Comic Arithmetic

I AM INTERESTED.

RULE XI.
DECIMALS.

Decimal Fractions are so called because the fractions are always tenths. They differ from Vulgar Fractions in this, that the denominator is not written, but a point before it is used instead.

Decimals are best illustrated by tithes, which are general and universal tenths extracted in every part of "merry England." They are added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided like any other numbers, but to designate their value a point is prefixed.

In tithes, as in decimals, the denominator does not appear; that is to say, the incumbent rarely lives at his incumbency. When tithes are to be added, taken, or subtracted, the tithodecimo point is used as his representative, namely, the POINT OF THE BAYONET.

To make a point of "doing good by stealth" is a national virtue; and among all other "points" in this uncertain world, the "point blank" is the most certain. This may be made with a rifle, when the pockets are to be rifled, either with or without a bayonet at the end of it. The charge for spiritual care is best settled by a charge of dragoons; and a discharge of clerical arrears by a discharge of fire-arms.[4]

TO REDUCE MONEY WEIGHTS AND MEASURES TO DECIMALS.

Take a tithe-owner, a collector, a proctor's warrant, and a constable, and go in a body to the house of a Quaker, or the mud hovel of an Irish Catholic. Enter the house by means of a crow-bar. Take pigs, poultry, pots, pans, sticks, or rattletraps. Obtain an appraiser, call in a broker, and divide the spoil by means of any number of vulgar fractions, called purchasers. Take the dividend, called plunder, and "pocket."

TO BRING DECIMALS TO THEIR PROPER VALUE IN WHOLE NUMBERS.

The proper value of a decimal is only to be ascertained by his points of character, and they are to be found of full value in many parts of the kingdom, in the shape of worthy curates, and honest rectors and vicars, dividing not their flocks, or the produce of their flocks, but their own time, means, and money, in the conscientious discharge of their clerical duties.

RULE XII.
PRACTICE.

The Rule of Practice is indispensable in all our operations. It is in some degree the "ultimatum" of the preceding rules, for as the proverb says, "Practice makes perfect."

Nature is said to have begun the creation of "living infinities" by this rule, for in the words of the poet,

Practice is thus divided into two kinds—the first called Practice Preliminary; the second is denominated Practice in General.

Practice Preliminary is experimental philosophy, or asking discount for a bill at 18 months; Practice in General taking in the flats. The one resolves itself into "trying it on," the other to "clapping it on."

"Trying it on" is an universal principle, from the old Jew salesman who asks four pounds for a thread-bare coat and takes four shillings; or the old cabbage woman who offers 3lbs. of "taters" for two pence and sells 7lbs. for three farthings; to the prime minister who asks three millions of taxes, and expects five. The converse of this rule is, "Don't you wish you may get it."

Practice is performed by taking "aliquot parts;" to be a man of some "parts" is therefore necessary. The application of our "parts" to the science of L.S.D. with a view to their development and perfection, is the aim of the rule, and the "practice of Practice" is to show,

GRAND CHORUS.

Practising for the Army.—As shooting and slaying are the legitimate objects of this profession, you cannot begin too early. The first instrument to be used is a pea-shooter; this is for the age P.C. previous to corderoys. The second is a pop-gun, indicating the age of breeches (and breaches). From this we arise to "sparrow-shooting," after the ruse de guerre of the salt-box has been tried without effect. Being now grown bloody-minded, we go to that sanguiniferous-looking house at Battersea, called the Red House, (being of a blood colour, from the enormous slaughter committed near it,) and here we take lessons in pigeon-shooting. From hence to the Shooting Gallery, Pall Mall, we improve rapidly. A lieutenancy in the Guards is our next step. To this succeeds a dispute respecting the glottis of Mademoiselle Catasquallee, and "Chalk-Farm" or "Wimbledon Common" is the result; and here, unless courage should ooze out of our fingers' ends, we may stop; our courage is apparent, and for the future we may shoot with the "long-bow" to all eternity without fear of contradiction.

