Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

132 SALMAGUNDI.
"whereas," or " also," or "nevertheless," struck out of a bill,
that the young lady wished heaven had made her a man instead
of a woman, in order that she might have an opportunity of seeing the "anthropophagi, and the men whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders;" which was a very natural wish, considering the curiosity of the sex. On being referred to, I incontinently decided in favor of the honorable member who spoke
last; inasmuch as I think it was a very foolish, and therefore
very natural, wish for a young lady to make before a man she
wished to marry. It was, moreover, an indication of the violent
inclination she felt to wear the breeches, which was afterward,
in all probability, gratified, if we may judge from the title of
" our captain's captain," given her by Cassio —a phrase which, in
my opinion, indicates that Othello was, at that time, most ignominiously hen-pecked. I believe my arguments staggered'Sbidlikens himself, for he looked confoundedly queer, and said not
another word on the subject.
A little while after, at it he went again on another tack, and
began to find fault with Cooper's manner of dying; " it was not
natural," he said; for it had lately been demonstrated by a
learned doctor of physic, that when a man is mortally stabbed,
he ought to take a flying leap of at least five feet, and drop
down " dead as a salmon in a fishmonger's basket." Whenever
a man, in the predicament above mentioned, departed from this
fundamental rule, by falling fiat down like a log, and rolling
about for two or three minutes, making speeches all the time,
the said learned doctor maintained that it was owing to the
waywardness of the human mind, which delighted in flying in
the face of nature, and dying in defiance of all her established
rules. I replied, " for my part, I held that every man had a
right of dying in whatever position he pleased; and that the