Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870.

Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870.

     ’Tis the voice of the Turtle
       That’s heard in the land. 
     Crying, “Bother your care! 
       I don’t want to be canned!

     “Pack me whole in a tub,
       Nor be stingy of ice,
     What I want is a BERGH,
       Nothing less will suffice.”

* * * * *

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Black-eyed Susan asks us whether a Pitched battle can take place on land. Answer.—­Certainly not.  When we speak of a battle being Pitched we mean that it has been fought by Tars.

Fogbank.—­“Is DANA, of The Sun, any relation to “Truthful JAMES,” of whom the Overland Monthy has written?” Answer.—­Distantly related, through intermarriage with the LONGBOWS.

Moses.—­We do not suppose that the person referred to by you as a Dyer and Scourer is in any way related to OLIVER DYER, although the latter person scoured Water Street some time since, and very effectually, in pursuit of a “sensation.”  The word “Scourer,” nevertheless, might be an allowable corruption of “Esquire,” when applied to any of the proprietors of that mephitic daily, The Sun.

Pickerel.—­Will Mr. GREELEY be obliged to dress in court costume if he accepts the mission to the Court of St. JAMES? Answer.—­No.  It would be contrary to Mr. GREELEY’S well-known principles to get on “tights.”

Flagroot.—­Is it correct to say the “balance” of an army, meaning the rest of it? Answer.—­Not always.  When an army has turned the Scale of battle, however, the word Balance may be used.

Mary Jane.—­I have embroidered a flag for the Prussian army, and am at a loss for a motto.  How would “Bear and Forbear” do? Answer.—­“Beer and for Beer” would be better.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “THERE!—­I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE THE UNDERTOW THAT WOULD RUN AWAY WITH ME!”]

* * * * *

A ROAR FROM NIAGARA.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO:—­Having been reminded, by your recent notes on Niagara, that there is a cataract of that name, possessed of height and depth and breadth and volume and other well-known characteristics of a genuine Waterfall, I thought I would go and see it for myself.  Not that I doubted your statements—­which, indeed, are handsomely supported by familiar statistics,—­but certainly there is a charm in treading the ground once trod by Greatness, breathing—­well not the same air, I hope, but some of the same kind,—­viewing the identical scenes, and being swindled by the self-same parties, that had just occasioned your animated comments.

I don’t know a charm at all comparable with that of being swindled in the midst of fine scenery, when the funds and enthusiasm still hold out, and the sense of actually getting the worth of one’s money is not yet so blunted by transactions calculated to awaken Thought, as to have lost the power of increasing one’s felicity.  That the intelligent lad who drove me was in league with every one of the parties who were stationed here and there with the sole apparent purpose of receiving fifty cents from visitors, I was loth to believe, though nothing could have been plainer, if one had happened to think of it from the start.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.