Practising for the Profession.—"Cutting up" and "Cut and come again," are the maxims of the surgeon; and as no trade or profession can live except by the adoption of the "cutting system," and if a man cannot cut a figure, he will assuredly be cut by his acquaintance, surely the art should be thoroughly studied. As a preliminary step, Burking and body-snatching must be mastered; and then you may go snacks in a "subject," and take your "loin of pauper," "leg of pauper," or "shoulder of beggar," or "rump of beggar," or "sirloin of alderman," or "fore-quarter of citizen," or "hand and spring" of beadle or bellman. Or should your taste be fastidious, you may take a "fillet of cherrybum;" or club for a "sucking-kid." On these practise till you are perfect; and should it so happen that any of the personages above-named should turn out to be related by consanguinity, be as stoical as a reviewer, and make no bones of cutting-up (if necessary for science) your own father.

Practising for the Ministry.—The aspirant for the "tub," "born in a garret, in a kitchen bred," commences his spiritual career by announcing to the elect that he is almost sure that he has had a call (caul), for he has heard his mother say he was born with one. He may next exhibit his buffetings with Satan by showing the marks of the beast, in the shape of double-dealing, pettifogging, shuffling, cutting and cheating; he may next venture on the new birth.

He now attempts open-air preaching on Kennington Common, and exhibits spiritual rabidity in good earnest. He foams at the mouth, barks and bites, and yells in his ravings; calls himself from a pig to a dog, and from a dog to no gentleman. What is he? "A bundle of filthy rags," "a whited sepulchre," "a cancerous sore," a "sink of pollution," "a mass of corruption," "a cesspool," "a common sewer," "a worm," "a scorpion," "a snake," "a spider," "an adder." He may also charge himself with murder, abomination, witchcraft, lying, and every vice denounced in the Decalogue, on the principle of "the greater the sinner the greater the saint."

Having thus initiated himself into the spiritual fraternity, he may write a work to prove that the "Church damns more souls than she saves."[6] He then mounts the rostrum as a burning and a shining light. He deals in brimstone, wholesale, retail, and for exportation. Now he unites his spiritual with secular power, and mixes parliamentary logic with divinity, electioneering squibs with "Hymns of the Chosen;" makes Lucifer cuckold, and swears himself his true liege man on the cross-buttock of a radical candidate. He now receives the degree of D.D. from a Scotch university, for 7l. 13s. 6d., and begins to feel as "big as bull-beef;" his lank hair curls; he has red velvet cushions to his tub; he begowns and belappets himself; he looks on all sides for an half-idiot heiress, or infatuated widow in a state of fatuity, and marries. Thus he jumps into his bishopric, makes religion a "good spec," till it is found out he has had "two wives" before, and a variety of miniature portraits of himself:—and thus ends his Practice.

RULE XIII.
BARTER—BUYING AND SELLING—PROFIT AND LOSS.

Man is a "forgiving animal," and this is a better definition of him than Plato's "biped without feathers," which the plucked cock demonstrated. Man is the only animal which strikes a bargain. A dog does not exchange a bone with another dog; and however skilful he may be at a steak, he is not at all clever at this sort of "chop."

"Our chops are our masters," says Hobbes; and it is all "a matter of wittles," says Sam Weller. Hence arise the art and mystery of swapping, buying, and selling, and the notion of trade and commerce.

England is per se a nation of shopkeepers—we do every thing upon the principle of small profits and quick returns. To barter the national honour is legitimate policy; to sell up our enemies has been a practice since the days of the Plantagenets.

Hence we can always buy our enemies, if we cannot beat them. Buonaparte, according to the radicals, was sold at Waterloo; we have been recently sold to the Russians; and thus British gold has been always more powerful than British steel.

Ten thousand thanks will be given to any influential gentleman who will procure the advertiser a place of commensurate value under government: an under lord of the treasury, a commissioner of excise, a distributor of stamps, a head clerkship, or any other situation, in which the principal duties are to receive the salary.

