Puck — October 29, 1879 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

PUCK. AUTUMNAL MEDITATIONS. HE sad, serene, Autumnal days are here, Clothing the forests in seraphic beauty; Whispering to men of foaming lager beer, And epizooty. The west-wind sighs of joys evanishéd, Of picnics held within the festive summer; Of living in the mountains on rye-bread, And playing bummer. ‘The raven croaks a very dismal croak, As Pheebus toward his golden gate approaches, Drear as the quondam boarder's hoary joke Are tavern roaches! +A change comes o'er the spirit of our dream,"* Not that gross change which worldly men call dollars,” But that which whispers solace from ice-cream And sticky collars! No more our ears are tortured by the fierce, Wild “éshad-ohs” of the piscatorial hawkers; But now we buy our fishes by the tierce And slay our porkers. A fragrant haze enshrouds the distant hills, “The snow-bird seems to grow more fat and frisky; The politicians post up flaring bills, And guzzle whiskey! ‘Then «by these presents” know that Autumn 's here, The glorious season of fresh pork and chickens; Bring out the brandy and the bottled beer, And play the dickens! Ci. PUCK’S PATENT TYPOGRAPHICAL TALMAGE.* “The most beautiful figure in all geometry is a circle. There are in the natural world straight lines, angles, par- on the plan of a circle. wr God made the universe alellograms, triangles, quadrilaterals; but these are not God's favorites.” —Kev. Dr. Talmage, in his sermon of Sunday, October 19th, *) There i 00 copyright on this cartoon, It is built of “rules” stuck in putty, and the artist is permancatly engaged in our composing rooms. “This masterpiece has been produced oaly for the beneSt of wn-llustrated exchanges, IN THE STREETS, No, III. ‘THE SMALLER PARKS. iT is hardly possible to commend too highly the urbanity, courtesy, and highly genteel : behavior of the Department of Public Parks. All the officials wear a dignified air, as if the parks were their private property. The president, the commissioners, the secre- tary, the superintendent, the deputy-superin- tendent, the architects, the clerks, the police, the messengers, the numberless subordinates— are models of generous attentiveness to a com- plaint, a suggestion, or an appeal. ‘A soft an- swer turneth away wrath” is ever before their minds, and to an outsider their benignity is be- wildering. But, alas! if-‘ by their fruits ye shall know them" is to be applied to this highly-favored section of the city government, then the whole crowd would seem to be a place-holding crowd, with as little performance as possible for all their fair promise. Your “commissioner” is not going to fa- tigue you by repeating all that has been raved out, shouted and persisted in by all parties— the Ins, the Outs, the hope-to-be-ins, the hope- to-remain-ins —about that noble wilderness, Central Park; its faded shrubberies, its naked plantations, the wanton excision of the trees, too many wanting, indeed, the bald patches in the grass-plots, and the untended look of every- thing save in the great drives, where wealth and grandeur come to take the air, Your ‘‘ commissioner” will concern himself rather with a word or two on thesthree smaller parks, more frequented and traversed over than all the others, and will take these, the City Hall Park (was there ever such a misnomer?) the Union Square Park, the Madison Square Park, as pretty sure evidence of the harum- a heedless, slovenly, go-as-you-please fashion of these our public gardeners, their ge- rents and vice-gerents, Public opinion can have but little weight with the Department; for here, under the nose of the city magnates, our Mayor, our Comp- troller, our attorneys—nay, in the face of those wise-heads and ever-active fingers of the minis- ters of the great daily journals, and under the shadow of the depository of the intelligence of the whole community, the post-office itself—is the most striking area of shabbiness between the Battery and Fifth Avenue. Come across this Sahara called the City Hall Park. Stand in sadness beside the empty, yawning, miserable basins of the big fountain, now only a receptacle for hoops, boxes, rags, stones and rubbish from the street vagrants. Of the smaller water conduits, that facing Broadway is a ‘dribbling feebleness,” that to- wards the Bowery is grimy, mute, inglorious, deserted. What is more desolate and poverty- stricken than a neglected, shabby fountain? Only two neglected, shabby fountains. The paths are possessed by excavators, pa- vors, diggers and delvers; the benches are in the last stage of mutilation and drear neglect; the grass-plots behind the City Hall are half covered with the earth from the dug-out trenches, and there is about the whole space an air of slovenliness and ill-treatment that it would take months to trim up and set in order. ‘Tis certainly the seediest-looking of the three ks which the public most patronizes. Union quare Park wears a more cheerful air. The fountain is ample, and its girdle of flowers is an object of affectionate care from the horti- culturist. But the benches thereabouts have a dissolute, unkempt look for the most part, and sadly need cleaning and painting. There are lamp-posts wanting their heads, like most of the city prominences just now. ‘The surface of the broad walks, stone or composite, is cracked, re- ticulated and mapped, as though the authori- ties, the president, commissioners, secretary, superintendent, deputy-superintendent, archi- tects, clerks, messengers and hangers-on at the east side of Union Square thought to set out a lesson in linear geography. Noticeably the fa- gade of lamps and the aspiring Venetian masts would be more attractive for another coat of paint. The little drinking-fountain just now has neither cup nor water, All these are small details, but it isin these that our official care and heedfulness are seen. Happily for our dear Madison Square Park, if the day is in any degree favoring, it is so beautiful and begemmed by swarms of child- ren that it always wears a sweet, fresh face. 'Tis the paradise, too, for nursemaids and their followers, as well as those that they follow in the shape of perambulators, which, by the by, have a tendency to wheel into line and dispute the way. The tramps prefer this pleasure-ground to any other in the city asa dormitory. In the early morning they wash themselves in the fountains and refresh their soiled linen as well as they are able, and you may see their traces on the grass-plots, their fragments of old news- papers, greasy wraps for their food, and the ‘iscarded remnants of hats, shoes and tattered clothing. ‘Tne alley-ways here are cracked and dilapi- dated here and there; there are benches with broken bars and half-worn-out backs. Some of the benches have been freshly painted, some untouched. The band-house is desolate and dirty. But, after all, the principal frequenters of the soil, the Nomads, the Bohemians and street Arabs are never tired of their haunt— sedent, aternumgue sedebunt—and have only words of disfavor if the police interfere in their customary enjoyment and displace them. “ Eternal vigilance" is the price of keeping these priceless public treasures in pee order, and ‘‘ eternal vigilance” is not to be expected from men in office who are here to to-day and gone to-morrow—hurled from their places just when they begin to understand their duties. Hitaris. comicbooks.com