[ 612 3 |:Dec. 



TOO EAllLY ! 



People talk about this fallacy, and that fallacy ; but of all the falla- 

 cies in the world, there is not one that equals that prodigious prejudice 

 that has for some hundreds of years been running in favour of getting 

 up early. I could shew by a thousand reasons, that, instead of such 

 a practice being praiseworthy, it rather gives token of a want of that 

 syllogistical clear headethiess which enables a man to look thoroughly, 

 and at once, to the bottom of a subject. — " And mind you get up early, 

 my dear," cries Mrs. Tomkins to her eldest born, just as he is on the 

 point of quitting his native village for the great world — " mind you 

 get up early ; for it is so unwholesome to lie in bed of a morning." — 

 Foolish matron ! never was so great a mistake pronounced with so grave 

 a countenance ! 



" But why, sir — why ?" exclaims Mrs. Tomkins, or some one of my 

 readers for her. Now, for my own part, I am very considerably the 

 friend of a system, that is daily gaining strength in this admirable world, 

 of making assertion not only stand in the place of, but actually take 

 precedence of all argument ; and I would therefore protest with Shak- 

 speare's fit knight against giving any reason " on compulsion ;" but 

 that, in this case, the other side happens to have the start of me on the 

 ground of assertion ; and I must, therefore, content myself with having 

 the whole of the argument on mine. 



So now for the " Why, sir, — why ?" 



The " why" consists in these five reasons. — It is imwholesome. It is 

 unsafe. It is uncomfortable. It is impolitic. It is unwise. 



1st. It is unwholesome. — I once had a great-grandfather — the last of 

 our family that was ever so foolish as to indulge in what he used to call 

 the luxury of early rising — and what was the consequence ? — That 

 nature one day summoned him to pay for the luxury, by bestowing on 

 him such an admixture of cold and catarrh as carried him in half a week 

 to his grave. And how could it be otherwise ? If, from your comfort- 

 able bed-room window you chance to observe some unfortunate wretch 

 whose cruel destiny compels him to quit his wholesome couch for the 

 crude morning air and its draggle-tailed dew, you first see him striving, 

 as it were, to shrink Avithin himself in the hopes of avoiding the raw 

 atmosphere that salutes him on every side, and then — all escape, in spite 

 of his ingenuity, proving fruitless — you next perceive him suddenly 

 struck with a sort of ague-fit that dances him along, groaning and grum- 

 bling, at the rate of seven miles an hour, while his teeth chatter and jar 

 against each other at a still more rapid pace. And after all, what is his 

 remedy ? He has none, till the day has marched on, and the sun has 

 nearly approached his highest elevation : then he feels himself a little 

 relieved from the swamp in which he has been buried ; and he begins to 

 find out that his clothes hang about him damp and drearj', like a lady's 

 handkerchief that has undergone the ordeal-by-water through a five-act 

 tragedy in the dog-days : lie lifts up his leg, and resting it against a 

 stile, surveys with rueful countenance the streamy drops that trickle 

 from it, till a deep and dangerous puddle is formed beneath ; while thus 

 he gazes, he calls to mind how he has seen a washerwoman handle a 

 sheet, and he longs to try and wring his leg, that he may have one limb 

 dry at least : or " with curious busy eye" he carries his reflections yet 

 further, and quitting the survey of his leg for that of his general condi- 