Appointments in the army secured without risk, loss, or trouble to the purchaser. Cornetcies, Ensigncies, Lieutenancies, Colonelcies, to be disposed of, at the lowest possible prices. Also a few cast-off ribbons, stars, spurs, and garters, to be had a bargain.

The next presentation to a valuable rectory, to be had for a song. A title for orders, "cheap as dirt." Degrees may be obtained of A.M., LL.D., D.C.L. and D.D., on reasonable terms; and livings wholesale, retail, and for exportation. Apply at the "Bottle-nose Head," York; or at the "Frigasseed surplice," Canterbury.

Comfortable and respectable sittings at Beelzebub Chapel, Brimstone Alley, St. Luke's, under an able minister, by the quarter, month, or year. Pews to hold eight, 2l. 12s. 6d. per annum; single sittings, 10s. The Pewseyites will have the right of election and other privileges.—N.B. No connexion with the parish church next door.

To be sold, peremptorily, the property of a gentleman about to travel, (once a rum cove, now a Sidney cove,) a five-year old hunter, the most splendid horse in Europe, with grand action. Got by Spavin out of Roarer, grandsire Glanders, grandam Botts, warranted sound and without fault; (blemishes are not faults, but misfortunes;) gentle to ride, quiet to drive, warranted to do fourteen stone, or any other weight. Price 120 guineas.—No abatement.

Sale by auction, in Smithfield. Without reserve. A most eligible and desirable lot. Coming in low. Parasol, bustle, and baggage included. My better half. Weight, sixteen stone. Has taken the lead at All Max. Temper, mild (horse-radish). Eloquence, Broughamatic. Voice, Saffernhillish. Person, Nixmydollyish. Talons, cataclawdish.—No abatement.

The idea of trade and commerce naturally leads us to the consideration of the sublime science of Political Economy, which endeavours to dogmatize that profound conundrum, that the natural rate of wages is that which barely affords the labourer the means of subsistence, and of continuing the race of labourers—meaning thereby, the starvation point at which a labourer can be worked. It is assumed that the labourer has so much work in him, and the problem is to draw it out at the least possible cost—of whip or legal enactment—or police forces or military expenditure.

Another leading doctrine of the political economists is, the fatal necessity of starvation. It is maintained, and that seriously, that "God, when he made man, intended that he should be starved;" that human fecundity tends to get the start of the means of subsistence; that the former moves as 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64; but the latter only as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. The consequence drawn from this proposition is, that poor-laws, or any efforts of charity, are only a childish indulgence of feeling; for since there will be a surplus number, who must at all events be starved, if the life of one is saved by charity, whether public or private, it is only that another may be starved in its stead. Hence the perishing of annual multitudes may be looked upon as a proof of the national wealth; and the poor-law system, and the Queen's Letter, but so much concern utterly useless; and the only remedy for our abundant population is for us to return to the system of the ancients, and legalize a few Herods, or, to go further back, to make every man a Saturn—the eater of his own children.

RULE XIV.
DISCOUNT.

Discount is the allowance made to a person, for paying money before it is due; so says Walkinghame; but there are now few persons who commit so egregious a folly, the plan being not to pay until it has been due a long time, and then get discount as for ready money.

The usual manner of settling accounts in the City is to purchase for ready money; to give a bill at three months, which is to be considered as equal to ready money; and when the bill becomes due to give—the cash? No! but another bill at five months. This is called cash payments.

Leaving the City, as being "vulgar," let us look at discount by the broad light of Universality. Discount means something "taken off," or reduced by so much, or decreased in value, or lessened.

A man is said to be at a discount on 'Change, when he has no change at the Bank; when he has no banker in the City; when "no effects" is written on his "mandible:"—at Almack's, when he ceases to invite dinner eaters; among the ladies, when grey hairs and crows' feet make their appearance, and teeth their disappearance.

