<h2 id="id00185" style="margin-top: 4em">ALL FOOLS' DAY</h2>
<p id="id00186" style="margin-top: 2em">The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first
of April to us all!</p>
<p id="id00187">Many happy returns of this day to you—and you—and <i>you</i>, Sir—nay,
never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know
one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch
of <i>that same</i>—you understand me—a speck of the motley. Beshrew
the man who on such a day as this, the <i>general festival</i>, should
affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the
corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the forest
to-day, shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. <i>Stultus sum</i>.
Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself for your
pains. What, man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at
the least computation.</p>
<p id="id00188">Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry—we will drink no wise,
melancholy, politic port on this day—and let us troll the catch of
Amiens—<i>duc ad me</i>—<i>duc ad me</i>—how goes it?</p>
<p id="id00189"> Here shall he see<br/>
Gross fools as he.<br/></p>
<p id="id00190">Now would I give a trifle to know historically and authentically, who
was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him in
a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much
difficulty name you the party.</p>
<p id="id00191">Remove your cap a little further, if you please: it hides my bauble.
And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his bells to what
tune he pleases. I will give you, for my part,</p>
<p id="id00192"> —The crazy old church clock.<br/>
And the bewildered chimes.<br/></p>
<p id="id00193">Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since you went a
salamander-gathering down Ætna. Worse than samphire-picking by some
odds. 'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your mustachios.</p>
<p id="id00194">Ha! Cleombrotus! and what salads in faith did you light upon at the
bottom of the Mediterranean? You were founder, I take it, of the
disinterested sect of the Calenturists.</p>
<p id="id00195">Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, bring
in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat here at
my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if
I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you
must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on the
low grounds of Sennaar. Or did you send up your garlick and onions by
a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on
Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat.</p>
<p id="id00196">What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears?—cry, baby, put its finger
in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty
moppet!</p>
<p id="id00197">Mister Adams—'odso, I honour your coat—pray do us the favour to read
to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop—the twenty and
second in your portmanteau there—on Female Incontinence—the same—it
will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the
time of the day.</p>
<p id="id00198">Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error.—</p>
<p id="id00199">Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox.
We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove
those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins
of his apprehension stumbling across them.</p>
<p id="id00200">Master Stephen, you are late.—Ha! Cokes, is it you?—Aguecheek,
my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.—Master Shallow, your
worship's poor servant to command.—Master Silence, I will use few
words with you.—Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in
somewhere.—You six will engross all the poor wit of the company
to-day.—I know it, I know it.</p>
<p id="id00201">Ha! honest R——, my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind,
art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare
as thy stories:—what dost thou flitting about the world at this
rate?—Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to
read long ago.—Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure,
thou canst hawk a volume or two.—Good Granville S——, thy last
patron, is flown.</p>
<p id="id00202"> King Pandion, he is dead,<br/>
All thy friends are lapt in lead.—<br/></p>
<p id="id00203">Nevertheless, noble R——, come in, and take your seat here, between
Armado and Quisada: for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic
smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly
ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise
sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of
Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy
singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be <i>happy
with either</i>, situated between those two ancient spinsters—when I
forget the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now
to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile—as if
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands
of periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could have
given his invidious preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied
and meritorious-equal damsels, * * * * *</p>
<p id="id00204">To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools'
Banquet beyond its appropriate day,—for I fear the second of April
is not many hours distant—in sober verity I will confess a truth to
thee, reader. I love a <i>Fool</i>—as naturally, as if I were of kith and
kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived
not below the surface of the matter, I read those <i>Parables</i>—not
guessing at their involved wisdom—I had more yearnings towards
that simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I
entertained for his more cautious neighbour; I grudged at the
hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent;
and—prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my
apprehension, somewhat <i>unfeminine</i> wariness of their competitors—I
felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a <i>tendre</i>, for those five
thoughtless virgins.—I have never made an acquaintance since, that
lasted; or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some
tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest
obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall
commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will
not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable
hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out of season
ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool
told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of
folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his
composition. It is observed, that "the foolisher the fowl or
fish,—woodcocks,—dotterels,—cod's-heads, &c. the finer the flesh
thereof," and what are commonly the world's received fools, but such
whereof the world is not worthy? and what have been some of the
kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absurdity,
minions of the goddess, and, her white boys?—Reader, if you wrest my
words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are
the <i>April Fool</i>.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />