Ex-honorable John Buck, once the “representative” of a district out West, a lawyer originally, and finally a gentleman at large, and Jeremy Diddler generally, took up his quarters in Philadelphia, years ago, and putting himself upon his dignity, he managed for a time, sans l’argent, to live like a prince. Buck was what the world […]

It is truly astonishing, that the inexhaustible beds–mines of anthracite coal, lying along the Schuylkill river and ridges, valleys and mountains, from old Berks county to the mountains of Shamokin, were not found out and applied to domestic uses, fully fifty years before they were! Coal has been exhumed from the earth, and burned in […]

Travel is a good invention to cure the blues and condense worldly effects. When Cutaway went to California, “I carried,” said he, “a pile of despondency, and more baggage, boots, and boxes, than would fit out a caravan. After an absence of just fourteen calendar months, I started homewards, and was so boiling over with […]

Printers, from time immemorial–back possibly to the days of Faust–have suffered martyrdom, more or less, at the hands of the people who didn’t pay! Many of the long-established newspaper concerns can show a “black list” as long as the militia law, and an unpaid cash account bulky enough to take Cuba! Country publishers suffer in […]

“I dunno where I heer’d it, but I know it’s true. I expected it long ago. I told Jones it’d come out so.” “Why, Uncle Josh, you don’t pretend to say that Miller’s wife has run off with Bob Tape, Yardstick’s clark, do you?” “Yes, I do, too; hain’t it been the talk of the […]

Cato, when Censor of Rome, expelled from the Senate Manilius, whom the general opinion had marked out for counsellor, because he had given his wife a kiss in the day time, in the sight of his daughter. And this reminds us of a local story told us by one of the “oldest inhabitants” of the […]

People of experience tell awful stories about the miseries of boarding, and boarding-houses, and it is very clearly palpable to us that keepers of boarding-houses could a tale unfold of their own miseries, equal, if not double that of the luckless creatures who board. That housekeeping has its joys it would be vain to deny, […]

That poverty is at times very unhandy–yea, humiliating, we can bear witness; but that any persons should make their poverty an everlasting subject of shame and annoyance to themselves, is the most contemptible nonsense we know of. During our junior days, while officiating as “shop boy,” behind a counter in a southern city, we used […]

We observed a small transaction last Wednesday noon, on Hanover street, that wasn’t so coarse for an urchin hardly out of his swaddling clouts. He was a cunning-looking little fellow, and poking his head into a shoe shop, he bawls out in a very keen, fine, silvery voice– “S-a-a-y, Mister-r-r–“ “Eh?–what?” says the shop-keeper. “Somebody’s […]

During the great gathering of people in Quakerdom, while the Whigs were dovetailing in Old Zack, an artful dodger, a queer quizzing Boston friend of mine, thought a little side play wouldn’t be out of the way, so to work he goes to get up a muss, and I’ll tell you how he managed it, […]

“Bob, what yer doing now?” “Aiding Nat’ral History.” “Aiding Nat’ral History–what do yer mean by that?” “Why every time the kangaroo jumps over the monkey, I hold his tailup.”

I do not know a feminine–from the piney woods of Maine to the Neuces–so given to popularity, newspaper philippics, and city item bombards, as Aunt Nabby Folsom, of the town of Boston. The name and doings of Aunt Nabby are linked with nearly all popular cabals in Faneuil Hall, the “Temple,” “Chapel,” or Melodeon–from funeral […]

Some folks are easily glorified. We once knew a man who became so elated because he was elected first sergeant in the militia, that he went home and put a silver plate on his door. Ollapod, in speaking of this kind of people, makes mention of one Sabin, who was so overjoyed the first time […]

It is a most singular, or at least curious fact, connected with the histories of most all eminent men, that they were denied–by the decrees of stern poverty, or an all-wise Providence–those facilities and indulgences supposed to be so essentially necessary for the future success and prosperous career of young men, but acted as “whetstones” […]

We have roared until our ribs fairly ached, at the relation of the following “item” on sturgeons, by a loquacious friend of ours:– It appears our friend was located on the Kennebec river, a few years ago, and had a number of hands employed about a dam, and the sturgeons were very numerous and extremely […]

There is an individual in Quincy Market, “doing business,” who is downon customers who don’t speak proper. “What’s eggs, this morning?” says a customer. ” Eggs, of course,” says the dealer. “I mean–how do they go ?” “Go?–where?” “Sho–!” says the customer, getting up his fury, “what for eggs?” “Money, money, sir! or good endorsed […]

In “comparing notes” with a travelled friend, I glean from his stock of information, gathered South-west, a few incidents in the life of a somewhat extensively famed Boston panoramic artist–one of which incidents, at least, is worth rehearsing. Some years ago, the South-west was beset by an organized coalition of desperadoes, whose daring outrages kept […]

It’s a highly prized faculty in shop-keeping to sell something when a customer comes in, if you can. A female relative of ours went into a Hanover street fancy store ‘tother day, to “look over” some ivory card and needle cases; the slightly agricultural-looking clerk “flew around,” and when the question “Have you any ivory […]

No slight portion of the ills that flesh is heir to, in a city life, is the culinary item of rent day. Washing day has had its day–machines and fluid have made washing a matter of science and ease, and we are no longer bearded by fuming and uncouth women in the sulks and suds, […]

Nature seems to have her fitful, frightful, and funny moods, as well as all her children. Now she gets up a stone bridge, the gigantic proportions and the symmetrical development of which attract great attention from all tourists and historians who venture into or speak of “old Virginia.” The old dame goes down far into […]