Puck — May 7, 1879 — page 2: what you’re looking at

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

PUCK. PUCK. Nos. 21 & 28 WARREN STREET. FOR SALE BY ALL NEWS DEALERS. Terms Jo Sunscrinzns. -.JOS. KEPPLER. AJ SCHWARZMANN. ~-H. C. BUNNER. SPECIAL NOTICES. $3 Remittances by Money Order, etc. are tobe addressed to KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN. ‘We cannot undertake to return rejected communications, and to this rule we can make no exception. Agency of Messrs. Thaning Croes, and ‘COMPANY, tr, Booverie TERQUEM'S, ‘12 Boulevard Herald” Office, 49 Avenue de Puce 1s on Sale in London, at HENRY F. GILLIG & CO., at THE INTERNATIONAL Street, Fleet Street; im Pari Polssonniere, and on file at the VOpera. ee : REMOVAL. {37 Puck has removed to new and, of course, com- modious quarters at los. 21 & 23 WARREN STREET. CONTENTS. L*Assommoir, yymes of the Day. Prayer-Book Popoing (poem)— ‘James R_ Campbell Interview with the Hon. James ‘O'Brien —Leo Curran Evans My Old Hat—M. W.B. ‘Common Sense for the S.P.C.C. Mr. Governor Lorne once more. ‘The Theatres. Answens ron THe Ajxious. ‘Ancure Gascorwe—John Fraser Pucx’s Exchancas, The Democrats and their Ele- phant. Inartistic Fate. Pucxenmncs. Friendly Chats ‘age Citizen. The Irish Wai + (poem)—Joha Fraser. Frrznooote in Asantca,—No. LXXXVII. Gallic Gumdrops. The Mosquita’s Vengeance—ill. Phelan the Phonetic. h the Aver- AT. THE DEMOCRATS AND THEIR ELEPHANT. [See Cartoon on first page.) We have again taken the liberty of utilizing Mr. Nast’s elephant, and beg leave to thank this gentleman for lending him. The great blowing-match in Congress is over, and the Army Bill has passed, but is not, in its present shape, to become the law of the land. For Mr. President Hayes, not daunted by the painful manner in which he was sat upon when ¢ vetoed the Silver Bill, has exercised his glorious privilege of veto again—this time with more success. The autocrat of the White House thinks—and we don't see why he shouldn’t have an opinion —that if troops are not to be at the polls, neither troops nor polls must be mixed up with Appropriation Bills. ‘The Democratic elephant, who was just pre- paring to crush under his ponderous feet all opposition, now finds himself powerless, for even the Democratic ass hasn’t learnt the combina- tion of the padlock, ‘The Republican fox enjoys the joke hugely. “A plague o’ both your parties,” we say. INARTISTIC FATE. HERE was once a French landscape pain- ter who pointed out the fact that Nature was a very faulty institution, after all. He said that, judged by a high artistic stand- ard, Nature lacked harmony and balance. This gentleman’s name was Monsieur Lancret; and ‘we think he was a man of sense. We wish, moreover, to follow his footsteps a little way into the domain of radical thought by boldly asserting that Fact is occasionally a great deal more clumsily and idiotically improbable than Fiction in her most delirious movements. These remarks are suggested by the recent “ vindication” of Mr. Hotel-Clerk Merritt, charged with cheating a poor black sailor-boy out of $49, being difference between $50 alleged to have been given by said sailor-boy to said Merritt, in one bill, and 4 quarter-dollars al- leged to have been returned by said Merritt as change for said $50 bill, For a real, honest, square, irrefutable vindication, the vindication we refer to is just about the meanest-looking article in the market. Here we want it clearly understood that we are not casting any doubt on the solidity of the vindication, We regard it as fully and entirely vindicating the person who needed vindica- tion, which is all you can ask of amy vindica- tion. It has left us very confident that Mr. Merritt has been wrongfully accused, and is quite a martyr in a small, quiet way. We would swear to Mr. Merritt's complete innocence, any day, We will not, perhaps, go so far as to say that we would bet on it; but we would readily and cheerfully take our oath to it. Yet we must put on record our sense of the extremely bad form of the vindication. It is true, of course; but it isa very sick-appearing truth, : Mr. Lemuel Williams, on being hauled up before Justice Otterbourg for disorderly con- duct, asserted that the agitation of his manner was due to his having given Mr. Merritt, of the Metropolitan Hotel, a $50 bill to change; which bill, according to Mr. Lemuel Williams, Mr. Merritt obligingly transmuted isto four silver quarters, Justice Otterbourg, strangely enough, choose to investigate this tale of reverse-action alchemy. Which, we may say, incidentally, was very wrong in Justice Otterbourg. To doubt the virtue of a hotel-clerk showed bad taste, at the very