... Following is the manner of death incurred by Dr. Deadwood, the
celebrated African explorer, which took place at Ujijijijiji, under the
auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of England, assisted, at
some distance, by Mr. Shandy of the _New York Herald:_—
An intelligent gorilla has recently been imported to this country, who
had the good fortune to serve the Doctor as a body servant in the
interior of Africa, and he thus describes the manner of his master’s
death. The Doctor was accustomed to pass his nights in the stomach of
an acquaintance—a crocodile about fifty feet long. Stepping out one
evening to take an observation of one of the lunar eclipses peculiar to
the country, he spoke to his host, saying that as he should not return,
until after bedtime, he would not trouble him to sit up to let him in;
he would just leave the door open till he came home. By way of doing
so, he set up a stout fence-rail between his landlord’s distended jaws,
and went away.
Returning about midnight, he took off his boots outside, so as not to
awaken his friend, entered softly, knocked away the prop, and prepared
to turn in. But the noise of pounding on the rail had aroused the
householder, and so great was the feeling of relief induced by the
relaxation of the maxillary muscles, that he unconsciously shut his
mouth to smile, without giving his tenant time to get into the bedroom.
The Doctor was just stooping to untie his drawers, when he was caught
between the floor and ceiling, like a lemon in a squeezer.
Next day the melancholy remains were given up to our informant, who
displays a singular reticence regarding his disposition of them; merely
picking his teeth with his claws in an absent, thoughtful kind of way,
as if the subject were too mournful to be discussed in all its
harrowing details.
None of the Doctor’s maps or instruments were recovered; his bereaved
landlord holds them as security for certain rents claimed to be due and
unpaid. It is probable that Great Britain will make a stern demand for
them, and if they are not at once surrendered will—submit her claim to
a Conference.
.... The prim young maidens who affiliate with the Young Men’s
Christian Association of San Francisco—who furnish the posies for their
festivals, and assist in the singing of psalms—have a gymnasium in the
temple. Thither they troop nightly to display their skill in turning
inside out and shutting themselves up like jack-knives of the gentler
kind.
Here may be seen the godly Rachel and the serious Ruth, suspended by
their respective toes between the heaven to which they aspire and the
wicked world they do abhor. Here the meek-eyed Hannah, pendent from the
horizontal bar, doubleth herself upon herself and stares fixedly
backward from between her shapely limbs, a thing of beauty and a joy
for several minutes. Mehitable Ann, beloved of young Soapenlocks,
vaults lightly over a barrier and with unspoken prayer lays hold on the
unstable trapeze mounting aloft in air. Jerusha, comeliest of her sex,
ties herself in a double bow-knot, and meditates upon the doctrine of
election.
O, blessed temple of grace divine! O, innocence and youth and simple
faith! O, water and molasses and unsalted butter! O, niceness absolute
and godly whey! Would that we were like unto these ewe lambs, that we
might frisk and gambol among them without evil. Would that we were
female, and Christian, and immature, with a flavour as of green grass
and a hope in heaven. Then would we, too, sing hymns through our
blessed nose, and contort and musculate with much satisfaction of soul,
even in the gymnasium of The Straight-backed.
.... Some raging iconoclast, after having overthrown religion by
history, upset history by science, and then toppled over science, has
now laid his impious hands upon babies’ nursing bottles.
“The tubes of these infernal machines,” says this tearing beast, “are
composed of india-rubber dissolved in bisulphide of carbon, and
thickened with lead, resin, and sometimes oxysulphuret of antimony,
from which, when it comes in contact with the milk, sulphuretted
hydrogen is evolved, and lactate of lead formed in the stomach.”
This logic is irresistible. Granting only that the tubes are made in
that simple and intelligible manner (and anybody can see for himself
that they are), the sulphuretted hydrogen and the lactate of lead
follow (down the œsophagus) as a logical sequence. But the scientific
horror seems to be profoundly unaware that these substances are not
only harmless to the child, but actually nutritious and essential to
its growth. Not only so, but nature has implanted in its breast an
instinctive craving for these very comforts. Often have we seen some
wee thing turn disgusted from the breast and lift up its thin voice:
“Not for Joseph; give me the bottle with the oxysulphuret of antimony
tube. I take sulphuretted hydrogen and lactate of lead in mine every
time!” And we have said: “Nature is working in that darling. What God
hath joined together let no man put asunder!”
And we have thought of the wicked iconoclast.
.... There are a lot of evil-minded horses about the city, who seem to
take a fiendish delight in letting fly their heels at whomsoever they
catch in a godly reverie unconscious of their proximity. This is
perfectly natural and human, but it is annoying to be always getting
horse-kicked when one is not in a mood for it.
The worst of it is, these horses always manage it so as to get tethered
across the sidewalk in the most populous thoroughfares, where they at
once drop into the semblance of a sound slumber. By this means they
lure the unsuspecting to their doom, and just as some unconscious
pedestrian is passing astern of them they wake up, and without a
preliminary yawn, or even a warning shake of the tail like the more
chivalrous rattlesnake, they at once discharge their feet at him with a
rapidity and effect that are quite surprising if the range be not too
long. Usually this occurs in Merchant-street, below Montgomery, and the
damage is merely nominal; some worthless Italian fisherman, market
gardener, or decayed gentleman oozing out of a second-class restaurant
being the only sufferer.
Rut not infrequently these playful brutes get themselves tethered in
some fashionable promenade, and the consequence is demoralizing to
white people. We speak within the limits of possibility when we say
that we have seen no less than seven women and children in the air at
once, impelled heavenward by as many consecutive kicks of a single
skilled operator. No longer ago than we can remember we saw an aged
party in spectacles and a clawhammer coat gyrating through the air like
an irregular bolt shot out of a catapult. Before we could ascertain
from him the site of the quadruped from whom he had received his
impulsion, he had passed like a vague dream, and the equine scoundrel
went unwhipped of justice.
These flying squadrons are serious inconveniences to public travel; it
is conducive to profanity to have a whizzing young woman, a rattling
old man, or a singing baby flung against one’s face every few moments
by the hoofs of some animal whom one has never injured, and who is a
perfect stranger.
It ought to be stopped.
.... In the telegraphic account of a distressing railway accident in
New York, we find the following:—“The body of Mr. Germain was
identified by his business partner, John Austin, who seemed terribly
affected by his loss.”
