By the Effusive.
Professor Huxley is credited with the assertion that the primrose is "a
corollifloral dicotyledonous exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and a
central placenta."
A reporter with a large imagination, writing about the decoration of a
church at a fashionable wedding in this city, said that "the church was
ensconced in flowers."
A scientific writer defines sneezing as "a phenomenon provoked either by
an excitation brought to bear on the nasal membrane or by a sudden shock
of the sun's rays on the membranes of the eye. This peripheral
irritation is transmitted by the trifacial nerve to the Gasserian
ganglion, whence it passes by a commissure to an agglomeration of
globules in the medulla oblongata or in the protuberance; from this
point, by a series of numerous reflex and complicated acts, it is
transformed by the mediation of the spinal cord into a centrifugal
excitation which radiates outward by means of the spinal nerves to the
expiratory muscles."
The school committee in Massachusetts recommend exercises in English
composition in these terms:
"Next to the pleasure that pervades the corridors of the soul when it is
entranced by the whiling witchery that presides over it consequent upon
the almost divine productions of Mozart, Haydn, and Handel, whether
these are executed by magician concert parts in deep and highly matured
melody from artistic modulated intonations of the finely cultured human
voice, or played by some fairy-fingered musician upon the trembling
strings of the harp or piano, comes the charming delight we experience
from the mastery of English prose, and the spell-binding wizards of song
who by their art of divination through their magic wand, the pen, have
transformed scenes hitherto unknown and made them as immortal as those
spots of the Orient and mountain haunts of the gods, whether of sunny
Italy or of tuneful, heroic Greece."
A farmer's daughter expresses herself in the following terms:
"Dear Miss:
"The energy of the race prompts me to assure you that my request is
forbidden, the idea of which I awkwardly nourished, notwithstanding my
propensity to reserve. Mr. T will be there--Let me with confidence
assure you that him and brothers will be very happy to meet you and
brothers. Us girls cannot go, for reasons. The attention of cows claims
our assistance this evening.
"Unalterably yours."
The following is probably the longest sentence ever written, containing,
as it does, eight hundred words:
"I propose, then, to give your readers some description of this old yet
still strange and wild country, that has been settled for three hundred
years, and is not yet inhabited--a land of shifting sand and deep mud--a
land of noble rivers that rise in swamps and consist merely of chains of
shallow lakes, some of them twenty miles long and two miles across, and
only twelve feet deep--of wide, sandy plains, covered with
solemn-sounding pines--of spots so barren that nothing can be made to
grow upon them, and yet with a soil so fertile that if you tickle it
with a hoe, it will laugh out an abundant harvest of sugar, cotton, and
fruit--a land of oranges, lemons, pomegranates, pineapples, figs, and
bananas; whose rivers teem with fish, its forests with game, and its
very air with fowl; where everything will grow except apples and wheat;
where everything can be found except ice; yet where the people, with a
productive soil, a mild climate and beautiful nature, affording every
table luxury, live on corn-grist, sweet potatoes, and molasses; where
men possessing forty thousand head of cattle never saw a glass of milk
in their lives, using the imported article when used at all, and then
calling it consecrated milk; where the very effort to milk a cow would
probably scare her to death, as well as frighten a whole neighborhood by
the unheard of phenomenon; where cabbages grow on the tops of trees, and
you may dig bread out of the ground; where, below the frost-line, the
castor-oil plant becomes a large tree of several years' growth, and a
pumpkin or bean-vine will take root from its trailing branches, and thus
spread and live year after year; where cattle do not know what hay is,
and refuse it when offered, so that the purchase of a yoke of oxen is
not considered valid if the animals will not eat in a stable; and where
in the mild winter, when the land grass is dried up, horses and cattle
may be seen wading and swimming in the ponds and streams, plunging their
heads under water grasses and moss; where many lakes have holes in the
bottom and underground communication, so that they will sometimes shrink
away to a mere cupful, leaving many square miles of surface uncovered,
and then again fill up from below and spread out over their former area;
where some of them have outlets in the ocean far from shore, bursting up
a perpetual spring of fresh water in the very midst of the briny
saltness of the sea; where in times of low water, during a long
exhaustive dry season, men have gone under ground in one of these
subterranean rivers, from lake to lake, a distance of eight miles; where
the ground will sometimes sink and the cavity fill with water, until
tall trees, that had stood and sunk upright, will have their topmost
branches deeply covered; where rivers will disappear in the earth and
rise again, thus forming natural bridges, some of them a mile in
breadth; where, instead of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, there are
two seasons only--eight months summer, and four months warm weather;
where the winter is the dry season, and the summer almost a daily rain;
where, in order to take a walk, you first wade through a light sand
ankle deep and then get into a mud-puddle, and some of these mud-puddles
cover a whole county; where no clay is found fit for brick-making, and
people build houses without chimneys; where to make a living is so easy
a task, that every one possesses the laziness of ten ordinary men, every
one you wish to employ in labor says he is tired and would seem to have
been born so; where ague would prevail if the people would take the
trouble to shake; where a large orange-tree will bear several thousand
oranges--leaves, buds, blossom, half-grown and full-grown fruit, all at
once--and every twenty-five feet square of sand will sustain such a
tree; where, in many parts, cold weather is an impossibility, and
perpetual verdure reigns; where the Everglades are found, covering many
large counties with water from one to six feet deep, with a bottom, mud
covered, yet underneath solid and firm, from which grasses grow up to
the surface--a sea of green, and with islands large and small scattered
over the surface, covered with live oaks and dense vegetation; where
alligators, or gators as they are called in Florida parlance, possess
undoubted aboriginal rights of citizenship, and mosquitoes pay constant
visits and are instructive and even penetrating in their attention to
strangers."
