" I devoutly trust that none of the West
India islands furnishing such satanic entomological specimens will
ever be annexed to the United States. Some of our extreme advocates of
territorial expansion might spend a profitable few weeks on one of those
favored isles. A brief association with that _cabritt-bois_ would be
likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist.
An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon
daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at
mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than
their precept--or their poetry. Thomson, the author of "The Castle of
Indolence," who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe,
"Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,"
was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed
until noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be
seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat
pockets, eating peaches from a pendent bough.
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