Chapter 3

Of all such persons, the one with microscopes in his bumps for eyes is the most bumptious. He is continually detecting pernicious particles in everything that he eats and drinks. One such will seize a pepper-castor, invert it over his mashed turnips, spank it as if it were a child, and then, peering at the dark particles with which the succulent heap of vegetable matter is dusted, proceed to deliver a lecture upon the poisons that we swallow with our daily food. He sees iron-filings in the pepper. Also particles of the tail-feathers of Spanish flies. He will tell you that if you continue to use pepper like that for a long duration--say seventy or eighty years--you will have iron enough in your stomach, from the filings, to make a ten-pound dumb-bell, and blistering stuff sufficient from the Spanish fly to draw all the interest of the National Debt. If the pepper happens to belong to the Cayenne persuasion, he magnifies it into a hod of bricks. It is his hod way of accounting for it. Keep using it daily for half-a-century, says he, and see if you don't wake up some fine morning and find yourself a brick chimney stuck up on the roof of a house for bats to live in. It will be a just judgment on you; and small will be to you the consolation should some poetical friend pen an epigrammatical threnody to your memory, telling in "In Memoriam" stanzas how you "went up like a thousand of bricks."

"Beef?" says the microscopic man, probing the meat with a pencil of light that beams from his right eye (the other being closed for concentration purposes), "Beef, sir?--not a bit of the _bos taurus_ about it, sir. Horse, donkey, mule, zebra--what you will, but not a single fibre of ox. Did you ever see the fibres of beef run in a direction due north and south, like these? If you did I should like to know it, sir. I inspected this meat raw, sir, to-day, on the butcher's stall, and the minute _ova_ perceptible in it were those of the horse gad-fly, not the ox gad-fly, sir. Yes, begad, sir, and I'm prepared to maintain the fact upon oath, sir."

Porter and other malt liquors are favorite subjects for the analysis of the microscopic man. As you are placidly enjoying your pint of GUINNESS'S brown stout, he will look at you for minutes with a compassionate smile. Then, suddenly plunging into his favorite horror knee-deep, he will ask you if you know what becomes of all the ends of smoked-out cigars. Of course you submit that little boys pick them up and smoke them to everlasting annihilation. "Pshaw! sir," exclaims the microscopic person; "there is a man in the City of Dublin, sir--I believe he is a baronet now, but will not force that as a fact--and he made an enormous fortune by going about the streets at early dawn and picking up all the cigar-stumps he could find, and they were not few, as you may suppose, in that smokingest of cities. He used to furnish these by the ton to old GUINNESS, who used them for giving color and body to his famous 'Stout.' Body?--I should think so rather!--but only think where the body came from! Just recall to mind the filthiest gutter that ever you saw in your life, with the numerous ends of cigars that you perfectly remember having observed sweltering in it, and then take another pull at your GUINNESS, sir, and I wish you joy of it, sir!"

Once we remember to have heard the subject of the possibility of lizards snakes, frogs, and other cheerful reptiles having resided for indefinite periods in the stomachs of human subjects, discussed in the presence of the microscopic man. A lady of the party was skeptical on the subject, dwelling especially upon the impossibility of any person swallowing a reptile unawares. "Observe those water-cresses of which you have been partaking so freely, madam," said the microscopic man. "Beneath each leaf I discern _ova_ of things that it might horrify you to enumerate in full. Suffice it to say, then, for the present, that on the leaves of this small sprig culled by me at random from the cluster, are to be detected the germs of the _trigonocephalus contortrix_, than which, when fully developed, no more deadly reptile wriggles upon earth. See this minute agglomeration of yellowish specks on the stalk of the cress. These are the eggs of the _lacerta horrida_, a lizard that within the large warts with which its epidermis is studded secretes a poison of the most virulent character. Others, too, I discern, but they are too disagreeable to dwell upon--not to speak of one having _them_ dwell inside one, instead--ha! ha! Now, remember that all these germs are hatched by gentle warmth. No degree of temperature that we know of is more gentle than that of the human stom--"

At this point the lady fainted, and the microscopic man was thrown promptly out of the window by her husband, who has since been presented by a committee of grateful citizens with a gold-mounted cane, as a mark of consideration for his services in ridding the world of a monster.

