Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 — John Shaqi
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870Various
General
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
SIR: I wish to call your attention to certain defects in the journal
conducted by you, and to make a few suggestions, which, if followed,
will greatly improve it. I have talked with several eminent gentlemen on
the subject, among whom are the Rev. EZEKIEL DODGE, pastor of the
Sandemanian Church in our town, and also the Hon. PELEG SMITH, our
Representative in Congress. Both fully agree with me in the ideas which
I am about to lay before you.
In the first place, I object to the name PUNCHINELLO. It is too
frivolous, and suggests no food to the thoughtful mind. You should have
called your paper the _Banner of Progress_. This would have at once
enlisted the sympathy of all earnest men in your enterprise. Rev. Mr.
DODGE says that he wrote to you some weeks ago, proposing that you
change the name to that of the _Friend of Truth,_ while Mr. SMITH thinks
that the _Pig Iron Review_ would be the best possible name. He is,
however, a high tariff man, and his judgment may be influenced by that
fact. Either of these latter names would unquestionably be preferable to
PUNCHINELLO, but the name which I have suggested is the one which you
ought to adopt.
Then the shape of your paper is all wrong. Any one can see that if it
were only shorter and broader, it would closely resemble the shape of
_Punch_. Now, sir, we Americans don't want anything that looks like
anything British or European. Our country is bigger, and consequently
better than any other. We have bigger rivers, bigger cataracts, bigger
steamboats, and bigger jimfisks than any other people, and, therefore,
our newspapers ought to be original in shape. You should make your paper
octagonal in form, otherwise everybody will justly accuse you of
imitating some effete and monarchical British journal.
And I must strongly object to the spirit of levity which I find in your
paper. This is an Earnest Age, sir, and we cannot afford to joke. The
Rev. Mr. DODGE has been greatly grieved at the light way in which you
have treated such serious subjects as the Divorce Question. He will
forward to you a sermon of his own on the topic of "The Jewish Marriage
Law compared with that of the Amalekites and the Jebusites, together
with Remarks on the construction of the Ark, including an Inquiry into
the origin of the Edomites, and a Dissertation upon the Levitical law of
Tithes." This sermon would occupy from four to six pages of your paper
every week, if published in weekly instalments, for a period of about
ten weeks, and would give a tone to PUNCHINELLO which it now lacks.
Besides publishing this sermon, you would do well to print, every week,
a speech of the Hon. Mr. DODGE, who is one of the most eloquent members
of the House, and whose views on finance are greatly respected by such
men as Mr. KELLEY and Mr. CHANDLER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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