Chapter 2

_All the Respectable Men in the house_. "Ah! there is nothing like SHAKESPEARE, and there is no theatre like BOOTH'S. This is indeed an intellectual feast."

_All the Middle-aged Ladies, wiping away the tear of sensibility_. "This is something worth seeing! How can people be so frivolous as to go to see comedies?"

_All the Young Ladies_. "Isn't BOOTH perfectly splendid? Isn't he magnificent? You should have seen his CLAUDE MELNOTTE; it was so perfectly lovely."

_All the Ushers, each to the other_. "Have another chew?"

_Worldly-Minded Person to Congenial Reprobate_. "Let's hear MOLLENHAUER once more, and then go."

But MOLLENHAUER'S violin ceases to weep, and the curtain rises again. The remainder of the play proceeds in due solemnity. MACBETH has the usual fit of _delirium tremens_ at the banquet scene, where the nobility of Scotland--one of whom wears low shoes, Oxford tie pattern--drink with national ardor, and don't take the slightest interest in MACBETH'S hallucinations. Lady MACBETH afterward enjoys her own little private delirium in a gorgeous night-dress, and MACBETH is finally done for by MACDUFF, who can outfight and outhowl him with perfect ease. The tragedy being at last over, the audience disperses with solemn steps and slow; the men and elderly ladies still whispering their stereotyped chorus of praise, and the young ladies adding to their panegyrics of BOOTH ecstatic admiration of Lady MACBETH'S night-dress.

And the Worldly-Minded Person, walking homeward, soliloquizes in some such strain as this: "BOOTH can't play MACBETH; for he neither looks nor understands the character. FANNY MORANT can't play LADY MACBETH as perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, and MOLLENHAUER is superb."

"Didn't somebody say of WASHINGTON that "Providence made him childless, that the nation might call him father?" Somebody ought to say of Lady MACBETH that she was made childless, that no one might call her mother-in-law. Neat thing that! Somebody ought to send it to PUNCHINELLO. By Jove! what a mother-in-law that woman would have made. Or what a landlady; with the Weird Sisters to prepare the morning hash!"

"Well! BOOTH can't do every thing; and we ought not to expect it. A man who plays HAMLET as well as he does, can't possibly play MACBETH. As well might we ask TENNYSON to turn Ward politician. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for building MOLLENHAUER so splendid a theatre, and for giving us the best IAGO and the best HAMLET that we have ever seen, or ever shall see. And so, I for one am ready to forget and forgive when be fails as MACBETH, and does not succeed as ROMEO."

--MATADOR.

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Grant on Cuba.

The President is really in favor of the recognition of Cuba, with a view of ultimate annexation. He wants to have his Havanas a home production.

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Robbery at the Mines.

It is not strange that robberies are so frequent in the California mining regions, a country in which the mountains are full of Pyrites.

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A TEMPERANCE SONG.

Strained Verses Dedicated to Unstrained Water.

BY A. FILTERER.

Bring a glass of sparkling water, Fill the goblet to the brim, Let the microscopic critters Take in it a harmless swim.

Here are meat and drink united, _Life_, indeed, in this we see; Who'd exchange so rich a fluid For the baser _eau de vie_?

Give us, then, no ale nor porter, Logwood wine, nor other drugs; But a glass of sparkling water Filled with sportive little bugs.

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Musical and Mechanical.

The coopers of New-York City intend to start an organ. It will be a hand-organ, of course, for hand-organs have been Barrel-organs from time immemorial.

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the PUNCHINELLO PUBLISHING COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New-York.

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OUR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. (BY ATLANTIC CABLE.) DOWNING STREET, LONDON, April 10, A.M.

