Note 44 — MODERN HISTORY.

It is scarcely conceivable what strange remarks have been made to me on the subject of the Beard. One party very gravely enquired whether I really thought that Adam had a Beard? Another was remonstrating with me on the first manifestations of my moustache; against whom I wickedly urged the argumentum ad feminam—you don’t object to it in the military? when the daughter naively chimed in, “why you know, Sir, it is natural to them!” Two or three acute persons, one of them a lawyer, have objected, “but you have your hair cut!” To which I have replied, “yes! but I don’t shave it off; and I trim my Beard instead of removing it. You also pare your nails; but you don’t think of plucking them out, do you?”