University of Virginia Library

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

MORAL STATISTICIAN.” — I don't
want any of your statistics. I took
your whole batch and lit my pipe
with it. I hate your kind of people. You are
always ciphering out how much a man's health
is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired,
and how many pitiful dollars and cents
he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence
in the fatal practice of smoking; and
in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee;
and in playing billiards occasionally; and in
taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc.
And you are always figuring out how many women
have been burned to death because of the
dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops,
etc., etc., etc. You never see more than one
side of the question. You are blind to the fact
that most old men in America smoke and drink
coffee, although, according to your theory, they

ought to have died young; and that hearty old
Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly
old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely,
and yet grow older and fatter all the time.
And you never try to find out how much solid
comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives
from smoking in the course of a lifetime,
(which is worth ten times the money he would
save by letting it alone,) nor the appalling aggregate
of happiness lost in a lifetime by your
kind of people from not smoking. Of course
you can save money by denying yourself all
these little vicious enjoyments for fifty years;
but then what can you do with it? What use
can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal
soul. All the use that money can be
put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in
this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to
comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating
cash? It won't do for you to say
that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing
a good table, and in charities, and in supporting
tract societies, because you know yourself
that you people who have no petty vices
are never known to give away a cent, and that
you stint yourselves so in the matter of food
that you are always feeble and hungry. And
you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear
some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor,
will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in
church you are always down on your knees,
with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the
contribution-box comes around; and you never
give the revenue officers a true statement of
your income. Now you know all these things
yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is
the use of your stringing out your miserable
lives to a lean and withered old age? What is
the use of your saving money that is so utterly
worthless to you? In a word, why don't you
go off somewhere and die, and not be always
trying to seduce people into becoming as
“ornery” and unlovable as you are yourselves,
by your ceaseless and villainous “moral statistics”?
Now, I don't approve of dissipation,
and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't
a particle of confidence in a man who has no
redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't
want to hear from you any more. I think you
are the very same man who read me a long lecture,
last week, about the degrading vice of
smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence,
with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof
gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor-stove.

“Simon Wheeler,” Sonora.—The following
simple and touching remarks and accompanying
poem have just come to hand from the rich
gold-mining region of Sonora:

Verily, this man was gifted with “gorgis
abillities,” and it is a happiness to me to embalm
the memory of their lustre in these columns.
If it were not that the poet crop is unusually
large and rank in California this year,
I would encourage you to continue writing,
Simon; but as it is, perhaps it might be too

risky in you to enter against so much opposition.

“Inquirer” wishes to know which is the
best brand of smoking tobacco, and how it is
manufactured. The most popular—mind, I do
not feel at liberty to give an opinion as to the
best, and so I simply say the most popular —
smoking tobacco is the miraculous conglomerate
they call “Killikinick.” It is composed
of equal parts of tobacco stems, chopped straw,
“old soldiers,” fine shavings, oak leaves, dog-fennel,
corn-shucks, sunflower petals, outside
leaves of the cabbage plant, and any refuse of
any description whatever that costs nothing
and will burn. After the ingredients are thoroughly
mixed together, they are run through
a chopping-machine and soaked in a spittoon.
The mass is then sprinkled with fragrant Scotch
snuff, packed into various seductive shapes,
labeled “Genuine Killikinick, from the old
original manufactory at Richmond,” and sold
to consumers at a dollar a pound. The choicest
brands contain a double portion of “old soldiers,”
and sell at a dollar and a half. “Genuine
Turkish” tobacco contains a treble quan

tity of “old soldiers,” and is worth two or three
dollars, according to the amount of service the
said “old soldiers” have previously seen.
N. B.—This article is preferred by the Sultan
of Turkey; his picture and autograph are on
the label. Take a handful of “Killikinick,”
crush it as fine as you can, and examine it
closely, and you will find that you can make
as good an analysis of it as I have done; you
must not expect to discover any particles of
genuine tobacco by this rough method, however—to
do that, it will be necessary to take
your specimen to the mint and subject it to a
fire-assay. A good article of cheap tobacco is
now made of chopped pine-straw and Spanish
moss; it contains one “old soldier” to the ton,
and is called “Fine Old German Tobacco.”

“Professional Beggar.”—No; you are
not obliged to take greenbacks at par.

[2]“Melton Mowbray,” Dutch Flat.—This
correspondent sends a lot of doggerel, and says

it has been regarded as very good in Dutch
Flat. I give a specimen verse:

There, that will do. That may be very good
Dutch Flat poetry, but it won't do in the metropolis.
It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads
like buttermilk gurgling from a jug. What
the people ought to have is something spirited—something
like “Johnny Comes Marching
Home.” However, keep on practicing, and you
may succeed yet. There is genius in you, but
too much blubber.

