that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily
pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a
competent inspector.

I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound
horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands.
Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound
horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose.
And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness
on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to
thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation,
the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the
unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, by a subtle
intellectual process, the thing supposed to be wrong in the animal's
physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical
system the thing was wrong. Or, it is conceivable that the use of
the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth,
had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its
bodily nature, or warped its moral development. A tendon perhaps
received a tug which it never quite got over. A joint was suddenly
turned in a direction in which Nature had not contemplated its
ever turning: and the joint never played quite smoothly and sweetly
again. In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw,
something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a
perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrown person; that
is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the
machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to
work which had got a thraw or twist. The reflective reader will
easily discern that a complex piece of machinery, by receiving an
unlucky twist, even a slight twist, would be put into a state in