down by virtue of a collapse. Could we say to ourselves, in the great
style, This is the point where desire to embrace humanity is merged in
vindictiveness toward individuals: where radiant sweet temper culminates
in tremendous wrath: where the treasures of anticipation, waxing riotous,
arouse the memory of wrongs: in plain words, could we know positively,
and from the hand of science, when we have had enough, we should stop.
There is not a doubt that we should stop. It is so true we should stop,
that, I am ready to say, ladies have no right to call us horrid names,
and complain of us, till they have helped us to some such trustworthy
scientific instrument as this which I have called for. In its absence, I
am persuaded that the true natural oinometer is the hat. Were the hat
always worn during potation; were ladies when they retire to place it on
our heads, or, better still, chaplets of flowers; then, like the wise
ancients, we should be able to tell to a nicety how far we had advanced
in our dithyramb to the theme of fuddle and muddle. Unhappily the hat
does not forewarn: it is simply indicative. I believe, nevertheless,
that science might set to work upon it forthwith, and found a system.
When you mark men drinking who wear their hats, and those hats are seen
gradually beginning to hang on the backs of their heads, as from pegs, in
the fashion of a fez, the bald projection of forehead looks jolly and
frank: distrust that sign: the may-fly of the soul is then about to be
gobbled up by the chub of the passions. A hat worn fez-fashion is a
dangerous hat. A hat on the brows shows a man who can take more, but
thinks he will go home instead, and does so, peaceably. That is his
determination. He may look like Macduff, but he is a lamb. The vinous
reverses the non-vinous passionate expression of the hat. If I am
discredited, I appeal to history, which tells us that the hats of the
Hillford five-and-twenty were all exceedingly hind-ward-set when the
march was resumed. It followed that Peter Bartholomew, potboy, made
irritable objections to that old joke which finished his name as though