Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/Melange
Melange.
Happy is the man whose sweetheart laughs at him when absent—he may be sure he has no rival in her affection.
The season of serenades has come, and nightly our streets are vocal with most exquisite melody. We cannot have too much of it.
The people of St. Paul, Minnesota, consumed 75,000 pounds of venison, during the past winter. The article is yet abundant and cheap up north-west. Here it is always deer.
It is said that Samuel Rogers was engaged on the “Pleasures of Memory” for nine years. Mrs. Partington, to whom we submitted this, thinks a life of ninety years must have been a dreary one with only nine devoted to the pleasures of memory.
A lady was asked, “When a lady and gentleman have quarrelled, and each considers the other in fault, which of the two ought to be the first to advance towards a reconciliation?” Her reply was, “The better and wiser of the two.”
Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives have been applying a gold headed cane to Mr. Speaker Phelps, though in a different manner from that adopted by Brooks. It was as a gift, and had more connection with the heart than the head.
Old Joe Bartlett honestly says—“To see an old man with one foot in the grave, and the other quivering on the brink, laughing at morals and ridiculing religion, is the most detestable picture of human depravity which heart can conceive, or the imagination paint.”
M. Leverrier, the eminent astronomer, who is poking his long telescope among the stars, is firmly persuaded that a great number of small planets are situated between Mars and Jupiter, and that before 1860 nearly one hundred will certainly be discovered.
Powers, the sculptor, is progressing with his colossal statue of Daniel Webster, and also with his great piece of art, California. He has also for some time been engaged on a female figure, from snow-white marble, which, when finished, it is thought will be unequalled in artistic beauty.
Charles Kingsley gives the following definition of marriage:—
Marriage is the life long miracle—
The Eden, where the spirit and the flesh
Are one again, and new-born souls walk free,
And name in mystic language all things new,
Naked, and not ashamed.
An exchange says, the less you leave your children when you die, the more they will have twenty years afterwards. Poor Pilgarlic has nailed the above on his table and reads it every morning before breakfast as a devotional exercise. He says he means to stick to it most religiously, and according to present indications he will.
A sensitive clothing dealer in Milk street has been much annoyed at an outrage perpetrated upon him by an adjacent firm, who have placed a sign between their two doors advertising “Horns.” A half dozen times in a day he is asked, in a private way, for beverages that were once known as “horns,” but which, we think, are now not to be had.
Among certain tribes of Africa, thunder is called “the sky gun;” the morning, “the child’s day;” and one who is intoxicated is said to be “taken captive by rum.” A native of Africa, who visited England a few years ago, when asked what ice was, said, “Him be water fast asleep,” and of the railroad locomotive he said, “Him be one thunder mill.”
An exchange speaks of women as being stronger than oxen in their endurance of the weight of whalebone. This reminds us of the reasoning of Mr. Slow, as he looked at one of Gough’s large audiences. “Here,” said he, “are more people than ten yoke of oxen could draw—Mr. Gough has drawn ’em here—therefore Mr. Gough is stronger than ten yoke of oxen.” The reasoning was good.
The Portsmouth Chronicle indulges in a few tears over a chestnut mare named Jeannet, long a public favorite, that is supposed to have been poisoned in that city. By the same paper we learn that $200 have been collected in Portsmouth, for Capt. Small, of the schooner Emerald, who lost his all by the sinking of his schooner, loaded with lime, lately in Piscataqua River.
A gentleman whose character for sobriety has heretofore been unimpeachable, took us aside at the Dodworth Concert the other evening and propounded the following: “If I owed you five dollars what liquor should I resemble?” The band struck up the new Tiger Polka just then, and we hastened to hear it, but late in the evening the joker whispered in our ear “‘Owe’d a V,” (eau de vie.)
A very sedate young man, who hails from Dorchester, while breakfasting with some friends a few days since, thus astonished them: “If I,” said he, “should place those eggs underneath the grate what great hero would it remind you of?” A pause ensued and as no one replied, the querist ventured to say, “All eggs under the great,” (Alexander the Great). The penalty for this outrage has not been agreed upon.
The bridal favor for “Mrs. Partington, Ike, and Lion” was received, but the second party named lost it, as he said, in carrying it home, though there was a strong suspicion of spice in his breath, and a crumb or two observable on his coat. But Mrs. P. and Lion were none the less gratified, and the old lady breathed a wish of happiness for the union, and Lion gravely responded by expressive silence and an emphatic wag of his tail.
When the widow Wiseacre surveyed the funeral pomp which escorted her “dear departed” to the grave, she said, “Ah, how delighted my poor husband would be to see this, he was always so fond of ceremony!” It is a pleasant belief among our spiritual friends that a man can be a busy participant in his own funeral honors, and enjoy besides the better privilege of reading the real sentiments existing beneath the jackets of those who mourn for him.
Brilliant thoughts are often slow in their formation, like the diamond. Thomas Moore was frequently occupied three weeks in writing a song. Theodore Hook often took about the same time to perpetrate an “impromptu;” and Sheridan was frequently employed all day in getting up a joke, which was supposed by some to be the inspiration of the moment. And yet, with these facts fully established, many a poor fellow is yelled out, suddenly and unprepared, after a dinner, and laughed at for making a Judy of himself.
We clip the following from the Kokono (Ill.) Tribune: “Mrs. Partington was divorced from her husband, one day last week, in the Circuit Court of this county, and changed her name by marriage, the next day.” We are happy to inform “friends of the family” that it was Phœbe D. Partington, who was divorced from Thomas Partington, and married the next day to a man named Golding. The relations between Ruth and the defunct corporal still remain unbroken. The spiritual affinity still holds too strong to be disturbed by accidents of earth, even by a second marriage.