I have, as ordered, made extensive arrangements for a world-wide correspondence for PUNCHINELLO. Knowing your want of confidence in the party called, so truly and briefly, the "_Press Ass,_" who sends over accounts of horse-races, etc., with an occasional item of news, I have wires connecting this office with Paris, Madrid, Rome, and other places of consequence. A special delegate of PUNCHINELLO has been already admitted to a seat in the OEcumenical Council. Pope Pius remarked kindly that he was the only person there who honestly told what he came for. His Holiness enjoyed, also, a hearty laugh at his first interview; the subject being the proper title and costume of our delegate. It was concluded, as he was somewhat dark in complexion, to dub him Bishop of 'Ngami; which, you know, is one of those places that LIVINGSTONE (_is_ he living, though?) found out. When any body questioned him, the said delegate was immediately to talk 'ngammon Latin; and His Holiness would interpret it to the council, as being the African for infallibility. It's wonderful how well this jolly dog gets on, with his dogmas and dog Latin together.

Now for news. After all, the _most_ remarkable event has happened on your side of the water; but as Philadelphia is further from New York than New York is from Philadelphia, (the latter is _so_ slow,) I don't believe you have heard it yet. There is a railroad, well known thereabouts, going to _Germantown._ Well, the event is, that the board of directors of that road have--will you believe it? I hardly do--ordered a _new car_--a palace-car! The way it happened was that, owing to the large use of cattle-cars on the Pacific Railroad, no more second-hand cars could be got for a month or two, bad enough for the directors to buy; and there wasn't a builder in the country willing to make their kind of cars to order.

On this side of the "big pond" we have had nothing so laughable as the MORDAUNT case. The charge of the presiding judge to the Prince of Wales has not been correctly reported. I am told that he spoke thus: "Your Royal Highness is advised that, on this occasion, it is not expected that your Royal Highness should tell the truth, unless your Royal Highness pleases; indeed, your Royal Highness is rather advised not to tell the truth. Now, will your Royal Highness, acting under this advice, please to say, whether he did, or did not, ever do any thing naughty?" Some one said to me at the time--are there not _some_ mordants that will dye beyond whitewashing? But I believe that Wales always was moral, is moral, and always will he moral, (Balmoral!) Now, this last assertion I call news! Is it reliable?

More about Yokohama. An English sailor, from Captain EYRE'S vessel, is said to have murdered a Japanese, in cold blood, to rob his house. A court sat upon the case; and, after trial, pronounced this decision: "We regret to be obliged to find, that the man, CHAN-JUN, lost his life by an incision of his throat; and that the knife which made the incision was in the hand of the sailor called BILL BLINKS, of the Bombay. While, therefore, it would have been, undoubtedly, much better if the man CHAN-JUN, and his house, had been out of the way of the said BILL BLINKS, who by their proximity was placed under a temptation, we are unwillingly compelled to regret that BLINKS should have made an unfortunate incision of this kind. We are therefore of the opinion that the said WILLIAM BLINKS ought not to be allowed to have any grog for at least six days." This very severe sentence was, we are told, afterward remitted by request of Captain EYRE.

Our Roman delegate sends me word to-day, that, the Pope's gardener at the Vatican setting out a variety of early spring plants, every one of them came up a Hyacinth! One after another was sent to pot; but, hydra-headed, still they come! By the way, it is said that two newly noted people in the church are Frere JONQUIL and Soeur DAFFODIL; another is a negro priest, black as two ravens, and he is called Father CROCUS.

ROCHEFORT, we learn, the other day refused to eat any thing, because his prison food was at the cost of the Emperor's government. M. OLLIVIER forthwith sent him a polite autograph note of congratulation; telling him that this was the first act of his, public or private, of which he approved; and in the result of which the government, people, and world would take satisfaction. ROCHEFORT, after reading the note, twisted it up to light a cigarette, and then told his jailer to bring in his dinner! You _can't_ please that man.

M. CHASLES has just been appointed _Curator of Autographs_ at the Bibliotheque Imperiale at Paris, with VRAIN LUCAS as his secretary. This gives general satisfaction.

