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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

COMIC ARITHMETIC.

"Go the whole figure."--SAM SLICK.

LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

LONDON: R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFACE

TO THE READER, OR RATHER TO THOSE WHO HESITATE IN BUYING THIS WORK.

FIGURES FOR THE MILLION.

Of Arithmetic and its Importance.

INTRODUCTION.

"Rem facias; rem Recte si possis, s? non, quocunque Modo rem." Hor.

See page 19, for a poetical version of this maxim.

EXPLANATION OF ARITHMETICAL SIGNS AND CHARACTERS.

-- Minus, less. The sign of subtraction; as, for instance, an elopement to Gretna; or, a knocking-down argument by the way-side, -- minus ticker. Take from -- from take.

? Divided by. The sign of division. Example 1. The Whigs.--2. The Church. A house divided against itself. Division of property; the lion's share, &c.

SIGNS OF PROPORTION.

As Tommy Duncombe IS TO Lord Stanley, SO IS shrimp-sauce to a boiled turbot.

NUMERATION.

The good old times.

Lords 20000000 } P Tithe-eaters 3000000 } E Quarrel-mongers 400000 } O Land-swallowers 50000 } P Dividendists 6000 } L Men-killers 700 } E Pensioners 80 } . Sinecurists 9 }

ADDITION.

Man is an adding animal; his instinct is, to get. He is an illustration of the verb, to get, in all its inflexions and conjugations; and thus we get and beget, till we ourselves are added to our fathers.

Addition is also performed in a less daring manner by the save-all process, till Death, with his extinguisher, shuts the miser up in his own smoke.

If you would be merry, And never would fret, Then, get all you can, And keep all you get.

ADDING TO YOUR NAME.--This is another mode of performing addition. It is not necessary to go to an university for this, any more than it is necessary to go to a church to get married. The thing can now be done without it. Schoolmasters, and pettifoggers of all kinds, will find this an excellent piece of practical wisdom.

"ADDITION FOR COMMON NAMES."

"Oh! Mrs. Wiggins, I declare I never heard the like! The wretch knows how to curse and swear, To bite, and scratch, and strike!

"All day he's tossicated, and All night he roams about; But that is lucky, sure, for he Is worse when in than out."

"If this is what you get when wed, I'm glad I yet have tarried:-- Better to keep one's single bed, Than venture to get married.

"The fine piano long ago, Just after my last rout, With candlesticks and cruets too, Are all gone up the spout.

"And bills return'd, as I have heard, Last week, one, two, or three; And summonses for grocery-- 'Tis nothing, though, to me.

"'Tis nothing, though, my dear, to me, As I before have said. If married people don't agree, They ought not to get wed."

To go back a little to first principles, which should never be lost sight of in the teaching of any art or science, we must set forth the grand leading rule before our pupils. Addition teaches, therefore,

SONG.

"Argent comptant."

Get money, my son, get money, Honestly if you can; It makes life sweet as honey-- My son, get money, get money!

Don't stand upon ceremony, Or you may look mighty funny; But make it your constant song, Get money, get money, get money!

Money makes the mare to go, boy, Where every path looks sunny. Go it! my lad, through thick and thin; Get money, get money, get money!

Any one wishing to observe this great lesson to all mankind set forth by the leading journal of Europe, has only to look at the little vignette at the top of the leading article of the "Times."

SUBTRACTION.

Shakspere.

Corn and sugar monopolists. Tax-collector. Easter dues, beadle and clerk. Poor-rate. Christmas-box and Christmas-piece. Subscriptions for Chiggered Niggers. Parson Smith and his orphans. Poor relations.

Subtraction is perhaps one of the most fashionable of all the rules; and any one who sets himself down for a gentleman must expect to be beset by a swarm of hungry locusts, who make a rule to bleed him at every pore till he becomes poor. When Edward the First took the wealth of the Jews and their teeth at the same time, he showed a fatherly consideration for those who having nothing to eat wanted neither incisores, cuspidati, bicuspidae, or molarii. But we are to be nipped, and squeezed, and tapped, and leeched, and drained to all eternity, and are still expected to--give.

LITERARY SUBTRACTION.--This is of essential service to editors, reviewers, and others, who, having nothing good of their own with which to amuse the public, steal the brains of others.

NATIONAL OR POLITICAL SUBTRACTION.--There is one part of the New Testament which all Christian rulers have religiously observed, namely, "Now, Caesar issued a decree that all the world should be taxed." The art of taxation is, therefore, not only a religious obligation, but is the science of sciences and the most important part of National Arithmetic.

Taxation is necessary just as blood-letting is necessary in plethora. Over-feeding produces a determination of the blood to the head, and then radical rabidity breaks out into rebellion. Over-feeding requires bleeding. There is a tendency in every industrious nation to get on too fast. Taxation is the fly-wheel which softens and regulates the motion of the national machinery, the safety valve which prevents explosion, while that accumulation of taxation called the dead weight is a "clogger" to keep things down.

"Bleeding made easy."

MULTIPLICATION.

Multiplication teaches a short way of adding one number together any number of times. Its sign is a cat o'-nine-tails; its symbol a whipping-post. Since the wonderful powers of the number nine have been publicly discussed, we have had no more shooting at her Majesty, which shows the transcendant powers of arithmetical argument. The Egyptian plague of frogs and flies exemplifies this rule. In Modern Rome we have multiplication of fleas. In Modern Babylon we have multiplication of bugs, particularly humbugs. In the West Indies we have multiplication of musquitoes and piccaninies, and in the East, multiplication of oneself, as in the case of Abbas Mirza and his 1000 sons for a body guard.

MULTIPLICATION OF LAWS.--This is a favourite amusement with our modern legislators. It naturally leads to the multiplication of lawyers, whose proper calling is to set people together by the ears, for the multiplication of dissensions. The original type of this order was the plague of locusts.

DIVISION.

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