Life — October 4, 1883 — page 2: what you’re looking at

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

OCTOBER 4TH, 1883. 1155 BROADWAY, New York, Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents, BY all means let us have another game of hide-and-seek among the hummocks and floes and icebergs and glaciers in the land of frozen horror. There is so much to be gained, We may lose a ship and her crew, lose the vessel and men going in search of her, and lose fifty other floating coffins in search af her searchers; but some day, perhaps,—O blessed fortuity !—some hero may escape the icy jaws which closed upon him, and though the frost has deprived him of limbs, and the snow robbed him of eysight, and the scurvy and consumption have claimed him for their own, may be able to whisper, ere he dies, that once he saw the star Polaris describe a circle about the zenith, measur- ed the year by but one day and one night, found the compass to refuse allegiance to anything, and recorded the temperature and atmospheric pressure of the place—al! for the benefit of men who never have been there, never could go there, and never would go there if they could, It is a most noble and improving pastime, worthy the profoundest admiration, most untiring zeal, vastest expenditure and most dauntless heroism. True that astronu- mers know the exact position of Polaris at the pole ; electricians can tell to a certainty the behavior of the compass in latitude 90°; meteorologists can guess pretty nearly what the temperature and pressure is likely to be, and geographers set down with tolerable accuracy the physical characteristics of the place, but the eye of civilized man has never seen these things, and the sight of them is a guerdon worth whole hecatombs of lives, Yes, let us push forward to the pole, until the asperities of the horrid journey are softened to travel by a corduroy road of the bones of the brave but sadly foolish men perished by the way. Then, when the task is accomplished, let us build a mighty cannon and shoot scientists to the moon, with materials to shoot themselves back, for really, with all our telescopes, we know only half as much about the moon as we do about the North Pole. e © « RINCE George of England has settled the question. He says that Niagara is really quite grand. Aha! Didn't we always say there was something in Niagara, after all? * ¢ « HERE was Governor BUTLER on the night of the Strat- ford murder? Is there proof positive that Mr. TILDEN was at Greystone ? “ AM of course very much obliged to Mr. DANA—that is to say, Mr. DANA is really very kind and thoughtful, and all that, and I know he means. well, but—well, Mr. Dana is very kind, I am sure, and really—but first tell me if damp powder can be dried, and if one bass drum is all that goes with a boom ?"— Holman, oe 6 “ Witt you please state that Miss Anderson is not the only dignified American, I too have in my day refused to see the Prince of Wales, although at the time, I held three jacks,"— Schenck, ee « “ you perhaps have noticed in the advertising culumns of many local contemporaries a little paragraph to the effect that I now sell war maps for tuppence?"—7. G. Bennett. s 2 8 HE Queen. of Servia undertook to write poetry and is now 1,000,000 roubles in debt. Who, in the face of this fact, can be an infidel ? e ¢ 6 <4 FROM what I read in the papers, about harmony existing at Buffalo, I am inclined to believe that during my sum- mer vacation the dictionary has been somewhat changed. Be kind enough to state that perfect “ ‘harmony’ reigns likewise. in my establishment."—Salan. * € « HE latest addition to the ranks of Roman believers is Sit- TING BULL, the two Mrs, BULL and fifteen or twenty of the little papal bulls, With a choice selection of Irish bulls now, his Holiness the Pore might emigrate to Texas and make a fortune in the cattle trade. * 8 @ ARTE R discovering that the ‘* chromatic scales of the vibrator were not in unison,” Mr. Keely has decided to briefly post- pone the running of his motor until Mr. Tilden is inaugurated, e 8 ¢ “ce NOTICE. that Mr. Georce AuGustus SALa says, ‘ The United States, as‘at present controlled, is a paradise for women.’ Now what / want to know is, where is Mr. Georce Acustus SALA?) Let me get at him.”—Susan B. Anthony. ee ¢ “ ALK about Western Union, or Denver,” said Mr. Hopkins to a speculative friend,—" fiddlesticks ! Why, / got something last January at 35 and yesterday it was 84." ‘*Gra- cious alive, man,” said the other, ‘ what was it?” ‘* A thermo- meter,” said Mr. Hopkins.