O, reader, how little we think upon the fearful possibilities hidden
away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its
light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object,
about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and
shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and
makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a
sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets;
to-morrow—we lose our business partner!
.... Mr. J. L. Dummle, one of our most respected citizens, left his
home to go, as he said, to his office. There was nothing unusual in his
demeanour, and he appeared to be in his customary health and spirits.
It is not known that there was anything in his financial or domestic
affairs to make life distasteful to him. About half an hour after
parting with his family, he was seen conversing with a friend at the
corner of Kearny and Sutter-streets, from which point he seems to have
gone directly to the Vallejo-street wharf. He was here seen by the
captain of the steamer _New World_, standing upon the extreme end of
the wharf, but the circumstance did not arouse any suspicion in the
mind of the Captain, to whom he was well known. At that moment some
trivial business diverted the Captain’s attention, and he saw Mr.
Dummle no more; but it has been ascertained that the latter proceeded
directly home, where he may now be seen by any one desiring to obtain
further particulars of the melancholy event here narrated.
Mr. Dummle speaks of it with perfect frankness and composure.
.... In deference to a time-worn custom, on the first day of the year
the writer swore to, affixed a revenue stamp upon, and recorded the
following document:—
“I will not, during this year, utter a profane word—unless in
sport—without having been previously vexed by something.
“I will murder no one that does not offend me, except for his money.
“I will commit highway robbery upon none but small school children, and
then only under the stimulus of present or prospective hunger.
“I will not bear false witness against my neighbour where nothing is to
be made by it.
“I will be as moral and religious as the law shall compel me to be.
“I will run away with no man’s wife without her full and free consent,
and never, no never, so help me heaven! will I take his children along.
“I wont write any wicked slanders against anybody, unless by refraining
I should sacrifice a good joke.
“I wont beat any cripples who do not come fooling about me when I am
busy; and I will give all my neighbours’ boots to the poor.”
....A town in Vermont has a society of young men, formed for the
express purpose of rescuing young ladies from drowning. We warn these
gentlemen that we will not accept even honorary membership in their
concern; we do not sympathize with the movement. Upon several occasions
we have stood by and seen young ladies’ noses disappear beneath the
waters blue, with a stolid indifference that would have been creditable
in a husband. It was a trifle rough on the darlings, but if we know our
own mind we do not purpose, just for the doubtful pleasure of saving a
female’s life, to surrender our prerogative of marrying when and whom
we like.
If we take a fancy to a woman we shall wed her, but we’re not to be
coerced into matrimony by any ridiculous school-girl who may chance to
fall into a horse-pond. We know their tricks and their manners—waking
to consciousness in a fellow’s arms and throwing their own wet ones
about his neck, saying, “The life you have preserved, noble youth, is
yours; whither thou goest I will go; thy horses and carriages shall be
my horses and carriages!”
We are too old a sturgeon to be caught with a spoon-hook. Ladies in the
vicinity of our person need not hesitate to fling themselves madly into
the first goose-puddle that obstructs their way; their liberty of
action will be scrupulously respected.
.... There is a bladdery old nasality ranging about the country upon
free passes, vexing the public ear with “hallowed songs,” and making of
himself a spectacle to the eye. This bleating lamb calls himself the
“Sacred Singer,” and has managed to get that pleasing title into the
newspapers until it is become as offensive as himself.
Now, therefore, we do trustfully petition that this wearisome
psalm-sharp, this miauling meter-monger, this howling dervish of hymns
devotional, may strain his trachea, unsettle the braces of his lungs,
crack his ridiculous gizzard and perish of pneumonia starvation. And
may the good Satan seize upon the catgut strings of his tuneful soul,
and smite therefrom a wicked, wicked waltz!
.... We hold a most unflattering opinion of the man who will thieve a
dog, but between him and the man who will keep one, the moral
difference is not so great as to be irreconcilable.
Our own dog is a standing example of canine inutility. The scurvy cur
is not only totally depraved in his morals, but his hair stands the
wrong way, and his tail is of that nameless type intermediate between
the pendulously pitiful and the spirally exasperating—a tail which
gives rise to conflicting emotions in the mind of the beholder, and
causes the involuntarily uplifted hand to hesitate if it shall knuckle
away the springing tear, or fall in thunderous vengeance upon the head
of the dog’s master.
That dog spends about half his elegant leisure in devouring the cold
victuals of compassion, and the other half in running after the bricks
of which he is the provocation and we are the target. Within the last
six years we employed as editors upon the unhappy journal which it was
intended that this article should redeem, no less than sixteen
pickpockets, hoping they would steal him; but with an acute
intelligence of which their writing conveyed but an imperfect idea,
they shunned the glittering bait, as one walks to windward of the
deadly upas tree. We have given him away to friends until we haven’t a
friend left; we have offered him at auction-sales, and been ourselves
knocked down; we have decoyed him into strange places and abandoned
him, until we are poor from the payment of unpromised rewards. In the
character of a charitable donation he has been driven from the door of
every orphan asylum, foundling hospital, and reform school in the
State. Not a week passes but we forfeit exemplary damages for inciting
him to fall foul of passing gentlemen, in the vain hope of getting him
slain.
If any one would wish to purchase a cheap dog, we would sell this
beast.
.... A religious journal published in the Far West says that Brothers
Dong, Gong, and Tong are Chinese converts to its church. There is a
fine religious nasality about these names that is strongly suggestive
of the pulpit in the palmy days of the Puritans.
By the way, we should dearly love to know how to baptize a Chinaman. We
have a shrewd suspicion that it is done as the Mongolian laundryman
dampens our linen: by taking the mouth full of water and spouting it
over the convert’s head in a fine spray. If so, it follows that the
pastor having most “cheek” is best qualified for cleansing the pagan
soul.
An important question arises here. Suppose Dong, Gong, and Tong to have
been baptized in this way, who pronounced that efficacious formula, “I
baptize thee in the name,” etc.? Clearly the parson, with his mouth
full of water, could not have done so at the instant of baptism, and if
the sentence was spoken by any other person it was a falsehood. It must
therefore have been spoken either before the minister distended his
cheeks, or after he had exhausted them. In either case, according to
the learned Dr. Sicklewit, the ceremony is utterly null and void of
effect. (_Study of Baptism_, vol. ix., ch. cxix. § vi. p. 627, line 13
from bottom.)
