Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death. - Hilaire Belloc

For there enters an element of Comedy (in the full sense of that great word) whenever we watch the death or passing of a human mood which had thought itself absolute and eternal. There is a high comedy in discovering new moods still timid or struggling, which will in their turn affirm themselves to be indestructible, and in their turn will die. To this comic interest is added another of a very practical kind: forewarned is forearmed.

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

When people call this beast to mind,
They marvel more and more
At such a <small>LITTLE</small> tail behind,
So LARGE a trunk before.