Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 01, April 2, 1870 — John Shaqi
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 01, April 2, 1870Various
General
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 01, April 2, 1870
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
One did not like PUNCHINELLO because it means a "little Punch," and
he--the speaking-trumpeter--liked a great deal; and lo! while he spoke,
he changed his trumpet for several horns. Then he was taken with a fit
of herpetology in his boots, and sank to advise no more.
Another--a fellow with an infinite fancy for buffo minstrelsy--was
vociferous that PUNCHINELLO should be called "Tommy Dodd." The
discussion upon this lasted for three months; but finally, "Tommy Dodd"
was rejected on account of the superfluously aristocratic aroma that
exhaled from the name.
Four divisions of men with banners then came by, each division
respectively composed of members of the waning families of Smith, Brown,
Jones, and Robinson, and each division bawled and thundered that the
name round which it rallied should be adopted instead of PUNCHINELLO, on
pain of death.
And thousands of others came with suggestions of a like sort; for which
some of them wanted "stamps." And when they had all had their say,
PUNCHINELLO was called PUNCHINELLO, and nothing else--a name by which he
means to stand or fall.
And now to business. PUNCHINELLO is not going to define his position
here. He refrains from boring his readers with prolix gammon about his
foreign and domestic relations. He will content himself (and readers, he
hopes) by briefly mentioning that he has foreign and domestic relations
in every part of the habitable globe, and that they each and all furnish
him with correspondence of the most reliable and spicy character,
regularly and for publication. Among his foreign relations he is happy
to reckon M. MEISSONNIER, the celebrated French artist, to whom he is
indebted for the original painting from which PUNCHINELLO, as he appears
on his own title-page, is taken.
A preface is not the place in which to enlarge upon topics of great
humanitarian interest, political importance, or social progress.
PUNCHINELLO will merely touch a few of such matters, then, and these
with a light finger. (No allusion, here, to the "light-fingered gentry,"
for whom PUNCHINELLO keeps a large grape vine in pickle.)
PUNCHINELLO observes the incipient tendency to return to specie
payments. To this revival, however, he is not as yet prepared to give
his adhesion, though, on the whole, he considers it preferable to
relapsing fever, which is also noted on 'Change. Cuba shall have her due
share of attention from him. And if She-Cuba, (Queen of the Antilles,
you know,) why not also He-Cuba?--lovely and preposterous woman, who,
from her eagerness to slip on certain habiliments that are masculine,
but shall here be nameless, shall henceforth be appropriately
distinguished by that name.
Let other important topics take care of themselves. PUNCHINELLO will
only add that he would at any time rather suspend the public plunderers
than _habeas corpus_, and that he means to take the gloss off the grim
joke that "Hanging for murder's played out in New-York."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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