Miss ANNE B----, of Philadelphia, who lives at Rome, has just written a charming song, with music for the piano, entitled, "Liszt, O Liszt!" The most famous _aria_, however, there now, is the malaria. Rome is sick. The people are sick of the Pope and his priests; the Pope is sick of the Council; the bishops are sick of each other; and travellers are sick of fever. _Sic transit!_

Let me tell you of my experience, for one day, with the "Press Ass" of the Cable. On getting here, finding him to be amicable, I tried him on. He gave me, for news, to send over to PUNCHINELLO, the following:

GREAT BRITAIN.

The _Times_ has an article this morning upon the quality of Virginia tobacco. It speaks with great respect of the authority of Ex-Governor HENRY A. WISE upon that subject.

Mr. GLADSTONE was affected last night with a severe pain in his stomach. On going to his place in the House, he was overheard to say, "It must have been that cabbage." This morning he is better.

10 A.M. Mr. GLADSTONE did not say, "It was that cabbage;" but, "It was those beans."

12 A.M. Right Hon. Mr. GLADSTONE is not any better. It is now doubtful whether it was the beans or the cabbage.

2 P.M. The Right Hon. W.E. GLADSTONE is a little better, but ate only a light dinner. Mr. BRIGHT thinks it was the beans.

Now, my dear PUNCHINELLO, by this time I began to think it _must be_ the beans, and so I sent word to my despi-telegraphic correspondent that _that would do_. And so it will, also, from your correspondent,

--PRIME.

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Women's Rights, Again.

Denver is said to be all agog about a performer named ANNIE CORELLA, who plays solos on the cornet. This is the latest manifestation of the Women's Rights movement, brass instruments having hitherto been played exclusively by masculine lips and lungs. "Blowing" through brass is very characteristic of the advocates of Women's Emancipation; and the next thing we shall hear, perhaps, is that the ladies of the _Revolution_ have organized themselves into a brass band, and taken to serenading HORACE GREELEY.

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Latest Fashionable Intelligence from the Plains,

INDIANS' war-(w)hoops.

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Our Future.

PUNCHINELLO believes in a future. He believes in it first for himself, second for his country, and third for other people. He considers his own future very good and gorgeous, of course. He considers that of his country as very hopeful. It has room to grow, and grows. It has appetite to eat by day and to sleep by night. It eats and sleeps. It rises in the morning refreshed and lively. It washes its face in the Atlantic, and its feet in the Pacific. It raises great eagles, great lakes and rivers, and has a very large, and wise, and honest Congress. Its members of Congress are all pure, unsullied men. Not a stain rests on their proud, marble-like brows--not much. The future of PUNCHINELLO will be, to borrow from the poet, a "big thing." Its genial, mellow, shining face will continue to beam through uncounted ages--as long as beams can be procured, at whatever cost. Its good things will be household words as long as households are held. It will keep its temper very sweet, its age very green, and its flavor very sparkling. It will help the country to get on in its future, and be always glad to give government a good turn. If government wants any money, it will be PUNCHINELLO'S pleasure and privilege to launch it out. PUNCHINELLO has faith in countries and governments, and thinks if such matters were not in existence, its own prosperity would be affected. It therefore says to government, "Go on--be good, and you'll be happy. Grow up in the way you are bent, and when you get old, you'll be there." It sees a gigantic future for the country. It sees the Polar sea running with warm water, the North Pole maintaining a magnificent perpendicularity, and the Equinoctial Line extended all around the earth, including Hoboken and Hull. It sees its millions of people happy in their golden (greenback and currency) prosperity, and also happy in a full supply of PUNCHINELLO to every family. It sees its favorite Bird of Freedom spread its wings from Maine to Oregon; from Alaska to the Gulf, and it trusts its wings will not be hurt or lose a single feather in the spread. It sees itself--PUNCHINELLO, not COLUMBIA--enter upon its thousandth volume as youthful and pretty as a June rose, and as vigorous as a colt. It sees the time when one Fourth of July will not go round the national family, and from two to half a dozen will have to be provided.

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Mind your P's and Q's.

Committees of State Legislatures are apt to use very slip-shod English in drafting their bills. This should not be. How can they expect to Parse a bill unless it is couched in grammatical language?