* * * * *

"GREEK MEETS GREEK."

Oh, lovers of your lager beer, Drinkers of wine and ale, Ye editors and ministers, Come listen to my tale, And learn the very slight basis Characters are built on, By reading of the fight between FULTON and friend TILTON.

In New York City, Broadway street, Friend FULTON took his way, Squinting in ev'ry restaurant, For it was then mid-day; He saw a bottle on a stand, With words all in gilt on, While right before that awful stand Guzzling wine sat TILTON.

On Sunday night, while walking down Bow'ry to the ferry, TILTON did spy a lager shop Where the folks were merry, And saw a sight that op'd his eyes, For, in that beery vat, Nine lagers foaming by his side, Reverend FULTON sat.

With spirit sword bound at his side, And his hand the hilt on, Brave FULTON smote at hip and thigh Of our little TILTON; Then TILTON took a mighty quill, Called FULTON a liar, FULTON took that to his church, Will he take it higher?

Now TILTON says that FULTON lies, FULTON says 'tis TILTON; I wish this epic was told by HOMER or by MILTON. _I_ cannot tell which yarn is true, Nor what each is built on, But surely there's been lying by FULTON or else TILTON.

* * * * *

A FINE OLD LADY.

In this day of monetary papyrus, it is pleasing to read of an ancient matron in Lafayette, Ind., who, at the age of eighty-nine, has gone to her reward, leaving no property save a $20 gold piece. For several years, she has been reserving this honest coin to pay her funeral expenses; and one cannot help surmising that she must have been distantly related to the late Old Bullion BENTON. "No National Bank nonsense at my tomb!" said she; "no grimed and greasy currency for my undertaker! I will have a specie-paying funeral or none at all." As we have the precedent of a great many Old Ladies in the Cabinet, we are rather sorry that it is too late to invite this clear-headed dame to take a chair in Washington.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE WRONG "DUMMIE."

Gatling (our countryman, you know) has invented a Battery Gun. They have been trying this gun over at Shoeburyness (how is that, for a name?) in England, to see whether they had not better order a few, in time for the next war. It seems that they conducted their experiments by firing at "dummies, representing men." (Oh, if they had _only_ had some of our American Dummies there, who Represent Men so inadequately.) There were 136 of these _simulacra_, "99 of whom," says the report "would have been killed." That is, if it had been possible to kill them. In fact, they would have been killed four or five times over. "Kilt intirely."

We shall always feel that a great opportunity was here lost of ridding the country of certain nuisances, who, if anything at all, are _worse_ than dummies, and deserve not four only, but four hundred balls in them, "forty-two one-hundredths of an inch in diameter," or even larger. There are so many, it would be useless to attempt to specify them: and besides, everybody knows who they are. We would begin with the Politicians, and end with the Brokers. And then the Millennium would begin, "sure pop."

* * * * *

TROUBLE FOR THE RISING GENERATION.

Mr. PUNCHINELLO has often thought with what melancholy feelings the naughty boys must gaze upon a fine grove of growing birches; but what pangs would a knowing child experience upon finding himself in Randolph county, Illinois, where they raise twelve bushels of castor-oil beans to the acre! Of what depths of juvenile wretchedness and precocious misanthropy is that crop suggestive! We see it all--the anxious parent--the solemn doctor--the writhing patient--the glass--the spoon! Howls like those of a battle-field, only less so, fill the air. The wretched victim of pharmacy, conquered at last, gives one desperate gulp to save himself from strangulation, and all is over! Ye who remember your boyhood's home! tell us if there was any joke in all this!

* * * * *

THE GREAT MODERN O MISSION.--The English Mission.

* * * * * [Illustration: THE LITERARY PIRATES.

SUGGESTED BY BIARD'S PICTURE, AND SHOWING THE PIRATICAL ROVER "HARPY" SPRINGING A TRAP UPON THE GOOD SHIP "AUTHOR" IN A FAVOURABLE TRADE WIND.]

"THE HARPY."

