PUNCHINELLO has been summoned on the jury. He is asked to try a
murderer. PUNCHINELLO is kind-hearted. He wishes neither to put himself
in suspense in a jury-box, nor a murderer so in a sheriff's box that the
murderer shall finally be put in suspense. PUNCHINELLO is to be asked
whether he has formed or expressed an opinion upon the subject of the
guilt or the innocence of the murderer, or whether he feels any bias
against an accused. Such questions, in PUNCHINELLO'S opinion, are
nonsensical. Jurors nowadays are influenced more through their stomachs
than through their heads or their hearts. Let a juror, when he comes to
be challenged, be rather asked, "Had you a good or a bad breakfast?"
"Were you out late last night?" "Have you had the dyspepsia lately?"
"Are you bilious?" "Do you habitually eat fried bacon or Welsh rarebit?"
"Do you afflict yourself with reading the Tribune?" "Can you digest
stewed lobster or apple-dumpling?" so that whenever a juror shall be
found freed from dyspepsia, or to be a good sleeper, or a man who can
digest even the new Tariff or the Income Tax, it is PUNCHINELLO'S
opinion that such a juror will make a capital chap to listen
complacently to lawyers, keep patience with witnesses, respect the
judge, laugh at the crier, smile at the reporters, give "true
deliverances," and contribute something toward redeeming our boasted
Anglo-Saxon jury system.
* * * * *
The Difference.
Salt Lake City and Chicago represent the extreme ends of the social
scale. In one place you get as many wives as you like; in the other it
is quite as easy to get rid of them.
* * * * *
Boston out of the Clouds.
There is talk of reviving the old ordinance in Boston against smoking in
the streets. This will aim a blow at side stove-pipes as well as at
meerschaums; but, fortunately, it will not prevent the smoking of hams
or of perpendicular chimneys.
* * * * *
"THIERS IDLE THIERS."
A newspaper item conveys the interesting intelligence that THIERS, the
renowned statesman and historian, consumes snuff to the amount of a
quarter of a pound daily. That M. THIERS is thoroughly "up to snuff"
every body knows; but that he has so much idle time on his hands as to
be able to use a quarter of a pound of it daily, will be news to most
people. Let any one of our readers try it. Let him be ever so "good at a
pinch," he will find that to feed his proboscis from a quarter of a
pound of snuff until he has reached the last pinch, would take up, at a
moderate computation, no less than eight hours at a stretch, allowing
reasonable intervals for sneezing and blowing his nose. Evidently the
story is an idle one--more idle than M. THIERS ever could have been.
Perhaps it was "pinching" poverty in the way of items that drove the
itemizer to invent it. At any rate, he has made a "mull" of it.
* * * * *
Apropos of Susan B. Anthony.
"Was ever woman in this humor One?"
* * * * *
A Gale Brewing.
Boston is agitating a reproduction of the Coliseum, and GILMORE hints at
an orchestra of three thousand, with eighteen hundred _wind_
instruments. A gale far more disastrous than that memorable southeaster
of last autumn may therefore be expected.
* * * * *
[Illustration: WOMAN IN WALL STREET _Lady Broker, (to applicant for
stock.)_ "O DEAR, DEAR! HOW CAN I ATTEND TO BUSINESS WHEN I'VE THE BABY
TO MIND?"]
* * * * *