“Amateur Serenader.”—Yes, I will give
you some advice, and do it with a good deal of
pleasure. I live in a neighborhood which is
well stocked with young ladies, and consequently
I am excruciatingly sensitive upon the
subject of serenading. Sometimes I suffer. In
the first place, always tune your instruments
before you get within three hundred yards of
your destination. This will enable you to take
your adored unawares, and create a pleasant

surprise by launching out at once upon your
music. It astonishes the dogs and cats out of
their presence of mind, too, so that, if you hurry,
you can get through before they have a chance
to recover and interrupt you; besides, there is
nothing captivating in the sounds produced in
tuning a lot of melancholy guitars and fiddles,
and neither does a group of able-bodied, sentimental
young men so engaged look at all dignified.
Secondly, clear your throats and do all
the coughing you have got to do before you arrive
at the seat of war. I have known a young
lady to be ruthlessly startled out of her slumbers
by such a sudden and direful blowing of
noses and “h'm-h'm-ing” and coughing, that
she imagined the house was beleaguered by victims
of consumption from the neighboring hospital.
Do you suppose the music was able to
make her happy after that? Thirdly, don't
stand right under the porch and howl, but get
out in the middle of the street, or better still, on
the other side of it. Distance lends enchantment
to the sound. If you have previously
transmitted a hint to the lady that she is going
to be serenaded, she will understand whom the
music is for; besides, if you occupy a neutral
position in the middle of the street, may be all
the neighbors round will take stock in your
serenade, and invite you to take wine with
them. Fourthly, don't sing a whole opera
through; enough of a thing's enough. Fifthly,
don't sing “Lily Dale.” The profound satisfaction
that most of us derive from the reflection
that the girl treated of in that song is dead,
is constantly marred by the resurrection of the
lugubrious ditty itself by your kind of people.
Sixthly, don't let your screaming tenor soar an
octave above all the balance of the chorus, and
remain there setting every body's teeth on edge
for four blocks around; and, above all, don't
let him sing a solo; probably there is nothing
in the world so suggestive of serene contentment
and perfect bliss as the spectacle of a calf
chewing a dish-rag; but the nearest approach
to it is your reedy tenor, standing apart, in
sickly attitude, with head thrown back and
eyes uplifted to the moon, piping his distressing
solo. Now do not pass lightly over this matter,
friend, but ponder it with that seriousness which
its importance entitles it to. Seventhly, after
you have run all the chickens and dogs and cats
in the vicinity distracted, and roused them into
a frenzy of crowing, and cackling, and yawling,
and caterwauling, put up your dreadful instruments
and go home. Eighthly, as soon as you
start, gag your tenor—otherwise he will be letting
off a screech every now and then, to let
the people know he is around. Your amateur
tenor is notoriously the most self-conceited of all
God's creatures. Tenthly, don't go serenading
at all; it is a wicked, unhappy, and seditious
practice, and a calamity to all souls that are
weary and desire to slumber and would be at
rest. Eleventhly and lastly, the father of the
young lady in the next block says that if you
come prowling around his neighborhood again,
with your infamous scraping and tooting and
yelling, he will sally forth and deliver you into
the hands of the police. As far as I am concerned
myself, I would like to have you come,
and come often; but as long as the old man is
so prejudiced, perhaps you had better serenade
mostly in Oakland, or San José, or around
there somewhere.

You should shed your affections on another,
also—or on several, if there are enough to go
round. Also, do every thing you can to make
your former flame unhappy. There is an absurd
idea disseminated in novels, that the happier
a girl is with another man, the happier it
makes the old lover she has blighted. Don't
allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as
that. The more cause that girl finds to regret
that she did not marry you, the more comfortable
you will feel over it. It isn't poetical, but
it is mighty sound doctrine.

I don't know.

“Ambitious Learner,” Oakland. — Yes,
you are right — America was not discovered
by Alexander Selkirk.

Of course you have. All the law, written
and unwritten, is on your side. The intention
and not the act constitutes crime—in other
words, constitutes the deed. If you call your
bosom friend a fool, and intend it for an insult,
it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and
meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you
discharge a pistol accidentally, and kill a man,
you can go free, for you have done no murder;
but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend
to kill him, but fail utterly to do it, the
law still holds that the intention constituted
the crime, and you are guilty of murder. Ergo,
if you had married Edwitha accidentally,
and without really intending to do it, you
would not actually be married to her at all,
because the act of marriage could not be complete
without the intention. And ergo, in the
strict spirit of the law, since you deliberately
intended to marry Edwitha, and didn't do it,
you are married to her all the same—because,
as I said before, the intention constitutes the
crime. It is as clear as day that Edwitha is
your wife, and your redress lies in taking a
club and mutilating Jones with it as much as
you can. Any man has a right to protect his

