Judge — February 23, 1889 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ACCORDING to the very latest sta- tistics our country produces four- teen million bushels of salt annually, and it is the cheapest commodity we have. Itis pumped up from inexhaust- ible fountains and mined in illimitable deposits, and yet there are young men in this class who are too fresh and last week put shoemaker's wax on my chair and anger in my heart, not to speak of the rent in my new trousers. It must not occur again, Those of you who were not present on the 28th of January missed a rich treat. The total eclipse of the moon was visible from the open-topped room on the roof, and pieces of smoked glass were furnished each student present. ‘The eclipse was in perihelion at forty minutes past five and gradually went into conjunction. At 5.45 it was in a coniatose state and rapidly came into quarantine, where it was in full climax at six o'clock. Science took a big bulge from our report to the Smithsonian institute at Washington. We expect an appropriation, and then we shall buy a new curriculum to run to the depot commencement days, What do you see on the blackboard ? HOBBIES Is our theme. Such a horse costs but little, eats nothing and can be kept anywhere. You can have him any color you wish, which you cannot always do with the real horse. Our schools are making us a nation of hobby-riders. Special studies are pursued until students’ heads get as one-sided as summer squashes. Students of mathematics alone become beetle-browed, not to say beetle- Jed, and go out into the world with a mansard roof on their brains which looks as if it would fall over into the street. Students of philosophy get the Queen-Anne style of roof, and their derby hats look as if they had been used to cover an egg-plant. Students of history broaden their intellects until the top of their craniums would hold a custard pie and not slop over. These men go out into the world and ride hobbies. The men this school sends out will be good all-round scholars. We intend to cultivate every fibre of a man’s intellect, and his mental food will be, like his diurnal hash, composed of ingredients known and unknown, but all flavored with the onion of common sense. ‘The man who rides the astronomical hobby rides among the stars and orbs of heaven. He comes back to tell us that in 50,000 years the sun will cool off and ice will form in Cen- tral park in August. Men who get this idea in their heads are unhappy. They want to sell out and go west or south. They do not think of the time yet to elapse. The ice gets them and the rider of the astronomical hobby is happy. He follows up a comet and predicts that in 2063 it will come so close to the earth that you can smell scorched pork at Chi- cago, and the ladies will have to wear herring-boxes on their fect when they walk on the pavements, ‘Then the world draws along sigh again and the hobby-rider spurs up his steed to greater efforts, * The rider of the physiological hobby has made. us a hation with a national liver. The flag of the free will have JUDGE to take the stars out of the blue field and put in an immense liver. The internal works of man are displayed on fences, rocks, barns, trees, every- where, hearts and livers and all, until we think if man is to be judged by his works he will have a hard time in the next world. ‘This anatomical hobby-rider wants to take man to pieces and oil him and set him up again. He can graft on a new nose, put in a glass eye, and build up a tin ear and gutta-percha stomach, He can do everything only furnish new brains, and he is now experimenting on a ‘Texas senator with oil cake and calves’-foot jelly. Young men, beware of the medical almanac and the lurid heart-and- liver pictures or you will soon be covered with plasters and rattle with pills like an armed man, You may think the old man is excited when he tells you that this country will stand until it is tilted down by the hobby-rider, A. socialist can get on his hobby in his study and gallop to the conclusion that labor- ing men are starving on two dollars a day, and freezing to death when eight dollars will buy a suit of clothes. ‘The anarchist can spur up his hobby until he finds tyranny in a coun- try where he is not allowed to use up all the gas-pipe to make bombs, and where a clean shirt is not a mark of aristocracy, or a bullet-head and a bad smell a sign of equality. You see, the hobby-horse will go in any direction you turn him and gallop as hard as you wish, The literary hobby-horse is giving us some trouble. His rider wants to create a love for an inferior style of novel and tangle up our brains with an incomprehensible style of poetry. We cling to Burns or Moore or Byron when we ought to love Browning. We find no juice in the modern realistic novel and go back to the flesh-pots of Dickens and Dumas and buy largely of Haggard, Young men, you will feel sick and sad when you go out into the world and hear the prancing wooden steeds and clashing of tin swords among the hobby-riders. In your native greenness you will want to agree with all of them, and you will hate yourself because you cannot see how aman can know so much and live through it. Let me whisper. Nine out of ten of these hobby-riders are liars, and the other one is a darned fool. Take large views of life. In order to develop you all round you may carry that load of coal into the cellar with a basket and then shovel off the walk. Janitor, let the boys out. THE OLD PKOFESSON, A TERRIBLE DISAPPOINTMENT. SiIpWRECKED sAILoR—" Thank heaven, there's some food washed ashore!” “Well, I'll be keel-hauled!" comicbooks.com