4. IV.
POPULARITY.
What a queer thing is popularity. Bill
Pug Nose of the “Plug-Uglies” acquires a
world-wide reputation by smashing up the
“champion of light weights,” sets up a Saloon
upon it, and realizes the first month;
while our Missionary, who collected two
hundred blankets last August, and at that
time saved a like number of little negroes
in the West Indies from freezing, has received
nothing but the yellow fever. The
Hon. Oracular M. Matterson becomes able
to withstand any quantity of late nights and
bad brandy, is elected to Congress, and lobbies
through contracts by which he realizes
some $50,000, while private individuals
lose $100,000 by the Atlantic Cable. Contracts
are popular—the cable isn't. Fiddlers,
Prima-Donnas, Horse Operas, learned
pigs, and five-legged calves travel through
the country, reaping “golden opinions,
while editors, inventors, professors and
humanitarians generally, are starving in
garrets. Revivals of religion, fashions,
summer resorts, and pleasure trips, are exceedingly
popular, while trade, commerce,
chloride of lime, and all the concomitants
necessary to render the inner life of denizens
of cities tolerable, are decidedly NON
EST. Even water, which was so popular
and populous a few weeks agone, comes to
us in such stinted sprinklings that it has
become popular to supply it only from
hydrants in sufficient quantities to raise
one hundred disgusting smells in a distance
of two blocks. Monsieur Revierre, with
nothing but a small name and a large
quantity of hair, makes himself exceedingly
popular with hotel-keepers and a numerous
progeny of female Flaunts and Blounts,
while Felix Smooth and Mr. Chink, who
persistently set forth their personal and
more substantial marital charms through
the columns of the New York Herald,
have only received one interview each—
one from a man in female attire, and the
other from the keeper of an unmentionable
house. Popularity is a queer thing, very.
If you don't believe us, try it!
Dull.—It is a scandalous fact that this
city is desperately and fearfully barren of
incident. No “dem'd, moist unpleasant
bodies” are fished up out of the river; no ambitious
young female runs off with her “feller;”
no stabbings, gougings, or fisticuffs
occur; no eminent merchant suspends; no
banker or railroad man defaults, and not
even a dog-fight disturbs the rigid and corpse-like
quiet of the city. We want a murder.
We insist upon having a murder. A manslaughter
won't do. It must be murder,
premeditated, foul, and unnatural. It must
be a luscious murder, abounding in soulharrowing
incidents. Some “man in human
shape” must chop the heads of his entire
family off with a meat-axe, or insert a
butcher-knife ingeniously under their fifth
ribs. Let murder be done. Bring on your
murderers. We want to be Rochestered!