With literary ventures stowed As full as ship can be, The good ship "Author" holds her way Over the fickle sea; Now sings the wind, and, all serene, The ripples forth and back Lap lightly round her gleaming sides And whiten on her track.

Far westward, on the line of blue That meets the pearly[1] sky, There looms up large a stranger sail, A sail both broad and high; And as she near and nearer draws She hovers like a bird, And strains of music from her deck Upon the air are heard.

Now closer draws the stranger sail-- Are sirens they who hang About the quivering cordage with-- Hallo! what's that?--bang! bang! The trap is sprung, the siren ship Runs up the sable flag-- It is the pirate "Harpy," and She takes the "Author's" swag!

[Footnote 1: A famous foreign writer offered us £500 to print this Pearl Street, but we wouldn't do it for double the money.--[ED.]]

* * * * *

WEAPONS THAT TAMMANY HALL CAN NEVER BE TAKEN BY.--SHARPE'S Rifles.

* * * * *

HIRAM GREEN AT THE BROOKLYN NAVY-YARD.

Bread and Butter vs. Old Cheese.

I hadent got but a little ways into the Navy-Yard, when a soljer steps up before me, and pintin his bagonet at my throack, said:

"Pass."

I stepped tother side of him to obey his orders, when he agin pinted his gun at me and said:

"Pass."

Thinkin I was on the rong side of him, I undertook to pass into the middle of the road, when he vociferated in louder tones:

"Pass!"

"Well," says I, by this time considerably riled at sich skanderlous treatment at the _hands_ of this goverment, "if you'l stop rammin your bagonet into my hash digester and let me _pass_, ile be hily tickled."

I was madder than if I had been a candidate for offis, and dident get elected.

"See here, Mister hard-tack Cowpenner," said I, addressin him, "how dare you stop _me_ in this ere outragous manner? You say 'pass,' and when I try to pass, you jab at my innards with that mustick in a rather oncomfortable manner. What do you mean?"

"I mean, sir," said he, sholderin his shootin iron, "that if you want to go further, you must get a pass from the offis across the way."

"Oho! that's a gooseberry pie of a different flavor," said I, coolin off; "why dident you say so before?" and I pinted for the offis to get the pass.

After bein put through a course of red tape, such as feelin of my pultz, lookin down my throte, and soundin me on my Spread Eagleism, I got the pass.

While on my tower of observashuns, a mechanikle lookin individual approched me, and says:

"Good mornin, Congressman WEBSTER."

I turned in cirprise, as several other men dropped their tools and rushed out and surrounded me.

"God bless you, Mister WEBSTER!" said one.

"Make way for the noble and good WEBSTER," said another.

"Let me kiss the hand of the great statesman," says a third, fallin to and gettin my thumb in his mouth.

"Mister WEBSTER, take care of me, I am yours to command," says a 4th, who jumped wildly for an old tobacker cud I had just throde away.

On all sides, men was fallin down to worship me, just as if I was the Golden Calf, spoken of in scripters, or else some great poletikle Mogul, with a pocket full of blank commissions, ready to be filled out for good fat offises.

All of a sudden, it popped into my mind that these 8 hour sons of toil hadent heard that DANIEL WEBSTER was dead, or else dident see the joak, when DAN said: "I aint dead," and supposed from my likeness to him that I was D. WEBSTER.

I couldent blame 'em for makin such a mistake, when I reccolected the time I was introjuced to the great man. It was when I was Gustise of the Peace.

As our hands clasped each other, we was both revitted to the spot, and the rivets was clinched tite.

"What! it can't be possible!" said Mr. WEBSTER, the first to break the silence. "Well if you haint another WEBSTER, you'l pass for D. WEBSTER'S bust, any day."

"And," said I, wishin to return the compliment, "if you haint _Green_, you can pass any time for GREEN on a bust."

This was one of my witcisms, and it made DANIEL blurt with lafter.

But, Mister PUNCHINELLO, me and WEBSTER looked so much alike, that if his tailor had sent him a soot of clothes at that time, I believe, in the confusion, that just as like as not, I should have thought I was WEBSTER, and wore off the clothes.