Possibly, however, D., G. and T. were not baptized in this way. Then
how the devil were they baptized?—and why?
.... Henry Wolfe, of Kentucky, aged one hundred and eight years, who
had never been sick in his life, lay down one fine day and sawed his
neck asunder with a razor. Henry did not believe in self-slaughter; he
despised it. It was Henry’s opinion that as God had placed us here we
should stay until it was His pleasure to remove us. That is also our
opinion, and the opinion of all other good Christians who would like to
die but are afraid to do it. It will be observed that Henry could not
claim originality of opinion.
But there is a point beyond which hope deferred maketh the heart sick,
and Henry had passed that point. He waited patiently till he was naked
of scalp and deaf of ear. He endured without repining the bent back,
the sightless eyes, and the creaking joints incident to over-maturity.
But when he saw a man perish of senility, who in infancy had called him
“Old Hank,” Mr. Wolfe thought patience had ceased to be commendable,
and he abandoned his post of duty without being regularly relieved.
It is to be hoped he will be hotly punished for it.
.... One day an obscure and unimportant person pitched himself among
the rolling porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busy-body,
not at once clearly apprehending that the matter was none of his
immediate business, hied him down to the engineer and commanded that
official to “back her, hard!” As it is customary upon the high seas for
such orders to emanate from the officer in command, that particular
boat kept forging ahead, and the unimportant old person carried out his
original design—that is, he went to the bottom like an iron wedge.
Rises the press in its wrath and prates about a Grand Jury! Shrieks an
intelligent public, in chorus, at the heartless engineer!
Meantime the pretty fish are running away with choice bits of God’s
image at the bottom of the bay; the cunning crab makes merry with a
dead man’s eye, the nipping shrimp sweetens himself for the table upon
the clean juices of a succulent corpse. Below all is peace and fat
feasting; above rolls the sounding ocean of eternal Bosh!
.... There is war! The woman suffrage folk go up against one another,
because that a portion of them cleave to the error that the Bible is a
collection of fables. These will probably divest themselves of this
belief about the time that Mr. Satan stands over them with a
toasting-fork, points significantly to a glowing gridiron, and says to
each suffrager:
“Madame, I beg your pardon, but you will please retire to the ladies’
dressing-room, disrobe, unpad, lay off your back-hair; and make
yourself as comfortable as possible while some fresh coals are being
put on the fire. When you have unmade your toilet you may touch that
bell, and you will be nicely buttered and salted for the iron. A polite
and gentlemanly attendant will occasionally turn you, and I shall take
pleasure in looking in upon you once in a million years, to see that
you are being properly done. Exceedingly sultry weather, Madame. _Au
revoir_.”
.... The funeral of the Rev. Father Byrne took place from the Church of
the Holy Cross. The ceremonies were of the most solemn and impressive
character, and were keenly enjoyed by the empty benches by which the
Protestant clergy were ably represented. Why turned ye not out, O
Biblethump, and Muddletext, and you, Hymnsing? Is it thus that the
Master was wont to treat the dead?
Now get thee into the secret recesses of thy closet, Rev. Lovepreach;
knuckle down upon thy knees and pray to a tolerant God not to smite
thee with a plague. For lo! thou hast been a bigoted, bat-eyed,
cat-hearted fraud—a preacher of peace and a practiser of strife. For
these many years thy tongue hath been dropping gospel honey, and thy
soul secreting bitterness. Thy voice has been as the sound of glad
horns upon a hill, but thy ways are the ways of a gaunt hound tracking
the hunted stag. “Holier than we,” are you? And when the worker of
differing faith is gone to his account, you turn your sleek back upon
the God’s image as it is given to the waiting worms. Perdition seize
thee and thy holiness! we’ll none of it.
.... Two hundred dollars for biting a woman’s neck and arms! That was
the sentence imposed upon the gentle Mr. Hill, because His Eminence set
his incisors into the yielding tissue of Mrs. Langdon, a lady with whom
his wife happened to be debating by means of a stew-kettle.
If this monstrous decision stand, the writer owes the treasury about
ten thousand dollars. Though by nature of a mild and gentle appetite,
preferring simple roots and herbs, yet it has been his custom to nip
all female necks and arms that have been willingly submitted unto his
teeth. He hath found in this harmless, and he had supposed lawful,
practice, an exceeding sweetness of sensation, and a satisfaction
wherewith the delights of sausage, or the bliss of pigs’ feet, can in
nowise compare. Having commonly found the gratification mutual, he
thinks he is justified in maintaining its innocence.
.... We are tolerably phlegmatic and notoriously hard to provoke. We
look on with considerable composure while our favourite Chinaman is
being dismembered in the streets, and our dog publicly insulted.
Detecting an alien hand in our trousers pocket excites in us only a
feeling of temperate disapprobation, and an open swindle executed upon
our favourite cousin by an unscrupulous shopkeeper we regard simply as
an instance of enterprise which has taken an unfortunate direction.
Slow to anger, quick to forgive, charitable in judgment and to mercy
prone; with unbounded faith in the entire goodness of man and the
complete holiness of woman; seeking ever for palliating circumstances
in the conduct of the blackest criminal—we are at once a model of
moderation and a pattern of forbearance.
But if Mrs. Victoria Woodhull and her swinish crew of free lovers had
but a single body, and that body lay asleep under the upturned root of
a prostrate oak, we would work with a dull jack-knife day and
night—month in and month out—through summer’s sun and winter’s storm—to
sever that giant trunk, and let that mighty root, clasping its mountain
of inverted earth, back into the position assigned to it by nature and
by nature’s God!
.... We like a liar—a thoroughly conscientious, industrious, and
ingenious liar. Not your ordinary prevaricator, who skirts along the
coast of truth, keeping ever within sight of the headlands and
promontories of probability—whose excursions are limited to short,
fair-weather reaches into the ocean of imagination, and who paddles for
port as if the devil were after him whenever a capful of wind threatens
a storm of exposure; but a bold, sea-going liar, who spurns a
continent, striking straight out for blue water, with his eyes fixed
upon the horizon of boundless mendacity.