own wife from the advances of other men. But
you have another alternative—you were married
to Edwitha first, because of your deliberate
intention, and now you can prosecute her
for bigamy, in subsequently marrying Jones.
But there is another phase in this complicated
case: You intended to marry Edwitha, and
consequently, according to law, she is your
wife—there is no getting around that; but she
didn't marry you, and if she never intended to
marry you, you are not her husband, of course.
Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of
bigamy, because she was the wife of another
man at the time; which is all very well as far
as it goes—but then, don't you see, she had no
other husband when she married Jones, and
consequently she was not guilty of bigamy.
Now, according to this view of the case, Jones
married a spinster, who was a widow at the
same time and another man's wife at the same
time, and yet who had no husband and never
had one, and never had any intention of getting
married, and therefore, of course, never had
been married; and by the same reasoning you
are a bachelor, because you have never been
any one's husband; and a married man, because
you have a wife living; and to all intents
and purposes a widower, because you have
been deprived of that wife; and a consummate
ass for going off to Benicia in the first place,
while things were so mixed. And by this time
I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies
of this extraordinary case that I shall have
to give up any further attempt to advise you—
I might get confused and fail to make myself
understood. I think I could take up the argument
where I left off, and by following it
closely awhile, perhaps I could prove to your
satisfaction, either that you never existed at
all, or that you are dead now, and consequently
don't need the faithless Edwitha—I think I
could do that, if it would afford you any comfort.

“Persecuted Unfortunate.” — You say
you owe six months' board, and you have no
money to pay it with, and your landlord keeps
harassing you about it, and you have made all
the excuses and explanations possible, and now
you are at a loss what to say to him in future.
Well, it is a delicate matter to offer advice in a
case like this, but your distress impels me to

make a suggestion, at least, since I can not venture
to do more. When he next importunes
you, how would it do to take him impressively
by the hand and ask, with simulated emotion,
“Monsieur Jean, votre chien, comme se porteil?”
Doubtless that is very bad French, but
you will find that it will answer just as well as
the unadulterated article.

“Arthur Augustus.”—No, you are wrong;
that is the proper way to throw a brickbat or
a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for
a bouquet; you will hurt somebody if you keep
it up. Turn your nosegay upside down, take
it by the stems, and toss it with an upward
sweep. Did you ever pitch quoits? that is the
idea. The practice of recklessly heaving immense
solid bouquets, of the general size and
weight of prize cabbages, from the dizzy altitude
of the galleries, is dangerous and very
reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the
Academy of Music, just after Signorina Sconcia
had finished that exquisite melody, “The Last
Rose of Summer,” one of these floral pile-drivers
came cleaving down through the atmosphere
of applause, and if she hadn't deployed

suddenly to the right, it would have driven her
into the floor like a shingle-nail. Of course that
bouquet was well meant; but how would you
have liked to have been the target? A sincere
compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long
as you don't try to knock her down with it.

“Young Mother.”—And so you think a
baby is a thing of beauty and a joy forever?
Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original;
every cow thinks the same of its own calf. Perhaps
the cow may not think it so elegantly, but
still she thinks it, nevertheless. I honor the cow
for it. We all honor this touching maternal
instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home
of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But
really, madam, when I come to examine the
matter in all its bearings, I find that the correctness
of your assertion does not manifest
itself in all cases. A sore-faced baby, with a
neglected nose, can not be conscientiously regarded
as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as
babyhood spans but three short years, no baby
is competent to be a joy “forever.” It pains
me thus to demolish two thirds of your pretty
sentiment in a single sentence; but the position

I hold in this chair requires that I shall not
permit you to deceive and mislead the public
with your plausible figures of speech. I know
a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this
city, which can not hold out as a “joy” twenty-four
hours on a stretch, let alone “forever.”
And it possesses some of the most remarkable
eccentricities of character and appetite that
have ever fallen under my notice. I will set
down here a statement of this infant's operations,
(conceived, planned, and carried out by
itself, and without suggestion or assistance from
its mother or any one else,) during a single
day; and what I shall say can be substantiated
by the sworn testimony of witnesses.