But, to "retrace my tale," as the canine said, when a flee was suckin the heart's blood from his cordil appendige--

"Well, my friends," said I, humerin these men in their mistake, "what can I do for you down to Washington?"

"Do for us? thou great and mitey!" said they all to once, "keep us into offis--we 'go' _you_, Nov. 8th."

"Well," said I, "my good men, my word is law down to Washington. Everybody respects the great DANIL WEBSTER."

"Eh!--who--what," exclaimed several.

"I say that I, DANIL WEBSTER, is great guns with the goverment," was my reply.

"DANIEL WEBSTER be d--d," said the ring-leader. "No, Sir! ED WEBSTER, the nominee for Congress, and Wet Nurse _pro tem._ over Unkle Sam's family in this 'ere _nursery_, is the man we're after. Haint you that man?"

"You don't mean the chap who was U.S. Assessor, agin whom I heard them Wall street brokers and scalpers cussin and swearin like a lot of Rocky Mountin savages chock full of fluid pirotecknicks, because he made them pay a goverment tax?"

"The same! the same!" they all hollered.

"Well! sweet wooers of the bread and butter brigade," said I, "speakin after the manner of men, you've got ontop the rong hencoop this time. As Shakspeer, who is now dead and gone, says:--

'A rose by any other name Is sweeter-er than I, I've diskivered I haint the _game_ You want to see roost high.'"

They left me, yes, they left me. I wasent the man, but some awdacious retch had sot 'em on tellin 'em I was _the_ man.

Surgeon GOODBLOOD, of the man o' war _Vermont_, then took me under his charge. I found him one of them _noble_ docters, under whose perscriptions a man could enjoy 'kickin the bucket.'

He took me to see the soljers drill.

"Thems the Marines," said he, pintin to the bloo cotes.

"Sho! you don't say?" says I. "Are them those obligin gentlemen who are allways ready to listen to what is told 'em?"

"Yes," says the Dr.; "anything nobody else believes, we tell to the Marines."

I mite okepy your hul paper tellin all about the war vessels, pattent torpedoes, monitors, and sich, which I saw, but will close with the remark:

That old rats never pile livlier onto roasted cheese, than a bread and butter patriot does onto candidates who has the _cuttin_ of a good _fat loaf_. That's wisdom which will wash.

Ewers,

HIRAM GREEN, Esq.,

_Lait Gustise of the Peece._

* * * * *

SIMILE USED UP.

We regret to state, that in consequence of a late discovery by one BÉCHAMP, of living things in chalk (he has actually seen 'em wriggle!) we are no longer at liberty to say, "As different as Chalk and Cheese." The difference is gone! If it is not, we would ask, where is it?

It is true, chalk is not in so general use, as an article of diet, as cheese, except in boarding-schools; but the difference is plainly one of degree rather than of kind. We have heard of "prepared chalk." It has been whispered that gentle spinsters use it for a beautifyer. We rather incline to the belief that it is prepared for the inside rather than the outside of humanity.

At any rate, the two articles now agree in their most prominent characteristics--which they did not, till M. BÉCHAMP looked into the matter with his microscope.

'Tis thus, alas! our cherished similes are going. One by one are they Bé-champ-ed (or chawed up) by the voracious creatures who hunger and thirst after novelty. Why, we expect to be told, ere long,--and have it proved to us,--that the Moon after all is actually and truly made of Green Cheese. And there will go another fond comparison! Nay, more;--perhaps Cheese itself is but Chalk, in its incipient stages of development,--with the tenantry already secured, however, that make it so lively inside.--_Si sic Omnes_.

* * * * *

To Our Youthful Friends.

We wish to do all in our power to keep the world cheerful. If there is a youth of our acquaintance who despairs of ever raising a fine moustache, we would remind him of that comforting apothegm of the Spanish: "Un cabello haze sombra"--"The least hair makes a shadow." Courage, lad! and do not cast that shadow from thy lip. If there is a single hair already there, it is a manly and noble thing!

* * * * *

"Done Brown."

"TOM BROWN" is not looked upon as a sheepish person, and yet, the English of his name is ewes ('ughes).

