Chapter 2

"N. B.--His real name was Woodcock, but it wouldn't come in rhyme. _His Widow._"

The subjoined contains a solemn warning:

"My wife has left me, she's gone up on high, She was thoughtful while dying, and said 'Tom, don't cry.' She was a great beauty, so every one knows, With Hebe like features and a fine Roman nose; She played the piany, and was learning a ballad, When she sickened and die-did from eating veal salad."

Upon a tombstone in Pennsylvania:

"Battle of Shiloh. April 6 1862

John D L was born March 26 1839 in the town of West Dresden State of New York where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

A tombstone in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has these lines:

"When you my friends are passing by, And this inform you where I lie, Remember you ere long must have, Like me, a mansion in the grave, Also 3 infants, 2 sons and a daughter."

IV.

By Correspondents.

From a butcher at Berhampoor, India, to a customer:

"To his Highness--Kid Esquire

"The humble butcher, Nows Rouny, Restpectfully sheweth that for your honor has sent a good beef, 1 rump and pleased to take it and pay day labor of bearer coolly. As your obedient butcher shall ever pray."

From a scholar in India to his master:

"My dear Sir: I humbly beg to inform you pleas to give me leaf for one week because I cannot walk with my feet, I am very uncomfortable. Give my compliments to My Master. I pray to God for Everlasting life. I am your humble Servant Shebart Lall."

From an Indian school-boy:

"Benevolent Sir: The wolf of sickness has laid hold on the flock of my health."

From an Indian clerk:

"Sir. Being afflicted to the stomach and vomiteng I am sorry I cannot attend to office today."

From a Canadian lady to eligible gentleman:

"Dear Mr. B. I, Mrs. Wigston wish you would call on my daughter Amelia. She is very amusing and is a regular young flirt. She can sing like a hunny bee and her papa can play on the fiddle nicely and we might have a rare ho-down. Amelia is highely educated, she can dance like a grasshopper looking for grub and she can meke beautiful bread, it tastes just like hunny bees' bread and for pumpkin pies she can't be beat. In fact she's ahead of all F girls and will make a good wife for any man.

"Yours truly "Mrs. Wigston.

"Bring your brother."

From a school-boy to the elder Booth:

"West House School. Prospect N.Y. "Dear Sur and Frend.

"Heering that you was going to come to Uttica to perform in a play called Hamlit I would like to say that us boys is gitting up a Exibition for the benefit of diseased soldiers and their widows and orfans and would like to engage you to do the leading part. I have talked it up with the boys and we will do the squire thing by you and I am arterised to make you the following offer. We will come doun after you with a good conveyance and will give you at the rate of 10 dollars a day and board and shall want you one week. If you think it necessary you can have one or two of our best women actors to come up with you but we can't pay them over three dollars a day and feed. You can have some fun at a hunting deer and foxes around Flamburgs and Ed Wilkisun's. Pleas let me know as soon as you can.

"Yours truly James Sweet.

"If you come callating to hunt get Frank Meyer's hound she is a good one."

We subjoin several letters received by a New York publishing house:

"---- La, Nov 18, 188-.

"Dear Sir. I have seated my self down to pen you a few lines in reguards off your high degrode Tex Books Sir I wish you would forward to me in the next Mail a Cataloudge off all of your Edgucational old and latest publish books in Market I stand in need off a good set of books and when I receive your Cataloudge I will send on immeadily and get a Selecticed outfit of your books. By so doing you will oblidge yours & Etc."

"dear Sr I saw A smawl list of yours embraces standard works in every department of study and for every grade of classes from the _primary_ school to the _university_ I desire to have correspondence with you and as I taught school for threw 3 seson in the ninth district of Fuentress County tennessee and i quit eimet with Cooper and our country need instruction and except we get the implement for instruction we may all ways espect ignorant. turn over. Mr I want you to send educational list of your standard works and also A copy Book that I may instruct my studentes more correctly and I profer to take Agents if hit is not contrary to law if your work can sold with out paing tax or lison

"and A blige youres truley Joel E Atkinson school teacher 9 deistrict Fuentress co Logan Finch Chareles Atkinson J Hall e school directers in my distrectes."

