While every one agrees that a railway running through the city of
New-York, and transporting passengers with rapidity from one end of the
island to the other, is an absolute necessity, no one has yet hit upon a
plan which satisfies the public. The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals objects to the Elevated Road, on the ground (though
it is in the air) that the cars will continually run off the track, and,
falling on the horses and dogs in the street below, crush them to a
fatal jelly. The Arcade plan is objectionable to the shop-keepers,
inasmuch as it will change the great thoroughfare into a street
consisting exclusively of cellars, thereby driving the buyers elsewhere.
Conservative people, who like old things, naturally dislike the
Pneumatic Railway, and vehemently assert that "they'll be blowed if they
travel over it," which will undoubtedly prove to be true. Evidently a
new plan must be devised if every body is to be satisfied. That plan
PUNCHINELLO rather flatters himself that he has invented.
It does not seem to have yet occurred to any one that we are not
necessarily shut up to the single plan of fitting a railway to the city.
Why can we not fit the city to the railway? Every body remembers that
when the Mountain wouldn't come to MOHAMED, that eminent preacher went
to the mountain. Here we have a precedent worth following, To build any
sort of railway in New-York will take time and money. Why, then, should
we do it when there are plenty of nice railways already built in every
part of the country? There is a very nice railway completed and in
running order from Pokertown, in Montana territory, to Euchrebend, just
across the line in Idaho. All we have to do is to box up our buildings,
together with the Central Park, the sewers, the docks, and the Tammany
Hall General Committee, and express them through to Pokertown. The city
can then be set up on each side of the Pokertown and Euchrebend Railway,
and then we shall have the desired state of things--a railway running
through the heart of our city. This plan is both novel and easy. At all
events it is easy of execution in comparison with the Arcade plan, and
it presents no features to which any one can reasonably object. Drawings
of the city as it will appear when this plan has been carried out are
now in process of publication, and will soon be for sale at this office.
(N. B.--Shares in the Pokertown and Euchrebend Railway, and lost along
the route of that admirable road, also for sale on application to the
gentleman whose able pen presents this scheme to our readers.)
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"Curses Come Home," etc.
The gay young men of New-York are said to be terribly addicted to the
use of _absinthe_. They pick up the vice in Paris, and hence arises the
singular paradox that, even after they return home, they still continue
to be Absinthees.
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A Logical Sequence.
Paper made from wood cannot be claimed as a modern invention, for Log
books, as every body knows, have been used by mariners since ever so
long ago.
* * * * *
[Illustration: MODERN MATRIMONY.
_Young Wife._ "YES, DEAR, MY HUSBAND IS ALL I COULD WISH HIM TO BE."
_Husband (who is making bread in the back room)._ "I WISH I COULD SAY AS
MUCH FOR HER."]
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