.... From London we have intelligence of the stabbing to death of a man
by mistake. His assassin mistook him for a person related to himself,
whose loss would be his own financial gain. Fancy the utter dejection
of this stabber when he discovered the absurd blunder he had committed!
We believe a slip like that would justify a man in throwing down the
knife and discarding murder for ever; while two such errors would be
ample excuse for him to go into some kind of business.
.... A small but devout congregation were at worship. When it had
become a free exhibition, in which any brother could enact a part, a
queer-looking person got up and began a pious and learned exhortation.
He spake for some two hours, and was listened to with profound
attention, his discourse punctuated with holy groans and pious amens
from an edified circle of the saintly. Tears fell as the gentle rains
from heaven. Several souls were then and there snatched as brands from
the eternal burning, and started on their way to heaven rejoicing. At
the end of the second hour, and as the inspired stranger approached
“eighty-seventhly,” some one became curious to know who the teacher
was, when lo! it turned out that he was an escaped lunatic from the
Asylum.
The curses of the elect were not loud but deep. They fumed with
exceeding wrath, and slopped over with pious indignation at the swindle
put upon them. The inspired, however, escaped, and was afterwards
captured in a cornfield.
The funeral was unostentatious.
.... We hear a great deal of sentiment with regard to the last solar
eclipse. Considerable ink has been consumed in setting forth the
terrible and awe-inspiring features of the scene. As there will be no
other good one this season, the following recipe for producing one
artificially will be found useful:—Suspend a grindstone from the centre
of a room. Take a cheese of nearly the same size, and after blacking
one side of it, pass it slowly across the face of the grindstone and
observe the effect in a mirror placed opposite, on the cheese side. The
effect will be terrific, and may be heightened by taking a rum punch
just at the instant of contact. This plan is quite superior to that of
nature, for with several cheeses graduated in size, all known varieties
of eclipse may be presented. In writing up the subsequent account, a
great many interesting phenomena may be introduced quite impossible to
obtain either by this or any other process.
.... We have observed with considerable impatience that the authors of
Sunday School books do not seem to know anything; there is no reason
why these pleasant volumes should not be made as effective as they are
deeply interesting. The trouble is in the method of treating wicked
children; instead of being destroyed by appalling calamities, they
should simply be made painfully ridiculous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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