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Taking a Senator's Measure.

Apropos of a recent debate in the Senate at Washington, a paragraph states that "CARPENTER made SUMNER seem very small." The carpenter who made SUMNER is not to blame for this. In the first place, Mr. SUMNER'S Measures are very difficult to take. In the second place, the best Cabinet-makers have failed to make Mr. SUMNER appear very large. In the third and last place, Ebony, which is the only wood with which Mr. SUMNER has any affinity, is a mighty hard material to work, even when treated with the application of a Fifteenth Amendment.

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The Maine Question in Massachusetts.

If New-York has had but little skating during the past winter, Massachusetts just now displays a good deal of backsliding. Her legislators have "gone back on" their liquor-bill, which they have modified to suit their habits, and, should it become law, the druggists of the Bay State will be at liberty to sell Bay and every other kind of rum in quantities to suit purchasers. _Sic semper_ Massachusetts! the English of which is, that Massachusetts will always keep Sick so long as liquor is to be had for physic.

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Trying to the Patients.

It is widely stated, though we cannot vouch for it as a fact, that the poultices used in St. Luke's Hospital are supplied from the too celebrated pavement of Fifth Avenue.

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"Cometh up as a Flower."

It is stated that Pere HYACINTHE is about to take a wife.

That's right--Pair, HYACINTHE.

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THE EPISODE OF JACK HORNER.

Probably there is no choicer specimen of English literature than the familiar stanza which we herewith reproduce:

"Little JACK HORNER sat in a corner, Eating his Christmas-pie, He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"

Although comprised in merely four lines, it contains more instructive truths and rarer beauties than some volumes whose pages can be enumerated by the hundred. The opening line is singularly beautiful:

"Little JACK HORNER sat in a corner."

Here we hare the subject gracefully introduced without unnecessary palaver or reference to family antecedents--the simple name given without a long rigmarole of dazzling titles or senseless adjectives. The Muse is neither pathetically invoked nor anathematically abused, but the author proceeds at once to describe his hero's present situation, which, it strangely appears, is in "a corner." The indefiniteness of the locality--_a_ corner--is not of the slightest moment; for it does not concern the general reader to know in what corner little JACK was stationed. Suffice it, as is apparent from the context, that it was not a corner in Erie, nor in grain; but rather an angle formed by the juxtaposition of two walls of an apartment or chamber.

Now, truly the subject of the poem must have been possessed either of an extraordinary modicum of modesty or of a bitter misanthropy; or possibly he had been guilty of a misdemeanor, and was cornered to expiate the punishment justly due; yet conjecture is at once made certainty in the second line, by which all doubts as to the reasons for his being in a corner are immediately cleared up:

"Eating his Christmas-pie."

The occasion was indubitably the universal annual holiday, and his object in going to the corner was manifestly to eat the pie. Perhaps the object had an antecedent. Perhaps he _stole_ the pie, and therefore wished to avoid observation; or, more possibly, supreme selfishness was his ruling passion, and he wished to eat it all by himself. As to this, however, we are left slightly in the fog.

In the third line, we are afforded an insight into the manner in which he partook of the Christmas delicacy:

"He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum."

Interesting scene! Here we have at least an inkling of the hero's powers of discrimination, and his regard for the little niceties of life. We have also a beautiful metaphorical allusion to the postulate that "fingers were made before forks," an assertion respecting the truth of which some antiquarians have expressed a doubt. We are not prepared to decide as to the propriety of leaving the substantial of life and employing sweets and frivolities to pamper the appetite--and there are other questions that naturally arise from the interesting circumstance noted above by the poet, but we will not dwell upon them here.

We proceed to the concluding verse.

