University of Virginia Library

4. OBITUARY NOTICES.

CHRISTIANS.

.... It is with a feeling of profes
sional regret that we record the death of Mr.
Jacob Pigwidgeon. Deceased was one of our
earliest pioneers, who came to this State long
before he was needed. His age is a matter of
mere conjecture; probably he was less advanced in
years than Methuselah would have been had he
practised a reasonable temperance in eating and
drinking. Mr. Pigwidgeon was a gentleman of
sincere but modest piety, profoundly respected by
all who fancied themselves like him. Probably no
man of his day exercised so peculiar an influence
upon society. Ever foremost in every good work
out of which there was anything to be made,
an unstinted dispenser of every species of charity
that paid a commission to the disburser, Mr.
Pigwidgeon was a model of generosity; but so
modestly did he lavish his favours that his left
hand seldom knew what pocket his right hand was

relieving. During the troubles of '56 he was
closely identified with the Vigilance Committee,
being entrusted by that body with the important
mission of going into Nevada and remaining there.
In 1863 he was elected an honorary member of the
Society for the Prevention of Humanity to the
Chinese, and there is little doubt but he might
have been anything, so active was the esteem with
which he inspired those for whom it was desired
that he should vote.

Originally born in Massachusetts, but for twenty-one
years a native of California and partially bald,
possessing a cosmopolitan nature that loved an
English shilling as well, in proportion to its value,
as a Mexican dollar, the subject of our memoir was
one whom it was an honour to know, and whose
close friendship was a luxury that only the affluent
could afford. It shall ever be the writer's proudest
boast that he enjoyed it at less than half the usual
rates.

The circumstances attending his taking off were
most mournful. He had been for some time very
much depressed in spirits of one kind and another,
and on last Wednesday morning was observed to
be foaming at the mouth. No attention was paid
to this; his family believing it to be a symptom of
hydrophobia, with which he had been afflicted from
the cradle. Suddenly a dark-eyed stranger entered

the house, took the patient's neck between his
thumb and forefinger, threw the body across his
shoulder, winked respectfully to the bereaved
widow, and withdrew by way of the kitchen cellar.
Farewell, pure soul! we shall meet again.

.... We are reluctantly com
pelled to relate the untimely death of Mrs. Margaret
Ann Picklefinch, which occurred about one
o'clock yesterday morning. The circumstances
attending the melancholy event were these:—

Just before the hour named, her husband, the
well-known temperance lecturer, and less generally
known temperance lecturee, came home from an
adjourned meeting of the Cold-Water Legion, and
retired very drunk. His estimable lady got up
and pulled off his boots, as usual. He got into
bed and she lay down beside him. She uttered a
mild preliminary oath of endearment and suddenly
ceased speaking. It must have been about this
time she died. About daylight he invited her
to get up and make a fire. Detecting no movement
in her body he enforced family discipline.
The peculiar hard sound of his wife striking the
floor first aroused his suspicions of the bereavement
he had sustained, and upon rising later in
the day he found his first fears realized; the lady
had waived her claim to his further protection.

We extend to Mr. P. our sincere sympathy in
the greatest calamity that can befall an unmarriageable
man. The inconsolable survivor called
at our office last evening, conversed feelingly some
moments about the virtues of the dear departed,
and left with the air of a dog that has had his tail
abbreviated and is forced to begin life anew. Truly
the decrees of Providence appear sometimes absurd.

.... Mr. Bildad Gorcas, whose death
has cast a wet blanket of gloom over our community,
was a man comparatively unknown, but his
life furnishes an instructive lesson to fast livers.
Mr. Gorcas never in his life tasted ardent spirits,
ate spiced meats, or sat up later than nine o'clock
in the evening. He rose, summer and winter,
at two A.M., and passed an hour and three quarters
immersed in ice water. For the last twenty years
he has walked fifteen miles daily before breakfast,
and then gone without breakfast. During his
waking hours he was never a moment idle; when
not hard at work he was trying to think. Up to
the time of his death, which occurred last Sunday,
he had never spoken to a doctor, never had occasion
to curse a dentist, had a luxurious growth of variegated
hair, and there was not a wrinkle upon any
part of his body. If he had not been cut off
by falling across a circular saw at the early age of

thirty-two, there is no telling how long he might
have weathered it through.

