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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Few Remarks on Goats, Asses and the Dead Hand</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I don't mind kings and dukes and things;<br>I don't mind wigs or maces;<br>I don't mind crowns or robes or gowns<br>Or ruffles, swords or laces <br>But what I do object to, and some others more than I,<br>Are the mad old, bad old practices these baubles signify.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Good friends, brother Australians and fellow voters;<br>I think that you will agree with me that few of us are doters<br>Upon the customs, practices, fooleries and tommyrotics of the mouldy past;<br>Nor are we apt to cast<br>A reverent eye behindward upon ancient precedent:<br>Nor do we consent<br>To let the cold, clammy and unusually muddling Dead Hand<br>Control the destinies of this our native land.<br>Nay, rather do we stand<br>Tiptoe upon the summit of the Present, peering out,<br>With faces eager and expectant eyes, into the mystic Future. Have you a doubt<br>That in Progress, Business-like Procedure, Common-sense Habit, and Up-to-Date <br>Method we are all earnest believers?<br>Is it not so?....<br>Well, I don't know<br>So much about it. 'Twere easy to prove, good friends, that we are, in the <br>lump, followers of Make-Believe, triflers with Humbug and inance self-deceivers.<br>'Twere easy to prove that our ass-like attribute indeed surpasses<br>That of innumerable and intensely asinine asses.<br>And here, good friends, I extend to all of you my blessin',<br>And conclude, amidst great applause, the first lesson.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Secondly, my brothers <br>Right-thinking persons, men-in-the-street, common-sense individuals, and people who call a spade a spade, and others <br>There are full many of us who deeply deplore<br>The use or display of these gauds, decorations, baubles and trappings that belong to the unpractical, superstitious and quite unfashionable days of yore.<br>We deride, for instance, the ntion that the caudal appendage of a deceased horse<br>Perched upon the cranium of an erudite justice can add to his dignity or give to his remarks more force.<br>In short, we class as mere bunkum, bosh, flapdoodle and other sludge<br>The contention that the hind end of a horse can in any way assist the fore end of a judge.<br>The wig, the gown, the staff, the rod, the mace,<br>We regard as obsolete, and entirely out of place.<br>If there is one thing more than another upon which we pride ourselves it is, I suppose,<br>The fact that we scorn to wear grandpa's old-fashioned clothes.<br>The poor old gentleman's pantaloons, his shirts, his cravat, his fob-chain, his frill-whiskers are all anathema to us.<br>Good friends, why all this fuss?<br>Why waste all this precious energy in denouncing the wig, the gown, the mace?<br>They may be, in a sense, out of place;<br>Yet, why should these things shock you?<br>Believe me, they are perfectly innocu<br>Ous, and furthermore, dear friends,<br>They serve their ends;<br>Fo why deny these toys<br>To that large, mentally-bogged, and much musinderstood class of elderly girls and boys<br>Whose state demands some sign or symbol<br>To push an idea or a principle into their heads, even as the thimble<br>Thrusts the needle into the cloth?<br>Then why so wrath?<br>Heed ye, good friends, the parable of the beam and the mote.<br>Nay, I crave your pardon, but I have known a not particularly intelligent goat<br>To view materially essential matters with a more discerning eye; to possess, so to speak, more inate perspicacity<br>Than you - that is to say, us. Nay, grasp not at the seeming audacity<br>Of these few remarks; for perfect perspicuity<br>Attends them, and I like not ambiguity.<br>As thinking machines the ass, the goat, good people are preferable; at least, so it appears.<br>And here, the ending of my second lesson is attended by your deafening and appreciative cheers.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>My worthy friends, ye who scorn to wear my poor grandpa's clothes<br>Get down from your pedestals, O ye modern intellectual giants; let each decline his scornful and uptilted nose.<br>Deride, would ye, grandpa's ancient mace?<br>Abolish it, would ye, and hunt it off the place? <br>What's the matter with it? It's not eating anythng, is it?<br>And it might prove handy if a masked burglar, or a Trust or a mad dog paid the<br>House a visit.<br>Gird, would ye, at grandpa's wig, at his gown trimmed with the overcoats of late lamented rabbits?<br>But, Oh! my up-to-date brothers, what have ye to say about grandpa's and great grandpa's and great-great-grandpa's ridiculous customs, absurd precedents,inance systems and obsolete habits?<br>What about that musty, dusty, mouldy, mildewed, hoary, Tory, injurious, time wasting, insane, inane, self-ridiculed, unwieldy and utterly unprofitable system of Party Govrnment? Great-great-great-great-grandpa's cherished<br>System, good friends?<br>Does it serve our modern ends?<br>Or is it, think you, obsolete and absurd?<br>I pause for a reply....What! Not a word?<br>Do I hear you raving to have it abolished?<br>Yearn ye to see this thing demolished?<br>Go to the ass, ye dullards! He doesn't eat mouldy sawdust when there's good hay about.<br>And here, kind friends, I pass to 'fourthly,' flattered by your encouraging shout.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Friends, countrymen and fellow-voters of this fair land,<br>All ye smart, up-to-date people who scorn dear grandpa's raiment, are you feeling his dead hand?<br>Think ye that ancient fist should interfere so in the vital affairs of to-day?<br>Or are ye so apathetic that you don't care a tuppenny curse either way?<br>'Tis cheap and easy to scoff at granpa's gauds and trappings and to the Devil send 'em;<br>But have ye ever seriously considered such things as elected Mnistries or theInitiative and Referendum?<br>Not you! You shirk, good friend, you shirk.<br>That means Work!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=357372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Friends, I am done....I know not what ye intend to do about it, and I haven't much hope; but, for my part,<br>I say unto ye, in a spirit of true brotherly love, and with my hand upon my heart,<br>That I have enjoyed the acquaintance of asses who were never fooled by musty precedent. Aye, and intelligent goats<br>Who scorned the jam-tin diet of their forebears when there was good grass about but they had no votes.<br>And what is a goat without a vote?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Clarence+Michael+James+Stanislaus+Dennis">Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis</a></strong></div>