A CHAPTER ON NOSES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 20 July 1883, Page 3

A CHAPTER ON NOSES.

The meanest-looking nose in the entire family of noses is tho nose that curves toward the face, runs almost to a point, and then bulges into a knobby protuberance like on exaggerated Avart. Such a nose may be good enough to inhale odors Avith, but it is good for nothing else. If the possessor of this sort of nose is a generous Avholo-souled person, he is compelled to get over his nose, as if. Avero, to show it. It is as if ho sent a herald in advance, proclaiming his own meanness, and then came halting in the rear denouncing him as a liar. There arc no two noses exactly alike, but all noses have many things in common. For example, all noses sneeze, some snarl, snuff, snort, sneer, sniff, Biiitrger, snuffie, snuffle, and snivel. Many persons stand in terror of their noses, as Avitness the remark often made : "I fear 1 shall sneeze my head off.'' Thousands of people make extended annual pilgrimages to avoid annoying their nosns. Their noses having got the bust of them, so to speak, they try to conoilatc them by travel, by folloAving them over the ocean, into the mountains, to tho springs, to the seaside. Some noses havo fallen into the lamentable habit of beginning to sneeze violently, annually, at a certain hour, of a certain day in the year. Tho possessors of these noisy noses weep and tear their hair Avith rage ; but to pull their own noses they do not dare ! It is under such circumstances that tho question arises; Does the man control the nose or the nose the man ? And those who maintain tho lattor proposition have the best of tho argument. They declare, for example, that if tho man Avith the hay-fever had the least influence over his nose, ho would make it stop sneezing. Tho better opinion is that the nose is entirely independent of tho man, and that it is totally depraved from its roots to the end. The strongest argument in support of this view is found in tho fact that tho noso can snore loud enough to Avake all but tho dead; while tho man avlio claims to own it, but avlio is in fact its slave, sleeps peacefully. The nose invariably refuses to give expression to pleasurcable and kindly .sentiments. Mon laugh Avith their eyes and smile with their lips, and even make gestures of sntisfaction through a shrug of the shoulders, a AvaA-o of the arm, or a movement of the hand. In none of the demonstrations of geniality docs the nose take part; it remains cold and implacable. But if the man is roused to passion the nose /seconds all his efforts to make a fooLof himself. It is tho nose that gives bitter emphasis to all tho varied modifications of contempt, anger, fear, or pain. It is insisted, Avith some klioav of reason, that the drunkard controls his own nose, since he is able, by drinking brandy, to make it as red as a beet. But if this be admitted, it is a confession that the man must degrade himself to the condition of a brute in order to obtain a mastery over his nose; and this is equivalent to saying that tho nose Avas able to make terms Avith the man, and that ho made such terms as involved the ruin of his victim. —Prize " Rare Bits."