A life like his is so bright and shining an
example that we are almost sorry he died.

.... During the week just rolled
into eternity, our city has been plunged into the
deepest grief. He who doeth all things well, though
to our weak human understanding His acts may
sometimes seem to savour of injustice, has seen fit
to remove from amongst us one whose genius and
blameless life had endeared him to friend and foe
alike.

In saying that Mr. Jowler was a dog of preeminent
abilities and exceptional virtues, we but
faintly echo the verdict of a bereaved Universe.
Endowed with a gigantic intellect and a warm
heart, modest in his demeanour, genial in his
intercourse with friends and acquaintances, and
forbearing towards strangers (with whom he ever
maintained the most cordial relations, unmarred by
the gross familiarity too common among dogs of
inferior breeds), inoffensive in his daily walk and
conversation, the deceased was universally respected,
and his loss will be even more generally deplored.

It would be a work of supererogation to give a
résumé of the public career of one so well known
—one whose name has become a household word.

In private life his character was equally estimable.
He had ever a wag of encouragement for the young,
the ill-favoured, the belaboured, and the mangy.
Though his gentle spirit has passed away, he has
left with us the record of his virtues as a shining
example for all puppies; and the writer is pleased
to admit that so far as in him lay he has himself
endeavoured to profit by it.

PAGANS.

.... Yo Hop is dead! He was last
seen alive about three o'clock yesterday morning
by a white labourer who was returning home
after an elongated orgie at a Barbary Coast inn,
and at the time seemed to be in undisputed possession
of all his faculties; the remainder of his
personal property having been transferred to the
white labourer aforesaid. At the moment alluded
to, Mr. Hop was in the act of throwing up his
arms, as if to ward off some impending danger in
the hands of the sole spectator. An instant later
he experienced one of those sudden deaths which
have made this city popularly famous and surgically
interesting.

The lamented was forty years of age; how
much longer he might have lived, in his own

country, it is impossible to determine; but it
is to be remarked that the climate of California
is a very trying one to people of his peculiar
organization. The body was kindly taken in
charge by a resident of the vicinity, and now
lies in state in his back yard, where it is being
carefully prepared for burial by those skilful meat-hounds,
Messrs. Lassirator, Mangler, and Chure,
whose names are a sufficient guarantee that the
mournful rites will be attended to in a manner
befitting the solemn occasion.

We tender the bereaved widow our sincere
sympathy at the regular rates. The cause of Mr.
Hop's demise is unknown. It is unimportant.

.... A dead Asian was recently
found in a ditch in Nevada county. His head, like
that of a toad, had a precious jewel imbedded in it,
about the size of an ordinary watermelon, and a
clear majority of his fingers, toes, and features had
received Christian burial in the stomachs of several
contiguous hogs with roving commissions. As he
seemed unwilling to state who he was, or how he
got his deserts, he was tenderly replaced in his last
ditch, and his discoverers proceeded leisurely for
the coroner. Upon the arrival of that public
functionary some days later, a pile of nice clean
bones was discovered, with this touching epitaph

inscribed with a lead pencil upon a segment of the
skull:

“Yur lize wot cant be chawd of Chineece
jaik; xekewted bi me fur a plitikle awfens, and et
bi mi starven hogs, wich aint hed nuthin afore
sence jaix boss stoal mi korn. Bil Roper, and
ov sich is Kingdem cum.”

.... The following report of an
autopsy is of peculiar interest to physicians and
Christians:—Case 81st.—Felo de se. Yow Kow,
yellow, male, Chinese, aged 94; found dead on the
street; addicted to opium. Autopsy—sixteen hours
after death. Slobbering at the mouth; head caved
in; immense rigor mortis; eyes dilated and gouged
out; abdomen lacerated; hæmorrhage from left
ear. Head. Water on the brain; scalp congested,
rather; when burst with a mallet interior of
head resembled a war map. Thorax. Charge of
buckshot in left lung; diaphragm suffused; heart
wanting—finger marks in that vicinity; traces of
hobnails outside. Abdomen. Lacerated as aforesaid;
small intestines cumbered with brick dust;
slungshot in duodenum; boot-heel imbedded in
pelvis; butcher's knife fixed rigidly in right
kidney.

Remarks: Chinese immigration will ruin any
country in the world.