QUIBBLING.

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stood. If I say “ I had a bird for dinner,” then thequalification “ cooked” is understood. The furtherremoved this qualification can be placed from thenoun in any argument, and the smaller it is inamount, the more successful is the quibble likely tobe. A humorous story is quoted by Professor De Morgan , which is a good example of a transparentquibble of this character. “ A servant who wasroasting a stork for his master, was prevailed uponby his sweetheart to cut off a leg for her to eat.When the bird came upon table, the master desiredto know what was become of the other leg. Theman answered, that storks had never more thanone leg. The master, very angry, but determinedto strike his servant dumb before he punished him,took him the next day into the fields, where theysaw storks standing, each on one leg, as storks do.The servant turned triumphantly to his master, onwhich the latter shouted, and the birds put downtheir other legs and flew away.” “ Ah, sir,” said theservant, “ you did not shout to the stork at dinneryesterday; if you had done so, he would have shewnhis other leg too.”

(120). Another common mode of deception forthose who admire that course, is to link two sets ofthings together, and thus it has happened thatwhen a statement has been made true in all parti-culars but on some trifling point, a total denial hasbeen given to the whole, and then the auditor was

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