"Dear Sir I want you to send me a catalogue the Emblem book and tell me what it will cost I think I can Sell as Many as Fifteen be sure and give the Price that is what they want to know Dear Sir I Received your Copy Oct 9th 1881 if you charge Any thing for composeing them letters write to me and I will pay will Send it by Mail in one cent stamps you need not to think I want to swinle you out of one cent I will do Every thing I say I will do So if you will write and give the Price of the Emblem and the love writer and chart and key of the Spenserion cystem and they like I will get up a subscription and send the Money for them immediately Dear Sir tell me what is the Emblem of a red rose and white rose of a boca."

"Dear Sir:

"Wilt please send me a description of your outfit of Books and give me one or two iedies abought the catalogue price of your English, Latin Greek brench and stanish Italian Hebrew and Siyuriak books to my address. I has issued out orders bot comisition &c--my trustee tell me that only two D V z and in New York at the time it Feby. the 15 my No of books is twenty five and I desire one complet Example of your best books if you can Conven'y furnish my needs wright at once I will be more an obliged to you. Looking by every mail for your returns Soon, so please your truly servant.

"I am dear Sir: "My name in Full "* * * *."

"Dear Sir:

"Understanding that You possess some Influence among the Bord of Directors of your fine books and for useful learning for Schools I beg to Solicit your interest for Me I want to Purchase Some Usful Books and Messrs please send me one of your Cataloges you well obligde me Much in so doing, & Far my Friends I Will tell You I have a great many of Relitives who would wish to Purchase some book if could be bought from you below Price My Frend you must excuse my Hasty note for the Small time Was at Hand and all so my Frend you must excuse my Led Pensel. Wright my soon Frend I will close and will shew you that you will be remembered by Sirs Your Obedient & Fathful Servants ----."

"Sir: I now write to you to ask you information on book lines Sir. i have seen some of your books and the suited me very much on Edjucational and Sir i did suspect to start To Teach School in the Same Ward And i Wanted to get a fenel Resortment of of Books and i Wanted To get My books from you and i Wanted Like to know how you Would Reply me them And i hope when you Riseived this Letter that you Would Write Wright away At once And give me the full Address how to send for These Books And i Want to Know Wethe I give you the Wright Address Sir your Friend ---- Would like To Read A Letter from under your Hand And i Want you To please To give me your Address of All kines of Books that yu have i Exspect to start School soon & i had much Applications By pupils that Lives A. Rounds in the Sections Where i Lives ses ef i gets the Books they Would Buy them from me i hope that you Would Wright As Soon as Posable And Let me know so that i Can Write Again And please To Send me some of your paper so that i Can Read them to the people so Them Can Believe that i did wrote here When you Write please To Direct your Letter to ---- so i hope you Will Write Soon And please fail not To Send me some of your Papers And Direct me how To Get Money to you When i Send for Books fail not To Direct your Letter to ---- Post-office. So i have no more to Write i Will Close & Remain

"Your Truly Friend." "M---- Ala.

"Oct 13th 1881. Dear Sir Dear Friend you will please Send me one line of capitals letters one line of the small letters and Show me the space how far up and how far down and write & tell me what the chart and frey with cost, the chart of the Standard System is the one I want. there is Eight men I have shewn your copy you sent to me they say they intend to have one chart a piece Dear Sir I have been talking with Several young Men about love writers I want you to compose three letters consisting of love and poetry write one as though you loved her and want to marry her. one as though she had Slighted you. the Next one as you think best Compose them and Send them to me and I will shew them to the Boys I am satisfied they will be sure to by."

Letter to an editor:

"Dear Sir--:

"The hystoric apple that tossed about and struck Sir Isaac Newton landed finally, in revealing its inner nature its hidden meaning, not only as a consolation but also of universal utility in all scientific branges:

"Or out of the simbols of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be seen by all mankind.

"Resp."

Letter received by a cotton-broker:

"Flat Town Dec. 30th

"Messrs. "J---- W---- & Co

"Sir. Gentlemen.