We have found such a one, and our hat is at half-mast in token of
profound esteem and conscious inferiority. This person gravely tells us
that at the burning of the Archiepiscopal Palace at Bourges, among
other valuable manuscripts destroyed was the original death-warrant of
Jesus Christ, signed at Jerusalem by one Capel, and dated U. C. 783.
Not only so, but he kindly favours us with a literal translation of it!
One cannot help warming up to a man who can lie like that. Talk about
Chatterton’s Rowley deception, Macpherson’s Ossian fraud, or Locke’s
moon hoax! Compared with this tremendous fib they are as but the stilly
whisper of a hearth-stone cricket to the shrill trumpeting of a wounded
elephant—the piping of a sick cocksparrow to the brazen clang of a
donkey in love!
.... For the memory of the late John Ridd, of Illinois, we entertain
the liveliest contempt. Mr. Ridd recently despatched himself with a
firearm for the following reasons, set forth in a letter that he left
behind.
“Two years ago I discovered that I was worthless. My great failings are
insincerity of character and sly ugliness. Any one who watched me a
little while would discover my unenviable nature.”
Now, it is not that Mr. Ridd was worthless that we hold his memory in
reprobation; nor that he was insincere, nor sly, nor ugly. It is
because possessing these qualities he was fool enough to think they
disqualified him for the duties of life, or stood in the way of his
being an ornament to society and an honour to his country.
....“About the first of next month,” says a pious contemporary, “we
shall discontinue the publication of our paper in this city, and shall
remove our office and fixtures to—, where we hope for a blessing upon
our work, and a share of advertising patronage.”
A numerous editorial staff of intelligent jackasses will accompany the
caravan. In imagination we behold them now, trudging gravely along
behind the moving office fixtures, their goggle eyes cast down in
Christian meditation, their horizontal ears flopping solemnly in unison
with their measured tread. Ever and anon the leader halts, uprolls the
speculative eye, arrests the oscillation of the ears, laying them
rigidly back along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank
jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from
their eternal repose. His companions take up the parable in turn, “and
the echoes, huddling in affright, like Odin’s hounds,” go baying down
the valleys and clamouring amongst the pines, like a legion of
invisible fiends after a strange cat. Then again all is hush, and
tramp, and sanctity, and flop, and holy meditation! And so the
pilgrimage is accomplished. Selah! Hee-haw!
.... A man in California has in his possession the rope with which his
father was hanged by a vigilance committee in ’49 for horse-stealing.
He keeps it neatly coiled away in an old cheese-box, and every Sunday
morning he lays his left hand reverently upon it, and with uncovered
head and a look of stern determination in his eye, raises his right to
heaven, and swears by an avenging God it served the old man right!
It has not been deemed advisable to put this dutiful son under bonds to
keep the peace.
.... A contemporary has some elaborate obituary commendation of a boy
seven years of age, who was “a child of more than ordinary
sprightliness, loved the Bible, and was deeply impressed with a
veneration for holy things.”
Now we would sorrowfully ask our contemporary if he thinks flattery
like this can soothe the dull cold ear of young Dobbin? Dobbin _père_
may enjoy it as light and entertaining reading, but when the
resurrecting angel shall stir the dust of young Theophilus with his
foot, and sing out “get up, Dobbin,” we think that sprightly youth will
whimper three times for molasses gingerbread before he will signify an
audible aspiration for the Bible. A sweet-tooth is often mistaken for
early piety, and licking a sugar archangel may be easily construed as
veneration for holy things.
.... A young physician of Troy became enamoured of a rich female
patient, and continued his visits after she was convalescent. During
one of these he had the misfortune to give her the small-pox, having
neglected to change his clothes after calling on another patient
enjoying that malady. The lady had to be removed to the pest-house,
where the stricken medico sedulously attends her for nothing. His
generosity does not end here: he declares that should she recover he
will marry her—if she be not too badly pitted.
Apparently the legal profession does not enjoy a monopoly of all the
self-sacrifice that is current in the world.
.... A young woman stood before the mirror with a razor. Pensively she
twirled the unaccustomed instrument in her jewelled fingers, fancying
her smooth cheek clothed with a manly beard. In imagination she saw her
pouting lips shaded by the curl of a dark moustache, and her eyes grew
dim with tears that it was not, never could be, so. And the mirrored
image wept back at her a silent sob, the echo of her grief.
“Ah,” she sighed, “why did not God make me a man? Must I still drag out
this hateful, whiskerless existence?”
The girlish tears welled up again and overran her eyes. Thoughtfully
she crossed her right hand over to her left ear; carefully but timidly
she placed the keen, cold edge of the steel against the smooth
alabaster neck, twisted the fingers of her other hand into her long
black hair, drew back her head and ripped away. There was an apparition
in that mirror as of a ripe watermelon opening its mouth to address a
public meeting; there were the thud and jar of a sudden sitting down;
and when the old lady came in from frying doughnuts in the adjoining
room she found something that seemed to interest her—something still
and warm and wet—something kind of doubled up.
Ah! poor old wretch! your doughnuts shall sizzle and sputter and swim
unheeded in their grease; but the beardless jaw that should have wagged
filially to chew them is dropped in death; the stomach which they
should have distended is crinkled and dry for ever!
.... Miss Olive Logan’s lecture upon “girls” has suggested to the
writer the propriety of delivering one upon “boys.” He doesn’t know
anything about boys, and is therefore entirely unprejudiced. He was
never a boy himself—has always been just as old as he is now; though
the peculiar vagueness of his memory previously to the time of building
the pyramid of Cheops, and his indistinct impressions as to the
personal appearance of Job, lead to the suspicion that his faculties at
that time were partially undeveloped. He regards himself as the only
lecturer extant who can do justice to boys; and he prefers to do it
with an axe-handle, but is willing, like Olive Logan, to sacrifice his
mere preferences for the purpose of making money.
This lecture will take place as soon as a sum of money has been sent to
this office sufficiently large to justify him in renting a hall for one
hour’s uninterrupted profanity—sixty minutes of careful, accurate, and
elaborate cursing. Admission—all the money you have about you. Boys
will be charged in proportion to their estimated depravity; fifty
dollars a head for the younger sorts, and from five hundred to one
thousand for those more advanced in general diabolism.
