Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1873-04-17
A Lie, Zoologically Considered.

We stand agape, in the British Muse.
um, looking at the monstrous skeletons
Of the mastOdOn, megetherium and ieu-
anOdon, and conclude that all the great
animals thirty feet long and eleven feet
high are extinct.
Now we have to say that, the other
day we caught glimpse of a monster,
beside which the lizards Of the saurian
era were short, and the elephants of the
mammalian period were insignificant.
We saw it In full spring. and on the
track Of its prey. Children would call
the creature a 'fib rough persons would
call It "a whopper;' polite folks would
say it was "a fabrication plain and mn
scientific folks would style it lie.
We do not think that anatomical and
geological justice has been done to the
ne: 1t eats up a great many children,
and would have DESTROYED the boy who
afterward became the father of his conn
try, had he not driveu it back will. his
hatchet.
The first popularity we notice is its
longevity. lift once gets born, it lives
on almost intcrminably. Sometimes it
has followed man for ten, twenty, or
Drty years, and has been as healthy in
its last leap as in the first. 1t has run
at every President from General Wash
lngton to General Grant, and helped kill
Horace Greeiy. 1t has barked at every
good man since Adam, and every good
woman since Eve, and everv good boy
since Abel, and every good COW since
Pharoah's lean kline. Miasma does not
poison 1t, nor fire burn it, nor Winter
freeze it. just now it is after your
neighbor; to morrow it will be after
you. 1t is healthiest of all monsters.
Its tooth knocks out the tooth of time
!ts hair never turns white with age, nor
does It limp with decrepitudc. 1t is dis
unguished for its longevity.
1t is distinguished also tor the length
OF its legs. 1t keeps up with the express
tram, and is present at the opening and
the shutting of the mail-bags. 1t takes
morning run from New York to San
francisco, or over to London before
breakfast. 1t can go thousand miles
at a jump. Itwould dcspise eseven-leaguc
boots as tedious. A telegraph-pole is
just knee-high TO this monster, and from
that you can judge its speed of locomo-
ton. 1t never gets out OF wind, carries
bag OF reputation made up in cold hash,
50 that 1t does not have to stop for vict-
uals. 1t goes so fast that sometimes
hve million people have seen it the same
morning.
AS to keenness of nostril, it can smell!
moral imperfection fifty miles away.
Inc crow has no faculty compared with
tins tor findinS carrion. 1t has scented
something hundred miles off, and be-
tore night 'treed' its game. It has n
great genius for smelling. Ii can find
more than is actually there. When il
begins TO snuff the air, YOU had better
look out. 1t has great length and
breadth and depth and heigh. of nose.
Its acuteness of the ear is no less won
dertul. The rabbit has no such power
TO listen as this creature we speak of. Ii
nears all the sounds that comes from
hvc thousand eyholes. 1t catches a
Whisper irom the other side the room,
ana can understand the scratch of pen
1t has one ear open toward the East and
the other toward the West, and hears
uscr tiiiS ia uoIIi uiIcCIiU..-- All -
tittle-tattle OF the world pours into those
ears Ike vinegar through Il funnel. They
are alwsys up and open, and to them Il
meeting OF the sewing-society is iubi-
lee. and political campaign is heaven.
Think OF the size of its throat. The
snake has hard work to choke down
toad, and the crocodile has a mighty
struggle to take in the calf; but the mon
ster OF which | speak can swallow any
thing. IL has throat bigger than the
whale that took down the minister who
declined the call to Nineveh, and has
swallowed whole presbyteries and con-
ierences OF clergymen. a Brobdingna-
gan goes down as easy as a Lilputian.
The largest story about business dis
honor, or female frailty, or political de-
ception, slips through with the ease of a
homeopathic pellet. Its throat is sui-
fcient Tor anything round. or square, or
angular, or octagonal. Nothing in all
the earth is too big for its mastication
and digestion save the truth, and that
will stick in its gullet.
1t is gregarious. 1t goes in flock
W !th others of its kind. If one takes
aftera man or a woman, there are at
least ten IN its company. AS soon as
anything bad is charged against man,
there are many others who know things
just as deleteriOus. Lies about himself,
lies about his wife, lies about his chill.
dren, lies about his associates, lies about
his house, lies about his barn, lies about
his store-swarms of them, broods Of
them, herds OF them. Kill one of them
and there will be twelve alive to act as
Its pall-bearers; another to preach its
funeral sermon, and still another to write
its obituary.
The monsters beat all the extinct
species. They are white, spotted, and
black. They have a sleek hide, sharp
claw, and sting in their tale. They
prowl through every street of the city,
crouch IN the restaurants, sleep in the
hall OF Congress, and in the grandest
parior nave one paw under the piano,
another under the sofa, one by the man
tel, ana the other on the door sill.
Now, many people spend half their
time in hunting lies. You see a man
rushing anxiously about to correct a
newspaper paragraph, or a husband,
with his fist clenched, on the way to
pound some one who has told false
thing about his wife. Theresa woman
on the next street who heard last Mon
day, sfalsehood about her husband, and
has had her hat and shawl on ever since,
In the effort to correct wrong Impress
Ions. Our object in this geological
sketch of lie is to persuade YOU OF the
FOLLY OF such hunting excursion. Bet
ter 60 TO your work, and let the lies run.
Their bloody muzzles have tough work
with man nsefully busy.-TT. DEWITT
ID. D., in The Methodist.