for those who only cater tu mi imaginashun, than I have for the man who fust invented ginger-pop.

I never knu a man ov much wisdum who could sing a song well or pla on a fiddle.

I don't kare how mutch a man talks, if he will only say it in a few wurds.

Rewards deferred make us miserable; it is jist so with punishments.

When i was a boy, i had rather be licked twice than tew be postponed once.

Thare is one thing sertain: reason is more than master ov the pashuns.

If this iz probably so, the man must be a phool who aint boss ov himself.

I think it reduces the stummuk ake tew holler; so i think it lessens awl kinds ov anguish, just as it does sin, by owning it.

We are awl willing tew pay more for being amused than instrukted.

How menny folks do yu serpose thare is in this world who are satisfied with things as far as they hav got? Not more than 6, i'll bet. This looks rather dusty for the rest ov the trip.

Thare aint no general rule for happiness; a man has tew be measured for his happiness, just as he does for his boots, and even then he don't alwus git a good fit.

Joy will make a man change ends quicker than sorrow.

If a yung man kant find enny thing else that he is fit for, i like tew see him carry a goold-headed cane.

The top rounds ov a ladder are always the most dangerous.

I beleaf in the final salvashun ov men, but i want the privilege ov picking the men.

Thare is just this difference between a success and a failure--1/4 ov an inch.

It is a great deal easier tew beat natur than it is tew equal her--so it is easier tew bile an egg tew much, than just enuff.

LXVII.

THE BUZZERS.

Ov awl the insekts or even animals, who occupy two legs and breathe the same kind ov air, and drink the same kind ov water that other folks do, thare is not a more distressingly bizzy and uncomfortably obnoxious one, than yure whisperer.

I mean now those men or those wimmin whose position in the world gives them the t.i.tle tew be listened to, and even beleaved, who spend their lives like a b.u.mbel bee on the wing, from flower to flower, and from thistle to thistle, buzzing and whispering.

These kind ov b.u.mbel beeze deal only in sekrets ov the most delikate or dreadful kind, which they entrust to you with awl the importance and aimable reserve that distinguishes the intimate frend.

Thare is nothing in the world that would give them more pain or confusion (if you can beleave them) than to have their buzzes repeated, and yet, in truth, nothing would giv them more mortifikation if they were not.

They sow their seed as the husbandman duz his expekting it tew sprout, and rejoice as he duz in a good crop.

I know not from what ambishun this buzzing springs, unless it is the vanity ov knowledge, or the skarcity ov news; but one thing is certain, that no more inveterate workers kan be found--they are emphatikally the early birds who find the worm; they are the bizzy bees ov thrift, and they are your provident p.i.s.smires who alwus have corn in their cells against the calamity ov a wet day. Evry citty has a thousand ov them, evry village a score, and evry naborhood its Aunt Dority, or its Unkle Darby, who whisper and buzz from Christmas to Christmas agin. These insekts know evry marriage that is on the ways, and just when it is tew be launched; they know awl the slips and the slipshods within a circle of twenty leagues or more; they guess at outrages and divine bankrupcys; they hear ov elopements in the breath ov the morning, and see the spektral shaddow ov a domestik brawl stealing on tiptoze amid the gray ov the evening; they know the crimes ov evrybodys grandfather, and remember, just like a book, the time when the wife ov esquire Baker was no better than she should be. I don't know as there is truth enuff in the world just now to do the bizness with; if there aint, the buzzers may be in a measure necessary as a circulating medium; but if this is really so, they stand in the same relation to an honest circulation that other counterfit munny dus.

I hav searched the musty annals ov primogeniture, and hav dove down deep into the labarynths of succession, to trace the literal descent ov these slander-breeding and birth-giving scorpions, and found that about four thousand years ago, _Envy_ begot _Malice_, _Malice_ begot _Revenge_, and _Revenge_ had twins--one was a common thief and the other was a buzzer.

Nature seems, in the production of Buzzers, to hav transgressed one ov her most aimable laws: I mean, the grate parsimony she generally shows in inflikting humanity with venemous reptiles.