An Irish paper contained this account of Mrs. Siddons's appearance:
"On Sunday, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking,
exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the
first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, and all
tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics of the
impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a
heavenly angel, but how were we supernaturally surprised into almost
awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess! The house was crowded with
hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators
who went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic
excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of
the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and
princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of
pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping
clouds! this Juno commanding aspects! this Terpsichore of the curtains
and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and excitement! this Katterfelto of
wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief and soared above all
the natural powers of description! She was nature itself! She was the
most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose,
sweet brier, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall flower, cauliflower,
auricula, and rosemary! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus! When
expectations were so high, it was thought she would be injured by her
appearance, but it was the audience who were injured: several fainted
before the curtain drew up! When she came to the scene of parting with
her wedding ring, ah! what a sight was there! the very fiddlers in the
orchestra, albeit unused to melting mood, blubbered like hungry children
crying for their bread and butter! and when the bell rang for music
between the acts the tears ran from the bassoon players' eyes in such
plentiful showers that they choked the finger stops, and making a spout
of the instrument poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book
that not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band
played it in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience
and the noise of corks drawn from smelling bottles prevented the
mistakes between sharps and flats being heard. One hundred and nine
ladies fainted! forty-six went into fits! and ninety-five had strong
hysterics. The world will scarcely credit the truth when they are told
that fourteen children, five old men, one hundred tailors, and six
common councilmen were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that
flowed from the galleries, the slips, and the boxes, to increase the
briny pond in the pit. The water was three feet deep. An Act of
Parliament will certainly be passed against her playing any more!"
Few poems have been more generally admired or paraphrased in the various
tongues of earth than that commencing with the lines--
"Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went
This lamb was sure to go."
The story is current at the national capital that Mr. Evarts, when
Secretary of State, on one occasion, in a jocular crowd of his friends,
was desired to condense into prose these immortal verses. Urgently
solicited, Mr. Evarts yielded, and wrote as follows:
"Mary, a female, judged to be of the race of man, whose family name is
unknown, whether of native or foreign birth, of lofty or lowly lineage,
and whose appearance, manners, and mental cultivation are involved in
the most profound mystery, which probably will never be fully
ascertained unless through the most profound researches of an historian
admirably trained in his profession, who shall devote the ablest efforts
of his life to the investigation of the subject, uninfluenced by either
passion or prejudice, and having only in view the sacred truth, at the
same time being utterly regardless of the plaudits or censures of the
world, we are informed by one who, it has been stated, at one time while
living in that part of the United States of America known as
Massachusetts, whose fishermen have frequently been involved in
difficulties with the authorities of her Majesty Queen Victoria, Queen
of Great Britain and Empress of the Indies, whose domains extended over
a large share of the habitable globe, thereby endangering the peace
which should so happily exist between nations of the same blood and
language, had an infant sheep, of which there are many millions of
various stocks and qualities now in our country, constantly adding
wealth and prosperity to our republic, and enabling us to be entirely
independent of all other nations for our supply of wool, now ample for
the use of factories already busily employed, and for those which ere
long will be constructed in all parts of our land, working both by water
and steam power, and in whatever direction the said Mary traveled, this
animal, whose fleece was snow-white, even as the lofty mountain-regions
in the silent solitudes of eternal winter, as the ethereal vapors which
oft float over an autumnal sky, 'darkly, deeply, beautifully blue' or as
the lacteal fluid covered with masses of delicate froth, found in the
buckets of the rosy dairymaid, whether meandering through the meadows in
midsummer, gathering the luscious strawberry, strolling in the woodland
paths in search of wild flowers, visiting the church with her uncles,
cousins, and aunts, to listen to the inspired words which come from the
lips of the minister of the sanctuary, or when retiring to her blissful
couch to seek rest and enjoy sweet repose after the cares and labors of
the day; in fact, 'everywhere that Mary went' this youthful sheep,
influenced doubtless by that affection which is oft so conspicuously
manifested by the lower animals in their association with human beings,
was ever observed to accompany her."