least; and we hope that Jus- tice Otterbourg may hereafter get room No. 11,997 and no shaving-water, whenever he has the audacity to enter a hotel. Well, Justice Otterbourg investigated the alleged case against Mr. Merritt—just as if Mr. Merritt were not a nephew of a prominent poli- tician. He treated him with a beastly, low- down impartiality, and made Mr. Merritt feel very uncomfortable. In fact, there is no know- ing to what extent Justice Otterbourg’s tyranny might not have gone, had not Mr. Merritt's little vindication come up right in the nick of time, The $50 bill turned up. Lemuel Williams had given it to Mrs. Brown of Brooklyn, colored, washerwoman, by mistake fora 99-cent govern- ment bond, or something of that sort. And so Mr. Merritt was vindicated. Of course, we are awfully glad of this, But we don't like the style of the vindication. Its artistic beauty was marred by all sorts of horrid drawbacks, In the first place, the private secre- tary of the politician who has the honor of be- ing uncle to Mr. Merritt had been quite too inartistically close to the place where the bill was found just a little while before it was found, ‘Then there were a white woman and a de- cidedly undesirable young drunkard hovering awkwardly in the background of Mr. Merritt's beautiful little tableau of justice and vindica- tion, Then the $50 bill that Mrs, Brown had so long nursed as’a simple solitary dollar was not by any means the correct realistic card, Altogether, there were lots of shockingly in- artistic little circumstances that gave the wickedly disposed several’chances to utter cruel hints about put-upjobs, and humbugs and things, The tyrant Otterbourg has held Mr. Merritt in $1,500 bail for trial. This will afford Mr. Merritt an opportunity for another vindication. And we cannot refrain from expressing the hope that he will give us a neater and more stylish article than this the present one. Ra Next week’s Puck will contain a con- densed edition of L’Assommoir. ss Puckerings, Aw auctioneer is a man of more-bid tastes, Or all professions ball-playing is most by nine. Lorittarp’s two-year-old entry at New- market ran to some papoose. Tue Pompeiians were a riotous set, and the last drop of the cratur was too much for them, WesTERN papers, as a rule, are so unreliable, that it is unsafe to trust them even for the day of the month, Tue very highest compliment that can be paid to a ballet is to remark that it owéstrips all its predecessors. An old ‘proverb says: “A gentle mare may have a gentle foal.” Yes, and of the prospec- tive size of a colt you cannot judge by a dam's height. “Ix consequence of the large and steadily increasing circulation” of this paper, it is pro- posed to change the name of this metropolis to Puck'keepsie. Now cometh the time when the awful swell taketh out his handkerchief and dusteth off the seat in the street-car, fearing that he may soil the bosom of his delicate trousers. A LutHeran minister has made a calcula- tion of the size of heaven, and finds that it contains 3954116666666666366634 rooms of fair size; but unless he can assure us that there are Japanese wa'l-paper, lace curtains, and hot and cold water in every room, and that each and every one has a southern exposure, he can scarcely expect to induce anybody to move there. Tue eminently disreputable old wanton whom San Francisco sees fit to call ‘“ Justice” is playing the other thing with James O'Neil for playing Jesus Christ, Next week's Puck will contain a few casual remarks on this subject. We purpose to find out, if possible, whether or not a white American citizen in the nineteenth century is to be forced to take his choice be- tween Christianity or a dungeon, We want to know if this publication office is to be removed from Warren Street to Mecca or Benares. TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP, THE TRAMP IS COMING! [Cartoon in No. 109 of Puck.] “1 am the New Constitution.”—We are in- debted to the New York Puck for the ideas in our cartoon, presented to our readers in this day’s issue of the S. F. News-Letter. The de- sign is quite equal to any yet emitted from that witty publication—San Francisco News- Letter. We don’t quite know what this item means; but when our brilliantly inconsistent contem- porary makes up his mind whether to regard us as fiends of the nether darkness or as angels of light, we shall be happy to have him stop his highly incomprehensible war-dance and express his intention definitely and distinctly. In the mean time we suppose we are to feel flattered; and will try so to be. . NoTron. Numbers 14, 25, 26, 39, 42 and 58 of Puck will be bought at this office, 21 & 23 Warren Street, at 25 cents per copy.