Life — April 16, 1885 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

MELANCHOLY case of self-destruction has just be- come known. The gas meter which exploded last week is now believed to have done so premeditatedly, being too conscientious to lie, so as to give satisfaction to the company in whose employ it was. Its depression was apparent some time before it exploded, and became specially noticeable when the last bill was received, . . . HERE is a club in this city which has presented so many unsavory morsels to the public nostril, that there is a movement on foot to change its name to the “ Onion Club.” To this there can be but one objection. The lovers of the onion will, no doubt, resent the imputa- | vegetable. * OUNT AND COUNTESS MAGRI, née Mrs. Tom Thumb, the celebrated Circusian beauty, will shortly take a tour of the earth, and then return to their ancestral tent at Barnumville. x tions thereby cast upon their favorite . . . . RS. SPRIGGINS is much exercised to know whether the “ Pope lets them Cardinal fellers wear their red hats when the Papal bull is loose.” . . . ISS SWEET, who refuses to hand in her resignation to General Black, should be removed under the Un- civil Service Act. HE telegraph companies refuse to bury their conductors, because they fear the cholera. We suppose the horse-car companies will come along next and refuse to bury their drivers, on the ground that it conduces to health to leave them above ground. Cremation is the only solution to the difficulty. * . N the interest of the Terrier constituency, the Isle of Skye is to be known hereafter as the Isle of Ski-yi. . . . F England and Russia fight, it will not be the first time that the bulls and bears have clashed. * N spite of the fact that H. R. H. the Prince of Wales has been shaking hands with Irish mobs, we would remind our Celtic friends that he is sof so green as he looks. . * . * RANCE has got over her crisis; but the Ferry which she used in getting over has suffered seriously. . * * HERE is a great demand this week for autograph letters of Horace Greeley and cuts from the New York Suz, to be used as Russian war maps in case of an emergency. The celebrated Holman picture has already been sent to a Western editor who desired an illustration to an article on the Afghan Boundary Complications. THE TURPITUDE OF CHURCH CHOIRS. N no sphere of human effort is greater progress shown than in the pulpit. But, as we bear witness to the fact, a dull pang of regret abates our joy in contemplating the peccant humors of church choirs. ‘The pews feel many a qualm of conscience under the fire of the pulpit. Sin cannot perk itself shame-faced on the cushion of repose in the highest seat in the synagogue, But who ever knew a church choir to cry peccav’? The theo- logical sword-thrusts at sinners in the pews and the arrows of eloquence that fly over their heads never hit the choristers. They tickle themselves with the straws of conceit. They wear an invisible coat of mail, and, under a barricade of hymn-books, eat sugarplums and crack jokes as if each in turn had slipped on the ring of Gyges. The man with bulg- ing eyes and a bald head, who plays a fantasy on “ Rock of Ages” on the cornet, fears no moral castigation from the pulpit for flirting with the soprano. He holds it at disadvant- age. In mockery of the preacher's meek stare of reproof, he causes the diamond on his little finger to twinkle in his eyes, as if it had caught a ray of celestial light, while triple-tongue- ing the last cadenza with an air of “ sarcastico-benignant superiority.” He knows it is not the sermon that draws, but the cornet. While the organist is holding a suspicious ¢ée-d-téte behind a sheet of music with a choir girl, who meets him half way with a fan of peacock-feathers, the tenor surreptitiously writes a note on the fly-leaf of a hymn-book and pokes it in the contralto’s muff. The moral torpor of the basso, who sits with folded legs reading a Sunday newspaper, is a contemptu- ous comment on the evangelizing power of the pulpit. Then | the second tenor is convulsed with a fit of laughter in watch- ing a fly tickle the bald pate of a deacon below. It seems as | if the Evil One had been metamorphosed into an insect, and was making a rival pulpit of the bare patch on the deacon’s crown. Usage has so consecrated the levities of church choirs, that missionaries must ever regard them as sterile fields for labor. | ALV.S. comicbooks.com