....  Only one hundred and ten thousand pious pilgrims visited Mount Ararat in a body this year.  The urbane and gentlemanly proprietors of the Ark Tavern complain that their receipts have hardly been sufficient to pay for the late improvements in this snug retreat.  These gentlemen continue to keep on hand their usual assortment of choice wines, liquors, and cigars.

Opposite the Noah House, Shem Street, between Ham and Japhet.

....  It is commonly supposed that President Lopez, of Paraguay, was killed in battle; but after reading the following slander upon him and his mother, written some time since by a friend of ours, it is difficult to believe he did not commit suicide:—­

“The telegraph informs us that President Lopez, of Paraguay, has again murdered his mother for conspiring against his life.  That sprightly, and active old lady has now been executed three thousand times for the same offence.  She is now eighty-three years old, and erect as a telegraph pole.  Time writes no wrinkles on her awful brow, and her teeth are as sound as on the day of her birth.  She rises every morning punctually at four o’clock and walks ten miles; then, after a light breakfast, enters her study and proceeds to hatch out a new conspiracy against her first born.  About 2 P. M. it is discovered, and she is publicly executed.  A light toast and a cup of strong tea finish the day’s business; she retires at seven and goes to sleep with her mouth open.  She has pursued this life with the most unfaltering regularity for the last fifty years.  It is only by this unswerving adherence to hygienic principles that she has attained her present green old age.”

....  There is a person resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval.  It is not that the woman-for this person is a mature female—­ever did us any harm, or is likely to; that is not our grievance.  What we seriously object to and actively contemn-yea, bitterly denounce-is the nose of her.  So mighty a nose we have never beheld-so spacious, and open, and roomy a human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture.  It rises from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic!  It turns up at an angle that fills the spectator with admiration, and impresses him with an awe that is speechless.

But we have no space for a description of this eternal proboscis.  Suffice it that its existence is a standing menace to society, a threat to civilization, and a danger to commerce.  The woman who will harbour and cherish such an organ is no better than a pirate.  We do not know who she is, and we have no desire to know.  We only know that all the angels could not pull us past her house with a chain cable, without giving us one look at that astounding feature.  It is the one prominent landmark of the nineteenth century-the special wonder of the age-the solitary marvel of a generation!