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According to his account of the matter, he did not set a higher value on his head than another; still, it was convenient to have one; had it been necessary to part with it, he made no doubt he should have submitted to do so like a man, referring to the fortitude with which he had borne the amputation of his cauda, as a proof of his resolution; for his part, he should take very good care how he accused any one with having a memory, or anything else, again, and he now saw the excellence of those wise provisions of the laws, which cut up a criminal in order to prevent the repetition of his offences; he did not intend to stay much longer on shore, believing he should be less in the way of temptation on board the Walrus than among the monikins; and, as for his own people, he was sure of soon catching them on board again, for they had now been off their pork twenty-four hours, and nuts were but poor grub for foremast hands, after all; philosophers might say what they pleased about governments, but, in his opinion, the only ra'al tyrant on 'arth was the belly; he did not remember ever to have had a struggle with his belly and he had a thousand that the belly didn't get the better; that it would be awkward to lay down the title of lord high admiral, but it was easier to lay down that than to lay down his head; that as for cauda, though it was certainly agreeable to be in the fashion, he could do very well without one, and when he got back to Stunnin'tun, should the worst come to the worst, there was a certain saddler in the place who could give him as good a fit as the one he had lost; that Miss Poke would have been greatly scandalized, however, had he come home after decapitation; that it might be well to sail for Leaplow as soon as convenient, for in that country he understood bobs were in fashion, and he admitted that he should not like to cruise about Leaphigh, for any great length of time, unless he could look as other people look; for his part, he bore no one a grudge, and he freely forgave everybody but Bob, out of whom, the Lord willing, he proposed to have full satisfaction, before the ship should be twenty-four hours at sea, etc., etc., etc.

It was the object of Noah to hitch on to one of these moral steam-tugs, in order that he too might be dragged through his duties without effort to himself; an expedient, as the old sealer expressed it, that would in some degree remedy his natural want of a cauda, by rendering him nothing but tail.

Judge People's Friend was now perfectly delighted. He told us this was exactly what he could most have wished for. "Here is a bob," said he, "for the horizontals and perpendiculars, and there is a capital ready-made cauda for his majesty and his majesty's first-cousin! A Leaphighized Leaplower, more especially if there be a dash of caricature about him, is the very thing in our diplomacy."

I never before felt so deep a sense of national humility. "As they have universities," cried another coxcomb, "perhaps this person has attended one of them." "Indeed, sir," I answered, "I am regularly graduated." "It is not easy to see what he has done with his knowledge for, though my sight is none of the worst, I cannot trace the smallest sign of a cauda about him." "Ah!"

It is this display of instinctive ingenuity that Lucan celebrates where he paints the ichneumon diverting the attention of the asp, by the motion of his bushy tail, and then seizing it in the midst of its confusion: "Aspidas ut Pharias caudâ solertior hostis Ludit, et iratas incertâ provocat umbrâ: *

So, after lifting up the anchor, they ran close along the coast of Crete: but in a short time a tempestuous wind called a "Northeaster" beat down upon them. The ship was caught in it and was unable to keep her head to the wind. So we had to give up and run before it. Running under the lee of a little island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to haul in the ship's boat.

So far everything had gone on swimmingly; but the new charge had, most unfortunately, a very long cauda, a fashion that was inexorably proscribed by the Leaplow usages, except in cases when the representative went to court; for it seems the Leaplow political ethics, like your country buck, has two dresses one for every-day wear, and one for Sundays.

More than that, his name lay snugly in all the et ceteras of the notaries, in wills or in caudicils, which certain people have falsely written codicil, seeing that the word is derived from cauda, as if to say the tail of the legacy.

You will be taken, Noah Poke, or No. 1, sea-water-color, forthwith, to the centre of the public square, between the hours of sunrise and sunset of this day, where your cauda will be cut off; and after it has been divided into four parts, a part will be exposed towards each of the cardinal points of the compass; and the brush thereof being consumed by fire, the ashes will be thrown into your face, and this without benefit of clergy.

I was drawn in by several persons to make that simple purchase. The year I bought it, I had my ascendant directed into a Trine of Jupiter first, and in the same year into the Cauda Draconis my fortune into a quadrant of Mercury. During my being there, the steeple of St.