William Hone to John Childs, 12 April, 1839

1.1.1.

Hang "My dear Childs," and "My dear Hone" too! I have done my duty, do you do yours. What! have we known each other twenty & odd years, and are we still to go on as vain fellows? Are we not as similar as dissimilar can be, or rather like two straight lines eternally approaching but never meeting, as mathematicians tell us upon the authority of Euclid, who was, they say, a very great man but who, on the authority of Shakspeare, must have been so in virtue of his masterhood in lying. For will you ever make me believe the truth of the old rogue's proposition? Attempt it if you dare—you dare not practically, & even John of Bungay will not have face enough, large & full though it be, to endeavor at persuading me to believe, imprimis, in a cold abstraction. Depend upon it Euclid, who was a Greek, was no better than he should be—a slave. "The Greek slave lies." But I am getting warm, when I meant to be cool, & to say plainly, that though we are different castings, we are out of the same mould—& though one may have cooled and hardened sooner than the other, we are both of the same mettle. Somewhat of the temper of the two goats who each met on a bridge so narrow that neither could go back without tumbling into the gulf-stream & therefore one knelt down & let the other pass quietly over him. Was not that friendship? I am sure it was peace.

Observe—"my hand writes, not I; just as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off." Have you heard of the new hatching process exhibiting in London—hatching mechanically, feathered [one word][?] without a mother, no mother to teach them the natural art of gravel eating, that get cropsick from good living & therefore die— cockerels that never heard the voice of a father, & therefore never crow— box-born & voiceless. I was going on to say something of ballot box hatching, but "for delicacy's sake, forbear."

Have Mesmeric influences reached you? When I promised Charles, that Dr. (breathe-not-his-name) should try his hand on me, I must have been demented.² It was the only promise I could keep which I ever broke. & I broke it willfully & knowingly, that is, backed out in broad daylight, glorying in my retreat. It was as skillful an one, you may be sure, as Moreau's—for like him, I would not be forced to an engagement. Dr. (above) be hanged! I was not to be by him, or with him, or for him, immortalized with the Okeys——- John, be cautious, however of the imaginative—avoid looking into the fire & fancying you see fine things there, until you burn your fingers among the glowing cinders & so become a cripple. Don't dream with your eyes open, & look like a fool wide awake. — Since I saw Charles, the sayed Dr. has written himself down—a donkey! Had he been permitted to play to the end, at Okey-pokey-hum, before the Lond. Univ. College, he would have left to the College his fortune, & now he says he has altered his will! The man has actually printed this. [one word][?] I had an escape?

I have been ill, done nothing to the paper since Wednesday fortnight, been up stairs ever since, & received no visits but from medical friends.

"Seriously," as Charles writes me (in his first-last?) let us get to business; & to begin in a business-like way, let me ask you how soon can you get out half a dozen volumes, same type, mode of printing, & size, as Life of Wilberforce—number 3000. I hope you are attending—I know of no job of the sort at present, nor am I likely, but if I should, & am alive after SamP³ is out of his time, & he should not have an office & establishment of sufficient power for getting out such a work, or should I hear of such a work, why I shall know you know, anything you choose to tell me about it, in answer to this.