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Current Journalings
by
It is improbable that the Rev. gentleman himself perished of starvation.
…. We are filled with unspeakable gratification to record the death of that double girl who has been in everybody’s mouth for months. This shameless little double-ender, with two heads and one body-two cherries on a single stem, as it were-has been for many moons afflicting our simple soul with an itching desire that she might die-the nasty pig! Two half-girls, joined squarely at the waist, and without any legs, are not a pleasant type of the coming woman.
Had she lived, she would have been a bone of social, theological, and political contention, and we should never have heard the end-of which she had two alike. If she had lived to marry, some mischief-making scoundrel would have procured the indictment of her husband for bigamy. The preachers would have fought for her, and if converted separately, her Methodist end might have always been thrashing her Episcopal end, or vice vers�. When she came to serve on a jury, nobody could have decided if there ought to be eleven others or only ten; and if she ever voted twice, the opposite party would have had her up for repeating; and if only once, she would have been read out of her own, for criminal apathy in the exercise of the highest duty, etc.
We bless God for taking her away, though what He can want with her is as difficult a problem as herself or Himself. She will have to wear two golden crowns, thus entailing a double expense; she wont be able to fly any, and having no legs, she must be constantly watched to keep her from rolling out of heaven. She will just have to lie on a soft cloud in some out-of-the-way corner, and eternally toot two trumpets, without other exercise. If Gabriel is the sensible fellow we think him, he wont wake her at the Resurrection.
Look at this infant in any light you please, and it is evident that she was a dead failure and is yet. She did but one good thing, and that was to teach the Siamese Twins how to die. After they shall have taken the hint, we hope to have no more foolish experiments in double folks born that way. Married couples are sufficiently unpleasing.
…. The head biblesharp of the New York Independent resigned his position, because the worldly proprietor would insist upon running the commercial column of that sheet in a secular manner, with an eye to the goods that perish. The godly party wished him to ignore the filthy lucre of this world, and lay up for himself treasures in heaven; but the sordid wretch would seize every covert opportunity to reach out his little muckrake after the gold of the gentile, to the neglect of the things that appertain unto salvation. Therefore did the conscientious driver of the piety-quill betake himself to some new field.
Will the editors of all similar sheets do likewise? or have they more elastic consciences? For, behold, the muckrake is likewise visible in all.
…. Some of the Red Indians on the plains have discarded the songs of their fathers, and adopted certain of Dr. Watts’s hymns, which they howl at their scalp-dances with much satisfaction.
This is encouraging, certainly, but we dare not counsel the good missionaries to pack up their libraries and go home with the impression that the noble red is thoroughly converted. There yet remains a work to do; he must be taught to mortify, instead of paint, his countenance, and induced to abandon the savage vice of stealing for the Christian virtue of cheating. Likewise he must be made to understand that although conjugal fidelity is highly com- mendable, all civilized nations are distinguished by a faithful adherence to the opposite practice.
…. Some raving maniac sends us a mass of stuff, which savours strongly of Walt Whitman, and which, probably for that reason, he calls poetry. We have room for but a single bit of description, which we print as an illustration of the depth of literary depravity which may be attained by a “poet” in love:–