.... Some women in New York have set the fashion of having costly
diamonds set into their front teeth. The attention of robbers and
garotters is called to this fact, with the recommendation that no
greater force be used than is necessary. The use of the ordinary
bludgeon or slung shot would be quite needless; a gentle tap on the
head with a clay pipe or a toothpick will place the victim in the
proper condition to be despoiled. Great care should be exercised in
extracting the jewels; instead of the teeth being knocked inwards, as
in ordinary cases of mere purposeless mangling, they should be
artistically lifted out by inserting the point of a crowbar into the
mouth and jumping on the other end.
.... The Coroner having broken his leg, inquests will hereafter be held
by the Justices of the Peace. People intending to commit suicide will
confer a favour by worrying along until the Coroner shall recover, as
the Justices are all new to the business. The cold, uncharitable world
is tolerably hard to endure, but if unfortunates will secure some
respectable employment and go to work at it they will be surprised to
find how glibly the moments will glide away. The Coroner will probably
be ready for their carcases in about four weeks, and it would be well
not to bind themselves to service for a longer period, lest he should
find it necessary to send for them and do their little business
himself. A fair supply of street-cadavers and water-corpses can usually
be counted on, but it is absolutely necessary to have a certain
proportion of suicides.
.... John Reed, of Illinois, is a man who knows his rights, and knowing
dares maintain. Having communicated to a young lady his intention of
conferring upon her the honour of his company at a Fourth of July
celebration, John was pained and disgusted to hear the proposal quietly
declined. John went thoughtfully away to a neighbour who keeps a
double-shotgun. This he secured, and again sought the object of his
hopeless preference. The object was seated at the dinner-table
contending with her lobscouse, and did not feel his presence near. Mr.
Reed poised and sighted his artillery, and with the very natural
remark, “I think this fetcher,” he exploded the twin charges. A moment
later might have been seen the rare spectacle of a headless young lady
sitting bolt upright at table, spooning a wad of hash into the top of
her neck. The wall opposite presented the appearance of having been
bombarded with fresh livers and baptized with sausage-meat.
No one in the vicinity slept any that night. They were busy getting
ready for the Fourth: the gentlemen going about inviting the ladies to
attend the celebration, and the ladies hastily and unconditionally
accepting.
.... In answer to the ladies who are always bothering him for a
photograph, Mr. Grile hopes to satisfy all parties by the following
meagre description of his charms.
In person he is rather thin early in the morning, and a trifle
corpulent after dinner; in complexion pale, with a suspicion of ruby
about the gills. He wears his hair brown, and parted crosswise of his
remarkably fine head. His eyes are of various colours, but mostly
bottle-green, with a glare in them reminding one of incipient
hydrophobia—from which he really suffers. A permanent depression in the
bridge of his nose was inherited from a dying father what time the son
mildly petitioned for a division of the estate to which he and his
seventeen brothers were about to become the heirs. The mouth is
gentlemanly capacious, indicative of high breeding and feeding; the
under jaw projects slightly, forming a beautiful natural reservoir for
the reception of beer and other liquids. The forehead retreats rapidly
whenever a creditor is met, or an offended reader espied coming toward
the office.
His legs are of unequal length, owing to his constant habit of using
one of them to kick people who may happen to present a fairer mark than
the nearest dog. His hand is remarkably slender and white, and is
usually inserted in another man’s pocket. In dress he is wonderfully
fastidious, preferring to wear nothing but what is given him. His gait
is something between those of a mud-turtle and a jackass-rabbit,
verging closely on to the latter at periods of supposed personal
danger, as before intimated.
In conversation he is animated and brilliant, some of his lies being
quite equal to those of Coleridge or Bolingbroke; but in repose he
resembles nothing so much as a heap of old clothes. In conclusion, his
respect for letter-writing ladies is so great that he would not touch
one of them with a ten-foot pole.
.... Only one hundred and ten thousand pious pilgrims visited Mount
Ararat in a body this year. The urbane and gentlemanly proprietors of
the Ark Tavern complain that their receipts have hardly been sufficient
to pay for the late improvements in this snug retreat. These gentlemen
continue to keep on hand their usual assortment of choice wines,
liquors, and cigars.
Opposite the Noah House, Shem Street, between Ham and Japhet.
.... It is commonly supposed that President Lopez, of Paraguay, was
killed in battle; but after reading the following slander upon him and
his mother, written some time since by a friend of ours, it is
difficult to believe he did not commit suicide:—
“The telegraph informs us that President Lopez, of Paraguay, has again
murdered his mother for conspiring against his life. That sprightly,
and active old lady has now been executed three thousand times for the
same offence. She is now eighty-three years old, and erect as a
telegraph pole. Time writes no wrinkles on her awful brow, and her
teeth are as sound as on the day of her birth. She rises every morning
punctually at four o’clock and walks ten miles; then, after a light
breakfast, enters her study and proceeds to hatch out a new conspiracy
against her first born. About 2 P. M. it is discovered, and she is
publicly executed. A light toast and a cup of strong tea finish the
day’s business; she retires at seven and goes to sleep with her mouth
open. She has pursued this life with the most unfaltering regularity
for the last fifty years. It is only by this unswerving adherence to
hygienic principles that she has attained her present green old age.”
.... There is a person resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot
regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval. It is not
that the woman—for this person is a mature female—ever did us any harm,
or is likely to; that is not our grievance. What we seriously object to
and actively contemn—yea, bitterly denounce—is the nose of her. So
mighty a nose we have never beheld—so spacious, and open, and roomy a
human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture. It rises
from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic!
It turns up at an angle that fills the spectator with admiration, and
impresses him with an awe that is speechless.
But we have no space for a description of this eternal proboscis.
Suffice it that its existence is a standing menace to society, a threat
to civilization, and a danger to commerce. The woman who will harbour
and cherish such an organ is no better than a pirate. We do not know
who she is, and we have no desire to know. We only know that all the
angels could not pull us past her house with a chain cable, without
giving us one look at that astounding feature. It is the one prominent
landmark of the nineteenth century—the special wonder of the age—the
solitary marvel of a generation!
We would give anything to see her blow it.
