THE FIVE ASININES.

HE accompanying cut exhibits five characters, phrenologically caricatured, which are embraced in the asinine family.

1. There's the man of asinine conceit. His head, from a side view, is a little rhom

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boid-shaped, sloping back to the rear of the coronal in the extraordinary development of the faculty of self-esteem, which runs into conceit. His mouth has a cynical curvature, drawn first up and then down at the corners, indicating a doubtful realm between the sour and the sweet of disposition, and is in perfect accord with his bump of conceit. This faculty is so extraordinarily developed, and his character and conduct in this line so marked and disgusting that everybody writes him down as an ass. matter what his other faculties are, or how nobly developed, this bump of conceit will stick out of his character as it sticks above the back of his head. His long ears will show up. I heard a distinguished religious controversialist speak, not long since, and while he tried otherwise to display his infinite and voluminous learning, or dabbling in the same, he could not refrain from telling, or intimating repeatedly, how learned he was and what a lot of ignoramuses belonged to the other side of the subject

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discussed. I wondered at the "big I" and "little

you " until I thought to look at his head, which was bald and well-proportioned, indicating a strong combination of the animal and the intellectual; a little sunken in the region of the moral, but awfully pointed and prominent in the bump of self-esteem. I did not wonder any longer, for I saw that the distinguished orator and debater could not help, or had not tried to help in time, his infirmity. He was challenged, not long since, to controversy on a certain question, by a Mr. Speaking of the subject before a large audience-disdaining to take such small game-he said: “In your imagination behold the fice going out to meet a lion! The lion puts down his paw, and where is the fice?" Mr. and the lion was himself!

The fice was

Unquestionably, egotism is asinine. The student of Latin who wanted to show off before his professor, one morning, by a very pleasant way of salutation, exclaimed, "Ego sum asinus!" intending to say, "Ego sum discipulus!" The young fellow, however, was right, and said truly, "I am an ass!" rather than, "I am a scholar!" and thousands of learned and unlearned conceits might well introduce themselves to the world every day: "I am an ass!" There is one advantage conceit ever has, and that is what the world calls "cheek," and with fair talents and opportunities the braying ass may make headway against the world, but seldom against the flesh and the devil. He is never conscious of shame or embarrassment, and will dare to do and tread where angels would blush and tremble. Self-conscious importance turns the world's ridicule into imagined commendation, and he is never afflicted with pain or chagrin,

no matter what his blunders or failures. In some respects the conceited donkey is to be envied; but his advantages are greatly counterbalanced by his disadvantages before a thinking and discriminating world. In the end and in the main self-conceit proves a failure and a blunder through life.

2. The next figure represents laziness. It is the circular face and head, fat and chuffy, with the mouth. curving upward-lethargic and phlegmatic, goodhumored and happy, with no dread of famine and misfortune, with no ambition for the future, and with no remorse of conscience for the past. He is the dull, slow donkey you see beaten and braying along the street sometimes, and the force of blows, like the force of circumstances, have no effect upon him beyond the present moment. All his faculties—intellectual, animal, or moral-have a rounded sameness of development, and he has no striking or prominent features of character which give him a salient force anywhere in the affairs of life. He may be a fair merchant, doctor, lawyer, school-teacher, or an intelligent farmer, but he is too indolent to succeed greatly at any thing. I remember one such man in my boyhood. He was a merchant, but he sat and dreamed in front of his store-large, chuffy, and pleasant; could laugh at a joke, but was too lazy to tell oneand while he sat and dreamed of nothing other business men were taking his custom from the front door, while the chickens and pigs came in at the back door. He would get up lazily and wait on his customers, if the clerk was absent, and then resume his seat. Nothing troubled him but the flies in summer, and he was too stupid to fan these away except when they would get too numerous and annoying-like

an ass with a tail, but too indifferent to use it. A few years ago I went back to the city where he lives, and I saw this man again-grown old and gray, fat and chuffy still, seedy and poor-and he was sitting on a goods-box, smoking his pipe, apparently as happy and contented as he ever was. An earthquake or a cyclone might stir him to action, but no ordinary⚫ circumstance in life nor phenomenon of nature would have any effect upon his nerves. This man also has his advantages in his freedom from care and in his absence of ambition, but his disadvantages overcome his advantages in the great chances and glories of successful life. His very happiness is that of asinine content seen in the stupid donkey that browses about on sticks and grubs along the barren hill-side; and he almost fills a blank in the history and development of the world, which only gives him sittingroom. Of the two misfortunes, conceit and laziness, it is hard to decide upon a preference, but I believe there is more conscious joy and real worth in the former than in the latter.

3. We come now to the third species of the asinine family-the kicker. He has an octagonal head and face-front view-with broad and deep-set jawbones and a straight and compressed mouth. The faculties of combativeness and destructiveness are most prominently developed, and he is so overbalanced in his make-up of belligerency and antagonism that he kicks upon all occasions and at all things, as his jaw-bones and mouth would indicate. He is a "striker," and he strikes square and often from the shoulder. In other words, he is an ass with heels, and he is always ready to let them fly. In his ridiculous opposition and readiness to kick at everybody

and every thing he receives at the hands of the discerning public the well-known title, ASS. I have known several such men in my life—and they may be found in almost every community-broad, thickskinned, heavy-set, square-built fellows, having the characteristics and contour of this figure in the picture. They are in politics, at the bar, among the doctors, at all business and general meetings, and often in the Churches. They are great on controversy, and in their salient angularity and opposition to every thing no question or movement arises against which they do not kick. I once knew a deacon of this character in a certain Church. No subject could be suggested, no enterprise could be proposed, no action taken in business, without his objections to it. He seemed to be born and bred in the objective case,. and he died, after having butted and kicked against the walls of Zion for thirty years. He was a good man if you would let him have his way without letting him know you favored his course; but he would kick against himself when he found that he had kicked you into his way. He was an ass of the most asinine character, and he was as tough-hided and as stupid-minded, in his line, as the veriest donkey that ever brayed. I am told that in the Zoological Garden of Cincinnati they have the stuffed skins of a lion and an ass which had killed each other in a fight, the lion biting and clawing the ass to death, and the ass biting and kicking the lion to death in the same conflict. One would hardly think it, but if you imagine for a moment that some asses cannot kick the life out of even a lion, you are mistaken. They can kick the life out of a Church, scatter the forces of a a political party, and turn a community upside down.