The descriptive part of the narrative is ended, and we naturally expect a catastrophe in the _denouement_. We may at least suppose that HORNER made himself sick, if he did not actually choke to death from one of the plums he was voraciously eating. By no means. We are spared so painful a recital. All we know is, that he made a remark, evidently in soliloquy,

"And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"

This concluding line, pointless as it may appear, partially clears up the mystery as to his being in a corner. He certainly was not there for misdemeanor; for he was a "good boy," at least in his own estimation. What a happy faculty it is, in this world, for a man to have a good opinion of himself! It relieves life of much of its bitterness. We thus perceive that, while JACK was tasting the sweets of a Christmas-pie, he was also enjoying the sweets of self-contentment.

As we have seen, JACK HORNER is an historical personage; Christmas-pies are historical; and dainties with plums are historical. JACK was an old man, doubtless, when our great-grandmothers were very young--certainly before the war. The world has had full opportunity to profit by his virtuous example. Numberless little boys have been quieted to sleep by the rhyme of JACK HORNER judiciously applied, and numberless little ones, clamorous for more pudding and enlarged privileges at the dinner-table, owe the success of their appeals to this same HORNER. The moral, which runs all through the narrative, is one by which the world may profit, and should. It la a good thing; but like a great many things that are good, in the sense in which we use the word, not relished. We much fear that the ancient, the historical JACK, is extinct. He was a moderate JACK. He only put in his _thumb_, when he might as well have put in his whole hand. The latter-day JACK is the representative of a numerous class possessing larger capacity and a greater dynamic capability. His pie is larger--has more and bigger plums. When we contrast the present JACK with the past, we blush for the comparison. When we encounter him in civic office or in the revenue service, we tremble for the plums. He is grasping, remorseless, ambitious. The old JACK was satisfied to sit in his corner and eat his pie; but this one seeks a pie of dimensions so extravagant as to fill the remotest corners of the globe; and, what is worse, he is--any thing but a Good Boy!

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A Voice from "the Hub."

A GRATULATORY Bostonian writes us that PUNCHINELLO'S voice (a Great Organ, truly) has reached the "Hub," and actually silenced the Great Organ of that pleasant rural town. So far, good; but he adds that Massachusetts takes umbrage at the first syllable of our name, on account of its being at variance with the prohibitory law of that pleasant but Puritanical State. Certainly, in a moral point of view, it is better to be in a Puritanical State than in a State of Punch; but Massachusetts, it is said, is very sly about the liquor business, and takes her "nips," regularly, behind the door. This may account, probably, for the "nipping air" by which so many of her denizens are characterized. The Bostonian further states of the inhabitants of the "Hub," that "liquor finds little favor in their eyes." Now, we are acquainted with three thousand four hundred and seventy-three Bostonians of the most solid "stripe," and we never yet knew one of them put liquor in his _eye_, wherever else he might stow it. That the great Boston I may be partially the result of liquor, is admissible; but then no true Bostonian would call it liquor, you see--he would call it I water.

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Why, Oh! Why?

Why has NAPOLEON III. a very salty taste just now? Because he prefers his hash with THIERS and without GREVY.

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An Established Fact.

The British Association have received L1055 toward a practical and comprehensive inquiry into the utilization of sewage. Bless your British associated hearts! The _Herald_ has demonstrated that long ago--made editorials of it.

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Rather Mixed.

The _Jersey City Journal_ of April 1st, (appropriate date,) contains the following advertisement:

"A few gentlemen can be accommodated with good board, washing, and ironing; or a gentleman and wife. Terms, $6 per week; or two single ladies. Apply at --, corner of Newark avenue."

According to this advertisement, it appears that in Jersey a "gentleman and wife" are legal substitutes for "board, washing, and ironing." Now, it is bewildering to think how on earth a "gentleman and wife" could be made available in lieu of washing and ironing; while, on the other hand, the idea of serving up a "gentleman and wife" as "board," suggests the horrible idea that cannibalism is practised in New-Jersey. With regard to the terms, "$6 per week" seems to be reasonable enough, though how "two single ladies" can be made legal tender for six dollars is absolutely maddening to the mind, inasmuch as average spinsters are far more apt to be tough than tender.

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True.

The _World_ moves with the _Sun_.