.... At the Coroner’s inquest in the case of John Harvey there was
considerable difficulty in ascertaining the cause of death, but as one
witness testified that the deceased was pounding fulminate of mercury
at the Powder Works just previously to his lamented demise, there is
good reason to believe he was hoist into heaven with his own petard. In
fact, such fractions of him as have come to hand, up to date, seem to
confirm this view. This evidence is rather disjointed and fragmentary,
but it is sufficient to discourage the brutal practice of pounding
fulminate of mercury when our streets and Sunday-schools are swarming
with available Chinaman who seldom hit back.
.... We find the following touching tale in all the newspapers. It
belongs to that class of tales concerning which the mildest doubt is
hateful blasphemy.
“A little girl in Ithaca, just before she died, exclaimed: ‘Papa, take
hold of my hand and help me across.’ Her father had died two months
before. Did she see him?”
There is not a doubt of it; but interested relatives have somewhat
misstated the little girl’s exclamation, which was this:—
“Papa, take hold of my hand, and I will help you out of that.”
.... We get the most distressing accounts of the famine in Persia. It
is said that cannibalism is as common among the starving inhabitants as
pork-eating in California.
This is very sad; it shows either a very low state of Persian morality
or a conspicuous lack of Persian ingenuity. They ought to manage it as
the conscientious Indians do. In time of famine these gentle creatures
never disgrace themselves by feasting upon each other: they permit
their dogs to devour the dead, and then they eat the dogs.
.... An old lady was set upon by a fiend in human apparel, and
remorselessly kissed in the presence of her daughter.
This happened a few days since in Iowa, where the fiend now lies
buried. Any man who is so dead to shame, and so callous of soul
generally, as to force his unwelcome endearments upon a poor,
defenceless old lady, while her beautiful young daughter stands weeping
by, equally defenceless, deserves pretty much all the evil that can be
done to him. Splitting him like a fish is so disgracefully inadequate a
punishment, that the man who should administer it might justly be
regarded as an accomplice.
.... From London we have intelligence of the stabbing to death of a man
by mistake. His assassin mistook him for a person related to himself,
whose loss would be his own financial gain. Fancy the utter dejection
of this stabber when he discovered the absurd blunder he had committed!
We believe a slip like that would justify a man in throwing down the
knife and discarding murder for ever; while two such errors would be
ample excuse for him to go into some kind of business.
.... A small but devout congregation were at worship. When it had
become a free exhibition, in which any brother could enact a part, a
queer-looking person got up and began a pious and learned exhortation.
He spake for some two hours, and was listened to with profound
attention, his discourse punctuated with holy groans and pious amens
from an edified circle of the saintly. Tears fell as the gentle rains
from heaven. Several souls were then and there snatched as brands from
the eternal burning, and started on their way to heaven rejoicing. At
the end of the second hour, and as the inspired stranger approached
“eighty-seventhly,” some one became curious to know who the teacher
was, when lo! it turned out that he was an escaped lunatic from the
Asylum.
The curses of the elect were not loud but deep. They fumed with
exceeding wrath, and slopped over with pious indignation at the swindle
put upon them. The inspired, however, escaped, and was afterwards
captured in a cornfield.
The funeral was unostentatious.
.... We hear a great deal of sentiment with regard to the last solar
eclipse. Considerable ink has been consumed in setting forth the
terrible and awe-inspiring features of the scene. As there will be no
other good one this season, the following recipe for producing one
artificially will be found useful:—Suspend a grindstone from the centre
of a room. Take a cheese of nearly the same size, and after blacking
one side of it, pass it slowly across the face of the grindstone and
observe the effect in a mirror placed opposite, on the cheese side. The
effect will be terrific, and may be heightened by taking a rum punch
just at the instant of contact. This plan is quite superior to that of
nature, for with several cheeses graduated in size, all known varieties
of eclipse may be presented. In writing up the subsequent account, a
great many interesting phenomena may be introduced quite impossible to
obtain either by this or any other process.
.... We have observed with considerable impatience that the authors of
Sunday School books do not seem to know anything; there is no reason
why these pleasant volumes should not be made as effective as they are
deeply interesting. The trouble is in the method of treating wicked
children; instead of being destroyed by appalling calamities, they
should simply be made painfully ridiculous.
For example, the little scoundrel who climbs up an apple-tree to
plunder a bird’s-nest, ought _never_ to fall and break his neck. He
should be permitted to garner his unholy harvest of eggs in his pocket,
then lose his balance, catch the seat of his pantaloons on a knot-hole,
and hang doubled up, with the smashed eggs trickling down his jacket,
and getting into his hair and eyes. Then the good little girls should
be lugged in, to poke fun at him, and ask him if he likes ’em hard or
soft. This would be a most impressive warning.
The boy who neglects his prayers to go boating on a Sunday ought not to
be drowned. He should be spilled out into the soft mud along shore, and
stuck fast where the Sunday School scholars could pelt him with slush,
and their teacher have a fair fling at him with a dead cat.
The small female glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get
poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made
to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have
to be gouged out of her with a chisel and hammer.
Then there is the swearing party, who is struck by lightning—a very
shallow and unprofitable device. He should open his face to swear,
dislocate his jaw, be unable to get closed up, and the rats should get
in at night, make nests there, and breed.
There are other suggestions that might be made, but these will give a
fair idea of our method, the foundation of which is the substitution of
potent ridicule for the current grave but imbecile rebuke. It may be
gratifying to learn that we are embodying our views in a whole library
of Sunday School literature, adapted to the meanest capacity, and
therefore equally edifying to pupil, pastor, and parent.
.... A young correspondent, who has lately read a great deal in the
English papers about “baby-farming,” wishes to know what that may be.
It is a new method of agriculture, in which the young of our species
are used for manure.
The babies are collected each day and put into large vats containing
equal parts of hydrobicarbonate of oxygenated sulphide, and oxygenated
sulphide of hydrobicarbonate, where they are left to soak overnight. In
the morning they are carefully macerated in a mortar and are then
poured into shallow copper pans, where they remain until all the liquid
portions have been evaporated by the sun. The residuum is then scraped
out, and after the addition of a certain proportion of quicklime the
whole is thrown away. Ordinary bone dust and charcoal are then used for
manure, and the baby farmers seldom fail of getting a good crop of
whatever they plant, provided they stick the seeds in right end up.
