FullReads

No one in the vicinity slept any that night. They were busy getting ready for the Fourth: the gentlemen going about inviting the ladies to attend the celebration, and the ladies hastily and unconditionally accepting.

…. In answer to the ladies who are always bothering him for a photograph, Mr. Grile hopes to satisfy all parties by the following meagre description of his charms.

In person he is rather thin early in the morning, and a trifle corpulent after dinner; in complexion pale, with a suspicion of ruby about the gills. He wears his hair brown, and parted crosswise of his remarkably fine head. His eyes are of various colours, but mostly bottle-green, with a glare in them reminding one of incipient hydrophobia-from which he really suffers. A permanent depression in the bridge of his nose was inherited from a dying father what time the son mildly petitioned for a division of the estate to which he and his seventeen brothers were about to become the heirs. The mouth is gentlemanly capacious, indicative of high breeding and feeding; the under jaw projects slightly, forming a beautiful natural reservoir for the reception of beer and other liquids. The forehead retreats rapidly whenever a creditor is met, or an offended reader espied coming toward the office.

His legs are of unequal length, owing to his constant habit of using one of them to kick people who may happen to present a fairer mark than the nearest dog. His hand is remarkably slender and white, and is usually inserted in another man’s pocket. In dress he is wonderfully fastidious, preferring to wear nothing but what is given him. His gait is something between those of a mud-turtle and a jackass-rabbit, verging closely on to the latter at periods of supposed personal danger, as before intimated.

In conversation he is animated and brilliant, some of his lies being quite equal to those of Coleridge or Bolingbroke; but in repose he resembles nothing so much as a heap of old clothes. In conclusion, his respect for letter-writing ladies is so great that he would not touch one of them with a ten-foot pole.

…. Only one hundred and ten thousand pious pilgrims visited Mount Ararat in a body this year. The urbane and gentlemanly proprietors of the Ark Tavern complain that their receipts have hardly been sufficient to pay for the late improvements in this snug retreat. These gentlemen continue to keep on hand their usual assortment of choice wines, liquors, and cigars.

Opposite the Noah House, Shem Street, between Ham and Japhet.

…. It is commonly supposed that President Lopez, of Paraguay, was killed in battle; but after reading the following slander upon him and his mother, written some time since by a friend of ours, it is difficult to believe he did not commit suicide:–

“The telegraph informs us that President Lopez, of Paraguay, has again murdered his mother for conspiring against his life. That sprightly, and active old lady has now been executed three thousand times for the same offence. She is now eighty-three years old, and erect as a telegraph pole. Time writes no wrinkles on her awful brow, and her teeth are as sound as on the day of her birth. She rises every morning punctually at four o’clock and walks ten miles; then, after a light breakfast, enters her study and proceeds to hatch out a new conspiracy against her first born. About 2 P. M. it is discovered, and she is publicly executed. A light toast and a cup of strong tea finish the day’s business; she retires at seven and goes to sleep with her mouth open. She has pursued this life with the most unfaltering regularity for the last fifty years. It is only by this unswerving adherence to hygienic principles that she has attained her present green old age.”

…. There is a person resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval. It is not that the woman-for this person is a mature female–ever did us any harm, or is likely to; that is not our grievance. What we seriously object to and actively contemn-yea, bitterly denounce-is the nose of her. So mighty a nose we have never beheld-so spacious, and open, and roomy a human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture. It rises from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic! It turns up at an angle that fills the spectator with admiration, and impresses him with an awe that is speechless.