Par, above par, below par. We are at par, when in that blessed state of equanimity found in perfection at a Quakers' meeting; above par, when floundering about in champagne; and below par, when cooling down on water gruel and Seidlitz.

Examples of discount at the present moment are too numerous to mention. Every thing seems at a discount; radicals, dissenters, theatricals, fine arts, scientificks, trade, commerce, manufactures. Asses' heads alone are looking up.

RULE XV.
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION.

Involution and Evolution are two rules of arithmetic which signify getting in and getting out. Involution signifies such matters as getting in love, getting into a lawsuit, or getting into debt. It is the rule of entanglement, and is represented by a fly in a spider's web.

Evolution comprehends all the tricks, shifts, schemes, and stratagems, by which we get out of our various difficulties; but it may be observed that it is much easier to become involved in any matter, than to get disentangled: whatever may be our evolutions, it is a difficult matter to get out of love, out of a law-suit, or out of debt.

LAW EVOLUTION—GETTING INTO A LAW-SUIT.

GETTING INVOLVED, OR IN DEBT.

The ways of getting into debt are multiform. To be involved is patriotic, fashionable, genteel, and sentimental. To pay is vulgar, inconvenient, and unpopular. The man who lives within his means is never considered to have any means. A man in debt possesses an interest and an importance truly pleasurable. It is surely something to know that in your little self a hundred are subject to hopes, fears, anxieties, speculations, aspirations, and a world of such like poetry. The greater the number of creditors, the greater must be the sensation produced; and the production of a sensation is every thing in fashionable society.

The old proverb was, "Out of debt out of danger;" but modern arithmetic teaches, "In debt out of danger;" the law of debtor and creditor being fashioned according to this maxim, which is now the Lex Scripta of the courts. To be over head and ears in debt, is the best security; "debt is the safest helmet." To be not worth powder and shot, or to make believe you are not, is the best method of keeping on the wing. It requires, however, some curious evolutions to enable an empty sack to stand upright.

LOVE EVOLUTION, OR GETTING IN LOVE.

This is an involuntary process, and an entanglement equally powerful with the meshes of the law. In this case, however, the pleasure increases with the entanglement, as the fly said in the honey-pot. The arms of a fair lady are the softest bonds; the poison of a maiden's lip the sweetest poison. To be in love is to be entangled in a cobweb of ten thousand ecstasies, where every string is bliss, and every mesh is beauty. In this web, Cupid sits as an angel in one corner, and Hymen on the other; thus bound with sighs, tied with kisses, linked by embraces, chained by tears, lovers disport themselves; till Hymen, in fear that they should die of ecstasy, tightens the web, and binds them hand and foot in the true lover's knot of matrimony.

PARLIAMENTARY EVOLUTION.

HOW TO GET INTO PARLIAMENT.

Supposing yourself to be a green yokel, just raw from school, with little wit, little money, and little influence, act as follows:—

1. Marry for the sake of respectability and a little more money.

2. Give away soup to the poor, flannel petticoats, trusses, and baby linen.

3. Set up schools on the free system, "every boy his own archbishop:" Free-trade in religion, and no walloping.

4. Get into a squabble with your Rector, about free grace and non-election.

5. Write once a week in the dissenters' "slop pail," against clerical intolerance, tithe pigs, "red noses," round paunches, lawn sleeves.

6. Attend the jawy jobations of Exeter hall, as a "flowery speaker," and advocate various Jew, Gipsy, Voluntary Church, Anti-pseudo-baptistical Societies, till you are black in the face.

7. Join the Society for the Diffusion of Useless Knowledge, the Donkey Protecting Society, and other congenial "Institutes."

8. Build a chapel, and bribe a congregation to come to it. Become a teetotaller; be a betwixt and betweenish, half-and-half, out-and-out radical. Defeat the imposition of a Church rate—rave against the taxes—pledge yourself to support triangular parliaments, universal suffering—blindfold voting—and confusion to all order.