It will be seen that the result depends more upon the hydrobicarbonate
than upon the infants; there isn’t much virtue in babies. But then our
correspondent should remember that there is none at all in adults.
.... A young woman writes to a contemporary, desiring to learn if it is
true that kissing a dead man will cure the tooth-ache. It might; it
sometimes makes a great difference whether you take your medicine hot
or cold. But we would earnestly advise her to try kissing a multitude
of live men before taking so peculiar a prescription. It is our
impression that corpses are absolutely worthless for kissing purposes,
and if one can find no better use for them, they might as well be
handed over to the needy and deserving worm.
.... Mr. Knettle, deceased, became irritated, and fired three shots
from a revolver into the head of his coy sweetheart, while she was
making believe to run away from him. It has seldom been our lot—except
in the cases of a few isolated policemen—to record so perfectly
satisfactory target practice. If that man had lived he would have made
his mark as well as hit it. He died by his own hand at the beginning of
a brilliant career, and although we cannot hope to emulate his
shooting, we may cherish the memory of his virtues just as if we could
bring down our girl every time at ten paces.
.... A pedagogue has been sentenced to the county gaol, for six months,
for whipping a boy in a brutal manner. The public heartily approves the
sentence, and, quite naturally, we dissent. We know nothing whatever
about this particular case, but upon general principles we favour the
extreme flagellation of incipient Man. In our own case the benefit of
the system is apparent; had not our pious parent administered daily
rebukes with such foreign bodies as he could lay his hands on we might
have grown up a Presbyterian deacon.
Look at us now!
.... A man who played a leading part in a late railroad accident had
had his life insured for twenty thousand dollars. Unfortunately the
policy expired just before he did, and he had neglected to renew it.
This is a happy illustration of the folly of procrastination. Had he
got himself killed a few days sooner his widow would have been provided
with the means of setting up housekeeping with another man.
.... People ought not to pack cocked pistols about in the hip pockets
of their trousers; the custom is wholly indefensible. Such is the
opinion of the last man who leaned up against the counter in a
Marysville drinking-saloon for a quiet chat with the barkeeper.
The odd boot will be given to the poor.
.... A man ninety-seven years of age has just died in the State of New
York. The Sun says he had conversed with both President Washington and
President Grant.
If there were any further cause of death it is not stated.
.... The letter following was written by the Rev. Reuben Hankerlockew,
a Persian Christian, in relation to the late famine in his country. The
Rev. gentleman took a hopeful view of affairs.
“Peace be with you—bless your eyes! Our country is now suffering the
direst of calamities, compared with which the punishment of Tarantulus”
(we suppose our correspondent meant Tantalus) “was nice, and the agony
of a dyspeptic ostrich in a junk shop is a condition to be coveted. We
are in the midst of plenty, but we can’t get anything that seems to
suit. The supply of old man is practically unlimited, but it is too
tough to chew. The market stalls are full of fresh girl, but the
scarcity of salt renders the meat entirely useless for table purposes.
Prime wife is cheap as dirt—and about as good. There is a ‘corner’ in
pickled baby, and nobody can ‘fill.’ The same article on the hoof is
all held by a ring of speculators at figures which appal the man of
moderate means. Of the various brands of ‘cemetery,’ that of Japan is
most abundant, owing to the recent pestilence, but it is, fishy and
rank. As for grain, or vegetable filling of any kind, there is none in
Persia, except the small lot I have on hand, which will be disposed of
in limited quantities for ready money. But don’t you foreigners bother
about us—we shall get along all right—until I have disposed of my
cereals. Persia does not need any foreign corn until after that.”
It is improbable that the Rev. gentleman himself perished of
starvation.
.... We are filled with unspeakable gratification to record the death
of that double girl who has been in everybody’s mouth for months. This
shameless little double-ender, with two heads and one body—two cherries
on a single stem, as it were—has been for many moons afflicting our
simple soul with an itching desire that she might die—the nasty pig!
Two half-girls, joined squarely at the waist, and without any legs, are
not a pleasant type of the coming woman.
Had she lived, she would have been a bone of social, theological, and
political contention, and we should never have heard the end—of which
she had two alike. If she had lived to marry, some mischief—making
scoundrel would have procured the indictment of her husband for bigamy.
The preachers would have fought for her, and if converted separately,
her Methodist end might have always been thrashing her Episcopal end,
or _vice versâ_. When she came to serve on a jury, nobody could have
decided if there ought to be eleven others or only ten; and if she ever
voted twice, the opposite party would have had her up for repeating;
and if only once, she would have been read out of her own, for criminal
apathy in the exercise of the highest duty, etc.
We bless God for taking her away, though what He can want with her is
as difficult a problem as herself or Himself. She will have to wear two
golden crowns, thus entailing a double expense; she wont be able to fly
any, and having no legs, she must be constantly watched to keep her
from rolling out of heaven. She will just have to lie on a soft cloud
in some out-of-the-way corner, and eternally toot two trumpets, without
other exercise. If Gabriel is the sensible fellow we think him, he wont
wake her at the Resurrection.
Look at this infant in any light you please, and it is evident that she
was a dead failure and is yet. She did but one good thing, and that was
to teach the Siamese Twins how to die. After they shall have taken the
hint, we hope to have no more foolish experiments in double folks born
that way. Married couples are sufficiently unpleasing.
.... The head biblesharp of the New York _Independent_ resigned his
position, because the worldly proprietor would insist upon running the
commercial column of that sheet in a secular manner, with an eye to the
goods that perish. The godly party wished him to ignore the filthy
lucre of this world, and lay up for himself treasures in heaven; but
the sordid wretch would seize every covert opportunity to reach out his
little muckrake after the gold of the gentile, to the neglect of the
things that appertain unto salvation. Therefore did the conscientious
driver of the piety-quill betake himself to some new field.
Will the editors of all similar sheets do likewise? or have they more
elastic consciences? For, behold, the muckrake is likewise visible in
all.
.... Some of the Red Indians on the plains have discarded the songs of
their fathers, and adopted certain of Dr. Watts’s hymns, which they
howl at their scalp-dances with much satisfaction.