"The shipments from this out the balance of the season will be for more on the count. last year was a short crop and two weeks erly than this season and people sold rite strate a long here last season and the biggest and best farmers this season are holding looking forward to Biger prices I have gathered 80 bales and 15 or 16 more in the field yet to pick so you see when I make my estimate in this county they are a power of cotton on the fields yet to pick and a grate eel in houses not gined up yet, gust act as if those deals were your own shood you close them out gust credit my account with the profitts but dont close them out until you think it has tuch bottom then I want you to by me the same amount but don't by till you think it the rite time and then shood you see a proffit in it Turn it loose without ever consulting me if it clears up cold we will have Kilan frost but it can't hurt here for the crop is made.

"I remain yours very truly."

Another letter to a cotton-broker:

"Messrs. W---- W---- & Co.

"Sir Gents

"I have gust got in form the West and find your letter stating that corn had touched bottom which I do think myself it has, but it has avanced so much now I don't noe that it wood pay me much either way now. had I bin at home I shood of closed out and of Bout the same amount was my Idee. we are from ten days to fully two weeks backwards with our crops owing to our wet weather but that donte say they won't be as much made as was last year while we are backward there are more fertilizers yoused than ware last year and more Acreage our country is in a better condision to make a crop and I expect the west ginerally that way at the same time I am only one neighbourhood. pleas let me hear from you more fully on the matter hoping to hear from you soon I remain

"yours verry truly

"I will act according to your council."

A Georgia merchant received a short time since the following order from a customer:

"Mr. B----, please send me $1 worth of coffy and $1 worth of shoogar, some small nales. My wife had a baby last nite, also two padlocks and a monkey rench."

V.

By the Effusive.

Professor Huxley is credited with the assertion that the primrose is "a corollifloral dicotyledonous exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and a central placenta."

A reporter with a large imagination, writing about the decoration of a church at a fashionable wedding in this city, said that "the church was ensconced in flowers."

A scientific writer defines sneezing as "a phenomenon provoked either by an excitation brought to bear on the nasal membrane or by a sudden shock of the sun's rays on the membranes of the eye. This peripheral irritation is transmitted by the trifacial nerve to the Gasserian ganglion, whence it passes by a commissure to an agglomeration of globules in the medulla oblongata or in the protuberance; from this point, by a series of numerous reflex and complicated acts, it is transformed by the mediation of the spinal cord into a centrifugal excitation which radiates outward by means of the spinal nerves to the expiratory muscles."

The school committee in Massachusetts recommend exercises in English composition in these terms:

"Next to the pleasure that pervades the corridors of the soul when it is entranced by the whiling witchery that presides over it consequent upon the almost divine productions of Mozart, Haydn, and Handel, whether these are executed by magician concert parts in deep and highly matured melody from artistic modulated intonations of the finely cultured human voice, or played by some fairy-fingered musician upon the trembling strings of the harp or piano, comes the charming delight we experience from the mastery of English prose, and the spell-binding wizards of song who by their art of divination through their magic wand, the pen, have transformed scenes hitherto unknown and made them as immortal as those spots of the Orient and mountain haunts of the gods, whether of sunny Italy or of tuneful, heroic Greece."

A farmer's daughter expresses herself in the following terms:

"Dear Miss:

"The energy of the race prompts me to assure you that my request is forbidden, the idea of which I awkwardly nourished, notwithstanding my propensity to reserve. Mr. T will be there--Let me with confidence assure you that him and brothers will be very happy to meet you and brothers. Us girls cannot go, for reasons. The attention of cows claims our assistance this evening.

"Unalterably yours."

The following is probably the longest sentence ever written, containing, as it does, eight hundred words:

