You run full
tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand on an
arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch it; and
before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the back of
your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture, we will
say, in some paper taken by the people in your kitchen. Your servants
get saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls you names, they need
not be so particular about shutting doors softly or boiling potatoes.
So you lose your temper, and come out in an article which you think is
going to finish "Ananias," proving him a booby who doesn't know enough
to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a person that tells lies.
Now you think you've got him! Not so fast. "Ananias" keeps still and
winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take
in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you
meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh,"
an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good
sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."--No, no,--keep your
temper.
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