* * * * *

* * * * *

POEMS OF THE CRADLE.

CANTO X.

There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise, He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes; And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main, He jumped into another bush, and scratched them in again.

Some people have a very curious way of doing things. Nowadays when the world has advanced by prodigious strides almost to the limit of civilization, and having no further to go, is debating within itself whether it shall lie down and take a rest, a man don't go to so much trouble to have his eyes out. The age is a fast one, you know; so, when the man feels like having his glims doused, he just jumps into the midst of a crowd of real b'hoys, runs his head, good-naturedly, you know, against a pair of knuckles, and the business is settled with "neatness and despatch," as the job-printers say.

How different our poet's description. He must have been a man of wonderful experience; and foresight, let us add, since from his simple yet wonderfully powerful sketches there is gained an insight into all the mysterious workings of humanity, from the lulling of the babe in the cradle, the ruthless disruption of the apron-string that he is led with, because some naughty little boys laughed at him, to the tolling of the bell by the old sexton over another dead.

Well, there is no use in moralizing. The tale is before us, graphically drawn; and to the reader is left naught but the pleasure of contemplating its beauties. In his pithy way the poet describes a man who, though possessed of some good qualities, evidently did not know how to use them. Though the poet has never yet touched upon politics, yet the careful reader will find that the hero of the sketch must have been a young Democrat, since he is made to appear very nimble, and has a fondness, partial to himself, of getting into rather thorny places. What led him into those dangerous places we have very little chance of knowing. "He was wondrous wise," saith the poet, and forsooth he jumps into a bramble-bush, the last place in the world where a _wise_ man is to be found. But then, perhaps, a tincture of irony flew from our poet's pen; the hero was wise in his own esteem, perhaps; or was wise in the opinion of his friends, whose wisdom seemed to be consummated in doing something ridiculous.

It is very fortunate for the social welfare of community that all its actions should not be sublime. Mankind would become too serious and morose and cynical, and life would be a burden. The ridiculous makes it enjoyable, but at the expense of those who cause the ridicule. Man _must_ laugh, no matter what the cost to the object laughed at.

Ordinary intelligence would have decided the fate of the wise individual who found no other use for his eyes but to scratch them out in a bramble-bush. But our poet dealeth otherwise with his portraits. He shows us the fate of an overwrought, badly instilled wisdom; yet when that wisdom has been deserted by its cause, the promptings of a heart, pure at the core, hold up to contempt the mad teachings of the sophist.

"When he saw what he had done,"

continues the poet, in a sense not entirely literal, for reasons which are not necessary to be explained, this man of wondrous wisdom saw that he had been made a dupe. Cunning as a fox were his would-be friends; but having got him to the bush, there they let him gambol as he would, ensnaring him to his own almost utter ruin.

A new light flashes upon his brain; his folly appears plainly to his mind; he had ruthlessly deserted his fond parents; sought evil counsel; was deserted by his false friends; and was now in a deplorable condition indeed. Remorse sometimes brings repentance; at least it did in this case. Our hero remembered the good teachings of his early youth; and, like the prodigal son, was willing to return to the home of his fathers. True, he was in a bramble-bush; but, _similia similibus curantur_ (which, interpreted, signifies, "You tickle me and I'll tickle you").

"He jumped into another bush,"

found his eyes as they were before his sad catastrophe, and without ceremony returned them to their places, by another operation of scratching.

What more need be said! No circumlocution of words will add to the ending of a tale, but perhaps serve only to conceal the point. The author is careful of his reputation. He restores the hero to his original position, in full possession of his senses.

There let him be; But O Be good, say we.

* * * * *

AGOSTINO THE GUNSMITH.

Of gun-tricks, old or new, the best that we know Was that performed by JOSEPH AGOSTINO, The gunsmith who, by burglars often vext, A week or two since plotted for the next By planting cunningly a wide-bored fusil, With buck-shot loaded half-way to the muzzle, Right opposite the window to which came The nightly thief, to ply his little game; And to the trigger hitching so a string, That when the burglar bold was entering The charge went off, and, crashing through the shutter, Relieved the rascal of his bread and butter By blowing off his head.