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KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



insanity of such fancies, is the fact of the 

 odd fellow at last leaving his property to 

 those very relations whom he has thus 

 sedulously shunned ! 



There are odd fellows who cannot endure 

 an attorney ; and whom it is impossible to 

 get to sign their name, even to the lease of a 

 house ; and there are some who would 

 rather die than take a dose of physic. A 

 very frequent trait of oddity, is a restless 

 impatience when any one interferes with the 

 management of the fire ; or a no less mani- 

 fest uneasiness if a guest should venture to 

 open and read the newspaper, when it comes 

 from the post — even though the gentleman 

 himself should not be in the house to take 

 the benefit of precedence. I have known 

 some persons, sane in all the ordinary rela- 

 tions of life, who insist on keeping a particu- 

 lar room, or " glory hole," for their own use ; 

 into which they will suffer no one to intrude ; 

 ami they would fall into a paroxysm of ab- 

 solute fury, if the housemaid, in the spirit of 

 her calling, should presume to dust and ar- 

 range it. 



Oddity is not peculiar to any one class in 

 society ; but churchmen, whether it be from 

 the seclusion of their college-life, or from 

 their habitual indulgence in dictation among 

 their parishioners, contribute to the list of 

 odd fellows in rather a greater proportion 

 than that of their relative numbers in society. 

 At the head of clerical oddities, every one 

 will at once place the celebrated Dean Swift, 

 whose vagaries fill the pages of many a col- 

 lection of anecdotes. His insisting upon pay- 

 ing Pope and Gay for the supper which they 

 would not allow him to order, on some even- 

 ing when they dropped in upon him unex- 

 pectedly, would alone entitle him to the 

 distinction, if his humorous sense of the 

 absurdity of a Protestant church without 

 Protestant parishioners had not broken 

 forth in the well-known " dearly beloved 

 Koger," and established his claim on still 

 higher ground. The melancholy termina- 

 tion of Swift's career as an " idiot and a 

 show," may be regarded merely as the full 

 development of the malady which governed 

 his early life ; but it may be some comfort to 

 the odd fellows at present upon town, to 

 know, that their hallucinations seldom go 

 further ; and that it is not every whimsiculo 

 who has the wit to become thoroughly mad. 

 The claims of Dr. Parr to the character of 

 an odd fellow, were too strong to admit of 

 controversy ; but the memory of his wig, his 

 Greek, and his eyebrows, are gone with the 

 occasion which gave them utility. Though 

 no clergyman, the leviathan of this class of 

 odd fellows, as he was also esteemed the levia- 

 than of literature, was Dr. Johnson. His 

 oddities were not altogether the most amus- 

 ing ; but he had the luck to pass them off on 



his own generation for excellencies, and he 

 throve accordingly. They would not be 

 tolerated now. 



In the last generation, flourished the long 

 celebrated Doctor Van Butchell ; whose repu- 

 tation as an odd fellow would have stood at 

 the highest, could the world have had assur- 

 ance of his eccentricities being genuine. Who 

 is there living that remembers his low, round- 

 crowned hat, his bushy beard, and his grey 

 pony with its painted spots ; or who visited 

 his pickled wife — and has not been tempted to 

 think so odd a fish downright mad ? Yet was 

 he only mad north-north-west ; and, when 

 the wind was southerly, he had good reason 

 for these absurdities, which were neither 

 better nor worse than professional advertise- 

 ments, and very slight exaggerations of the 



solemn fopperies of the great Doctor , 



or the queer-colored carriage of the fashion- 

 able Doctor . 



This spurious kind of oddity is an every- 

 day sin of professional life. Half the sur- 

 geons and physicians of London " dabble" 

 in it, as far as is consistent with a decent 

 self-respect — well knowing that a plain, sen- 

 sible, this-world-looking man, who trusts 

 merely to talent and learning, for the good- 

 will of the public, has no chance of a patient, 

 except it be either in forma pauperis or a 

 country cousin, who, like Daddy Haw- 

 thorn, takes physic " to oblige them." If 

 the lawyers are less given to oddity than 

 their medical compeers, it is because their 

 clients are not to be " done" in the same way. 

 The tests of legal merit are too tangible and 

 positive, to admit of a man's getting on at 

 the bar by monkey tricks ; and, therefore, 

 monkey tricks are not resorted to. Besides, 

 what oddity out of Bedlam could, in point of 

 the effect, come up to the wig and gown, 

 which is common to them all ? 



No voice to an organ 



's like that of lawyer in his bar-gown, 



is a distich quite as true and as applicable now 

 as it was in the days of merry King Charles. 

 But, though oddity be not strictly legal, I 

 would not advise a rising young barrister to 

 brush his coat too sedulously, or be too cri- 

 tical in the tie of his cravat. A certain 

 neglect of dress, and u affectation" of sloven- 

 liness, have very considerable charms in the 

 eyes of the attornies. 



Amongthemany varieties of" Odd fellows," 

 I know none more intolerable than those who 

 seek distinction by what they call u speaking 

 their mind," and have taken to themselves 

 the privilege of saying " whatever comes 

 uppermost." They tread upon the corns of 

 their neighbors' fine feelings with a very 

 careless indifference — they call up the blush 

 of shame, or the red spot of indignation, by 

 mal apropos allusions — and they probe the 

 half-skinned wounds of affliction with a de- 



