© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text
The electronic edition is a part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 5 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Originals are in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved.
Page images can be viewed and compared in parallel with the text.
Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as ".
All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as '.
All em dashes are encoded as —.
Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
Logic, notwithstanding it is in many respects dry and even abstruse, is on the
whole a very entertaining study. I myself am highly pleased with it, especially
that portion which treats of the detection of fallacies, some of which it would
puzzle a
"So natural, indeed, to the morbid activity of man are these revolving forms of alternate repulsion, when flight turns suddenly into pursuit, and pursuit into flight, that I myself, when a schoolboy, invented several: this, for instance which puzzled a man in a wig, and I believe he bore me malice to his dying day, because he gave up the ghost by reason of a fever before he was able to find out satisfactorily what screw was loose in my logical conundrum; and
thus in fact 'all along of me' (as he expressed) the poor man was forced to walk out of life reinfected, his business unfinished, the one whole problem that had tortured him being unsolved It was this. Somebody had told me of a dealer in gin, who, having had his attention roused to the enormous waste of liquor, caused by the unsteady hands of drunkards, invented a counter, which, through a simple set of continuances, gathered into a common reservoir all the spillings, that previously had run to waste. St Monday, as it was then called in English manufacturing towns, formed the jubilee day in each week for the drunkards; and it was now ascertained (i.e. subsequently to the epoch of the artificial counter) that the mere "spilth" of St Monday formed the entire demand of Tuesday. It struck me, therefore, on reviewing this case, that the more the people drank, the more they wouldtitubate, by which word it was that I expressed the reeling and stumbling of intoxication. If they drank abominably, then of course they would titubate abominably; and titubating abominably, inevitably they would spill in the same ratio. The more they drank, the more they would titubate; the more they titubated the more they would spill;and the more they spilt the more it is clear they did notdrink. It is evident fromEuclid that the more they spilt the less theycouldhave to drink. So that if their titubation was excessive, then their spilling must have been excessive, and in that case they must have practised almost total abstinence. Spilling nearly all, how could they leave to themselves anything worth speaking of to drink yet again, if they drank nothing worth speaking of, how could they titubate? Clearly they could not, and not drinking, they could have had no reason for spilling, in which case they must have drunk the whole — that is they must have drunk to the whole excess imputed, which doing they were dead drunk and must have titubated to excess which doing they must have spilt nearly the whole. Spilling the whole, they could not have been drunk. Ergo, could not have titubated. Ergo could not have spilt. Ergo, must have drunk the whole. Ergo, were dead drunk. Ergo, must have titubated. "And so round again" as my Lord the bishop pleasantly expresses it,in secula seculorum."
This requires no comment. I have studied Logic earnestly and industriously not
for the sake of winning Academical Honours (where merit is left out of the
account
You may send three hundred and twenty five dollars. I hope that will defray all expenses.
Plenty of good letter paper here — $10 per quire