RULE XVI.
DUODECIMALS;
OR,
THE MEASURING OF PAINTING, PLASTERING, JOINING, GLAZING, GLOZING, AND OTHER FLAT WORK.

Duodecimals teach us to find the superficial contents of any "thing." A thing is properly something, neither woman nor man; possessing all the superficial of either, and the substantials of neither: such as numbsculls, lordlings, quacks, empirics, &c.

Duodecimals also teach the mensuration of plastering, painting and glazing; which comprehend the arts of palaver and gammon, and the science of Flattery in general.

This is, above all others, a "superficial age," and the mensuration of superficies is characteristic of the modern era—the age of meretricious flummery. Our science is superficial thinking; our morality, superficial blinking. Every thing is made now-a-days for the "surface," which, like the gilded wooden organ pipes, placed in front of that instrument, are not made to blow, but for the sake of show. In learning, we get a smattering instead of the real thing; and we drop the meat for the sake of the shadow. The deep and the solid have long ago been discarded: in short, this is the age of gammon, and society is like a quire of "outsides foolscap."

Of Flat Surfaces.—A plane or flat surface has length and breadth without thickness. Flat surfaces are often made, by some peculiar property of polarized light, to reflect rays which do not belong to them. Thus, flats pass for solids, and "shallows" for "deep-uns."

RULE XVII.
BOOK-KEEPING AND ACCOUNTS.

Book-keeping is not to be understood only as the art of "Book-borrowing," a very good science in its way, but as the highest branch of the science of legerdemain, invented for the express purpose of enabling the speculative to conceal their accounts, just as the use of speech is given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.

We have excellent directions given us on this head from very high authority, which is to be understood according to the Benthamite Philosophy. "How much owest thou my lord? And he said, A hundred measures of oil. Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty." Hence the children of the philosophers are wiser than the children of light.

In "keeping books" it is not only indispensable that you should keep them, but that they also should "keep you." This is in accordance with the free-trade reciprocity system; and to enable them to do it requires but little tact. For instance, you open a shop—not for the purpose of doing business, but for doing some unfortunate flat, in the very spirit of a "Good-will;" so that when your business is done, your client may find his business done too, and when you have taken yourself off, he may find himself taken in. This example may be repeated any number of times.

Upon entering life, every young man must consider that it will be quite impossible to live without some "cash in hand;"—that he will, at times, be inevitably called upon to "fork out," "dub up," or "come down;"—and that in all transactions, such as swelling and dashing, cutting and flashing, it will be necessary to keep a sharp look-out upon the "blunt," tin, or pewter, as it is variously termed; if not for your own satisfaction, at least for your beloved father's, whom you are in duty bound to bamboozle. There are certain items which never need come into this account; namely, board, lodging, tailor's bills, boots, shoes, linen, horses, and such like necessaries; these belong religiously to the old boy, or are fit and proper matters for "whitewashing."

To fulfil this purpose, open a cash account, putting Dr. in the left hand corner, which signifies Dear Father, in honour of your respected parent, or in testimony that everything is dear; and Cr. on the right hand, which may signify "cruel little I have to spend." This is called the Waste Book. The items introduced are merely hints for the getting and disbursement of Cash.

WASTE-BOOK.

Having been thus initiated in the making out of personal accounts, the pupil must now turn his attention to the methods of Book-keeping adopted by "gentlemen in difficulties," connected with that peculiar process of law which professes to put new wind into a collapsed bladder, and enable an empty sack to stand upright. The example is called taking the "Benefit;" the principal part of which is making out a Schedule, which may be done as follows:—

STATEMENT OF MY PERSONAL AND GENERAL EXPENDITURE, VERIFIED BY OATH.

Notwithstanding the copious examples above given, there is one other kind of Book-keeping which can only be thoroughly understood by the first accountants, and is only practised by the first of practitioners. This is making up a book for the St. Leger, which is

LEGERDEMAIN COMPLETE.