"I propose, then, to give your readers some description of this old yet still strange and wild country, that has been settled for three hundred years, and is not yet inhabited--a land of shifting sand and deep mud--a land of noble rivers that rise in swamps and consist merely of chains of shallow lakes, some of them twenty miles long and two miles across, and only twelve feet deep--of wide, sandy plains, covered with solemn-sounding pines--of spots so barren that nothing can be made to grow upon them, and yet with a soil so fertile that if you tickle it with a hoe, it will laugh out an abundant harvest of sugar, cotton, and fruit--a land of oranges, lemons, pomegranates, pineapples, figs, and bananas; whose rivers teem with fish, its forests with game, and its very air with fowl; where everything will grow except apples and wheat; where everything can be found except ice; yet where the people, with a productive soil, a mild climate and beautiful nature, affording every table luxury, live on corn-grist, sweet potatoes, and molasses; where men possessing forty thousand head of cattle never saw a glass of milk in their lives, using the imported article when used at all, and then calling it consecrated milk; where the very effort to milk a cow would probably scare her to death, as well as frighten a whole neighborhood by the unheard of phenomenon; where cabbages grow on the tops of trees, and you may dig bread out of the ground; where, below the frost-line, the castor-oil plant becomes a large tree of several years' growth, and a pumpkin or bean-vine will take root from its trailing branches, and thus spread and live year after year; where cattle do not know what hay is, and refuse it when offered, so that the purchase of a yoke of oxen is not considered valid if the animals will not eat in a stable; and where in the mild winter, when the land grass is dried up, horses and cattle may be seen wading and swimming in the ponds and streams, plunging their heads under water grasses and moss; where many lakes have holes in the bottom and underground communication, so that they will sometimes shrink away to a mere cupful, leaving many square miles of surface uncovered, and then again fill up from below and spread out over their former area; where some of them have outlets in the ocean far from shore, bursting up a perpetual spring of fresh water in the very midst of the briny saltness of the sea; where in times of low water, during a long exhaustive dry season, men have gone under ground in one of these subterranean rivers, from lake to lake, a distance of eight miles; where the ground will sometimes sink and the cavity fill with water, until tall trees, that had stood and sunk upright, will have their topmost branches deeply covered; where rivers will disappear in the earth and rise again, thus forming natural bridges, some of them a mile in breadth; where, instead of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, there are two seasons only--eight months summer, and four months warm weather; where the winter is the dry season, and the summer almost a daily rain; where, in order to take a walk, you first wade through a light sand ankle deep and then get into a mud-puddle, and some of these mud-puddles cover a whole county; where no clay is found fit for brick-making, and people build houses without chimneys; where to make a living is so easy a task, that every one possesses the laziness of ten ordinary men, every one you wish to employ in labor says he is tired and would seem to have been born so; where ague would prevail if the people would take the trouble to shake; where a large orange-tree will bear several thousand oranges--leaves, buds, blossom, half-grown and full-grown fruit, all at once--and every twenty-five feet square of sand will sustain such a tree; where, in many parts, cold weather is an impossibility, and perpetual verdure reigns; where the Everglades are found, covering many large counties with water from one to six feet deep, with a bottom, mud covered, yet underneath solid and firm, from which grasses grow up to the surface--a sea of green, and with islands large and small scattered over the surface, covered with live oaks and dense vegetation; where alligators, or gators as they are called in Florida parlance, possess undoubted aboriginal rights of citizenship, and mosquitoes pay constant visits and are instructive and even penetrating in their attention to strangers."

An Irish paper contained this account of Mrs. Siddons's appearance:

"On Sunday, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, and all tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics of the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly angel, but how were we supernaturally surprised into almost awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess! The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators who went away without a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun of the firmament of the Muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno commanding aspects! this Terpsichore of the curtains and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and excitement! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief and soared above all the natural powers of description! She was nature itself! She was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet brier, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall flower, cauliflower, auricula, and rosemary! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus! When expectations were so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance, but it was the audience who were injured: several fainted before the curtain drew up! When she came to the scene of parting with her wedding ring, ah! what a sight was there! the very fiddlers in the orchestra, albeit unused to melting mood, blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter! and when the bell rang for music between the acts the tears ran from the bassoon players' eyes in such plentiful showers that they choked the finger stops, and making a spout of the instrument poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book that not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band played it in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience and the noise of corks drawn from smelling bottles prevented the mistakes between sharps and flats being heard. One hundred and nine ladies fainted! forty-six went into fits! and ninety-five had strong hysterics. The world will scarcely credit the truth when they are told that fourteen children, five old men, one hundred tailors, and six common councilmen were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that flowed from the galleries, the slips, and the boxes, to increase the briny pond in the pit. The water was three feet deep. An Act of Parliament will certainly be passed against her playing any more!"

Few poems have been more generally admired or paraphrased in the various tongues of earth than that commencing with the lines--

"Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went This lamb was sure to go."

The story is current at the national capital that Mr. Evarts, when Secretary of State, on one occasion, in a jocular crowd of his friends, was desired to condense into prose these immortal verses. Urgently solicited, Mr. Evarts yielded, and wrote as follows: