 | The fiend's delight |  |
3. CURRENT JOURNALINGS.
.... Following is the manner of
death incurred by Dr. Deadwood, the eelebrated
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
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
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
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 Merchantstreet,
below Montgomery, and the damage is
market gardener, or decayed gentleman oozing out
of a second-class restaurant being the only sufferer.
But not unfrequently 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
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,
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
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 metermonger,
this howling dervish of hymns devotional,
may strain his trachea, unsettle the braces of his
lungs, crack his ridiculous gizzard and perish of
pneumonial 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
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
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
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
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 un
important person pitched himself among the rolling
porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busybody,
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
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
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
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
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 strom—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
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
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
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
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
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
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 thisl 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
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
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 help 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 thou
sand 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
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
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 grivance. 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
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
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
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 intelli
gence 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 congrega
tion 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
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 senti
ment 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
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 con
siderable 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
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
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
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 perfeetly 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.
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
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
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 mischiefmaking
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
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
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,
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
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 pro
minent 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
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, de
scanting 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:—
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 in
structs 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.
| The fiend's delight | |