It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass
pills, box and all; then it fell down a flight
of stairs, and arose with a bruised and purple
knot on its forehead, after which it proceeded
in quest of further refreshment and amusement.
It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work—mashed
up and ate the glass, and then
swallowed the brass. Then it drank about
twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a
dozen table-spoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor.
The reason why it took no more laudanum

was because there was no more to take.
After this it lay down on its back, and shoved
five or six inches of a silver-headed whalebone
cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it
was all its mother could do to pull the cane out
again, without pulling out some of the child
with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it
broke up several wine glasses, and fell to eating
and swallowing the fragments, not minding
a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter,
pepper, salt, and California matches, actually
taking a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of salt,
a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer
matches at each mouthful. (I will remark here
that this thing of beauty likes painted German
lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but
she infinitely prefers California matches, which
I regard as a compliment to our home manufactures
of more than ordinary value, coming, as
it does, from one who is too young to flatter.)
Then she washed her head with soap and water,
and afterward ate what soap was left, and
drank as much of the suds as she had room for;
after which she sallied forth and took the cow
familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over
head. At odd times during the day, when this
joy forever happened to have nothing particular
on hand, she put in the time by climbing up
on places, and falling down off them, uniformly
damaging herself in the operation. As young
as she is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly;
and being plain-spoken in other respects,
blunt and to the point, she opens conversation
with all strangers, male or female,
with the same formula, “How do, Jim?” Not
being familiar with the ways of children, it is
possible that I have been magnifying into matter
of surprise things which may not strike any
one who is familiar with infancy as being at all
astonishing. However, I can not believe that
such is the case, and so I repeat that my report
of this baby's performances is strictly true; and
if any one doubts it, I can produce the child.
I will further engage that she will devour any
thing that is given her, (reserving to myself only
the right to exclude anvils,) and fall down from
any place to which she may be elevated, (merely
stipulating that her preference for alighting on
her head shall be respected, and, therefore, that
the elevation chosen shall be high enough to
enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction.)
But I find I have wandered from my
subject; so, without further argument, I will
reiterate my conviction that not all babies are
things of beauty and joys forever.

Here you come again, with your diabolical
arithmetical conundrums, when I am suffering
death with a cold in the head. If you could
have seen the expression of ineffable scorn that
darkened my countenance a moment ago and
was instantly split from the center in every direction
like a fractured looking-glass by my
last sneeze, you never would have written that
disgraceful question. Conchology is a science
which has nothing to do with mathematics; it
relates only to shells. At the same time, however,
a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or
shells a fortified town, or sucks eggs, is not,
strictly speaking, a conchologist—a fine stroke
of sarcasm, that, but it will be lost on such
an intellectual clam as you. Now compare
conchology and geometry together, and you will
see what the difference is, and your question

will be answered. But don't torture me with
any more of your ghastly arithmetical horrors
(for I do detest figures any how) until you
know I am rid of my cold. I feel the bitterest
animosity toward you at this moment—bothering
me in this way, when I can do nothing but
sneeze and swear and snort pocket-handkerchiefs
to atoms. If I had you in range of my
nose, now, I would blow your brains out.

“Socrates Murphy.”—You speak of having
given offense to a gentleman at the opera
by unconsciously humming an air which the
tenor was singing at the time. Now, part of
that is a deliberate falsehood. You were not
doing it “unconsciously;” no man does such
a mean, vulgar, egotistical thing as that unconsciously.
You were doing it to “show off;”
you wanted the people around you to know
you had been to operas before, and to think
you were not such an ignorant, self-conceited,
supercilious ass as you looked. I can tell you
Arizona opera-sharps, any time; you prowl
around beer cellars and listen to some howling-dervish
of a Dutchman exterminating an Italian
air, and then you come into the Academy

and prop yourself up against the wall with the
stuffy aspect and the imbecile leer of a clothing
store dummy, and go to droning along about
half an octave below the tenor, and disgusting
every body in your neighborhood with your
beery strains. [N. B.—If this rough-shod eloquence
of mine touches you on a raw spot occasionally,
recollect that I am talking for your
good, Murphy, and that I am simplifying my
language so as to bring it clearly within the
margin of your comprehension; it might be gratifying
to you to be addressed as if you were
an Oxford graduate, but then you wouldn't
understand it, you know.] You have got
another abominable habit, my sage-brush amateur.
When one of those Italian footmen in
British uniform comes in and sings, “O tol de
rol!—O Signo-o-o-ra!—loango—congo—Venezue-e-e-la!
whack fol de rol!” (which means,
“O noble madame! here's one of them dukes
from the palace, out here, come to borrow a
dollar and a half,”) you always stand with expanded
eyes and mouth, and one pile-driver
uplifted, and your sprawling hands held apart
in front of your face, like a couple of canvas-covered
hams, and when he gets almost
through, how you do uncork your pent-up enthusiasm,
and applaud with hoof and palm!
You have it pretty much to yourself, and then
you look sheepish when you find every body
staring at you. But how very idiotic you do
look when something really fine is sung—
you generally keep quiet, then. Never mind,
though, Murphy, entire audiences do things at
the opera that they have no business to do; for
instance, they never let one of those thousand-dollar
singers finish—they always break in
with their ill-timed applause, just as he or she,
as the case may be, is preparing to throw all
his or her concentrated sweetness into the final
strain, and so all that sweetness is lost. Write
me again, Murphy, I shall always be happy to
hear from you.