Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

vets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. ’Tisbut to kiss the locket of our lady-love’s hair. And nowthe vizor is up: the lance is in rest (Gillott’s iron is thepoint for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant sidesof Pegasus, and we gallop at the great brute.“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!”And who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisonedmaidens, the maltreated widows, the poor oldhoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in thedungeons these scores and scores of years, writhingunder the tyranny of that ruffian! Ah ye knights of thepen! May honor be your shield, and truth tip your lances!Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Betender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, outsword, and have at him.ThackerayON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERSWHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE *We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions—aplace which I take to be a very dismal, useless,and unsatisfactory terminus for many pleasant thoughts,kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little quips andpranks, harmless jokes which die as it were the momentof their birth. Poor little children of the brain! He was adreary theologian who huddled you under such a melancholycenotaph, and laid you in the vaults under theflagstones of Hades! I trust that some of the best actionswe have all of us committed in our lives havebeen committed in fancy. It is not all wickedness weare thinking, que diable! Some of our thoughts are badenough I grant you. Many a one you and I have had* The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinaryaffray between Major Murray and the money-lender in ahouse in Northumberland Street, Strand, and subsequent tothe appearance of M. Du Chaillu’s book on Gorillas.141