This is encouraging, certainly, but we dare not counsel the good
missionaries to pack up their libraries and go home with the impression
that the noble red is thoroughly converted. There yet remains a work to
do; he must be taught to mortify, instead of paint, his countenance,
and induced to abandon the savage vice of stealing for the Christian
virtue of cheating. Likewise he must be made to understand that
although conjugal fidelity is highly commendable, all civilized nations
are distinguished by a faithful adherence to the opposite practice.
.... Some raving maniac sends us a mass of stuff, which savours
strongly of Walt Whitman, and which, probably for that reason, he calls
poetry. We have room for but a single bit of description, which we
print as an illustration of the depth of literary depravity which may
be attained by a “poet” in love:—
“Behold, thou art fair, my love: behold, thou art fair; thou hast
dove’s eyes within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats that
appear from Mt. Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are
even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear
twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of
scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of
pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is a tower of ivory; thine eyes
like the fishpools of Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is
as the tower of Lebanon looking towards Damascus.”
Really, we think that will do for one instalment. What the mischief
this “poet” means, with his goat’s hair, sheep’s teeth, and temples
like a piece of pomegranate, is quite beyond our mental reach. We would
suggest that the ignorance of English grammar displayed in the phrase
“every one bear twins,” is not atoned for by comparing his mistress’s
eyes to a duck pond, and her nose to the “tower of Lebanon looking
towards Damascus.” The latter simile is suggestive of unpleasant
consequences to the inhabitants of that village in case the young lady
should decide to blow that astounding feature! Our very young
contributor will consider himself dismissed with such ignominy as is
implied by our frantic indifference.
.... A liberal reward will be paid by the writer for a suitably
vituperative epithet to be applied to the ordinary street preacher. The
writer has himself laboured with so unflagging a zeal in the pursuit of
the proper word, has expended the midnight oil with so lavish and
matchless a prodigality, has kneaded his brain with such a singular
forgetfulness of self—that he is gone clean daft. And all, without
adequate result! From the profoundest deep of his teeming invention he
succeeded in evolving only such utterly unsatisfying results as
“rhinoceros,” “polypus,” and “sheeptick” in the animal kingdom, and
“rhubarb,” “snakeroot,” and “smartweed” in the vegetable. The mineral
world was ransacked, but gave forth only “old red sandstone,” which is
tolerably severe, but had been previously used to stigmatize a member
of the Academy of Sciences.
Now, what we wish to secure is a word that shall contain within itself
all the essential principles of downright abuse; the mere pronouncing
of which in the public street would subject one to the inconvenience of
being rent asunder by an infuriated populace—something so atrociously
apt and so exquisitely diabolical that any person to whom it should be
applied would go right away out and kick himself to death with a
jackass. We covenant that the inventor shall be slain the moment we are
in possession of his infernal secret, as life would of course be a
miserable burden to him ever afterward.
With a calm reliance upon the fertile scurrility of our readers, we
leave the matter in their hands, commending their souls to the merciful
God who contrived them.
.... We have received from a prominent clergyman a long letter of
earnest remonstrance against what he is pleased to term our “unprovoked
attacks upon God’s elect.”
We emphatically deny that we have ever made any unprovoked attacks upon
them. “God’s elect” are always irritating us. They are eternally lying
in wait with some monstrous absurdity, to spring it upon us at the very
moment when we are least prepared. They take a fiendish delight in
torturing us with tantrums, galling us with gammon, and pelting us with
platitudes. Whenever we disguise ourself in the seemly toggery of the
godly, and enter meekly into the tabernacle, hoping to pass unobserved,
the parson is sure to detect us and explode a bombful of bosh upon our
devoted head. No sooner do we pick up a religious weekly than we
stumble and sprawl through a bewildering succession of inanities,
manufactured expressly to ensnare our simple feet. If we take up a
tract we are laid out cold by an apostolic knock straight from the
clerical shoulder. We cannot walk out of a pleasant Sunday without
being keeled over by a stroke of pious lightning flashed from the
tempestuous eye of an irate churchman at our secular attire. Should we
cast our thoughtless glance upon the demure Methodist Rachel we are
paralysed by a scowl of disapprobation, which prostrates like the shock
of a gymnotus; and any of our mild pleasantry at the expense of young
Squaretoes is cut short by a Bible rebuke, shot out of his mouth like a
rock from a catapult.
Is it any wonder that we wax gently facetious in conversing of “the
elect?”—that in our weak way we seek to get even? Now, good clergyman,
go thou to the devil, and leave us to our own devices; or an offended
journalist shall skewer thee upon his spit, and roast thee in a blaze
of righteous indignation.
.... The New York _Tribune_, descanting upon the recent national
misfortune by which the writer’s red right hand was quietly chewed by
an envious bear, says it cannot commend the writer’s example, but hopes
“his next appearance in print may edify his readers on the dangers of
such a practice.”
We had not hitherto deemed it necessary to raise a warning voice to a
universe not much given to fooling with bears anyhow, but embrace this
opportunity to declare ourself firmly and unalterably opposed to the
whole business. We plant our ample feet squarely upon the platform of
non-intervention, so far as affects the social economy and individual
idiosyncrasies of bears. But if the _Tribune_ man expects a homily upon
the sin of feeding oneself in courses to wild animals, he is informed
that we waste no words upon the senseless wretch who is given to that
species of iniquity. We regard him with ineffable self-contempt.
.... A young girl in Grass Valley having died, her father wrote some
verses upon the occasion, in which she is made to discourse thus:—
“Then do not detain me, for why should I stay
When cherubs in heaven call me away?
Earth has no pleasure, no joys that compare,
With the joys that await us in heaven so fair.”
As the little darling was only two years and a fraction of age it is
tolerably impossible to divine upon what authority she sought to throw
discredit upon the joys of earth: her observation having been limited
to mother’s milk and treacle toffy. But that’s just the way with
professing Christians; they are always disparaging the delights which
they are unfitted to enjoy.
.... The Rev. Dr. Cunningham instructs his congregation that it is not
enough to give to the Church what they can spare, but to give and keep
giving until they feel it to be a burden and a sacrifice. These,
brethren, are the inspired words of one who has a deep and abiding
pecuniary interest in what he is talking about. Such a man cannot err,
except by asking too little; and empires have risen and perished,
islands have sprung from the sea, mountains have burnt their bowels
out, and rivers have run dry, since a man of God has committed this
error.