Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 04, April 23, 1870Various
General
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 04, April 23, 1870
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
With regard to heating the Hotel Dieu Hospital, in Paris, by
electricity, a contemporary has remarked, "Of course, we know nothing of
the apparatus by which this result is accomplished in Paris; but we had
the opportunity of witnessing on Wednesday last, at the Winder building,
the experiments of Dr. LEIGH BURTON in applying electricity for warming
railroad cars, which were entirely successful and satisfactory." Of
course, _we_ know nothing about it either; but we hope the new method is
a great improvement on the old one, as we have several times witnessed
_from_ the Winder, buildings, barns especially, heated by electricity in
a very _un_satisfactory manner.
* * * * *
"On Two, Richmond!"
RICHARD III. fancied that there were "two RICHMONDS in the field."
Singularly coincidental with this, and well worth the attention of
Shakespearean scholars, is the fact that Richmond, Va., is now running
two mayors. Of course, Richmond, Va., cannot now be looked upon as a
"one-horse" town.
* * * * *
Ritualistic.
One of the latest allurements held out by the managers of a celebrated
"high" church in this city, is a "three hours' agony"--which is about
the most appropriate name for a long and tedious sermon we remember ever
to have heard.
* * * * *
BOYHOOD.
There can be no reason to doubt that METHUSELAH was blessed with a
tolerably vigorous constitution. The ordeal through which we pass to
maturity, at present, probably did not belong to the Antediluvian Epoch.
Whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever, and croup are comparatively
modern inventions. They and the doctors came in after the flood; and the
gracious law of compensation, in its rigorous inflexibility, sets these
over against the superior civilization of our golden age. At a time when
the court-dress of our ancestors was composed of fig-leaves, or of
imperfectly dressed skins--nothing like the Astrachans of the nineteenth
century--it would certainly have been very inconvenient to coddle ailing
infantry through an attack of diphtheria, for example. So bountiful
Nature, then in the first blush of maidenhood, doubtless brought the
long-lived Patriarch through his nine hundred and sixty-nine years
without once calling in the family medical adviser. It is recorded,
however, that he was born and that he died, and he therefore certainly
passed through that stage of existence called Boyhood. And as he was
nearly two hundred years old at the birth of his first-born, it is
reasonable to suppose that the adolescent period was frightfully
prolonged in his case. Just imagine a youngster of a hundred and ten or
fifteen stealing apples or running to fires! The revelations of
ethnology, which is too youthful a science to reveal a great deal, do
not oppose the theory of all matured humanity, to wit, that the animal
boy is the same in all ages and in all races, an Ishmaelite, and Ara, an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 04, April 23, 1870 — John Shaqi
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