Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 04, April 23, 1870 | Page 7

this. In the first place, Mr. SUMNER'S Measures are very difficult to take. In the second place, the best Cabinet-makers have failed to make Mr. SUMNER appear very large. In the third and last place, Ebony, which is the only wood with which Mr. SUMNER has any affinity, is a mighty hard material to work, even when treated with the application of a Fifteenth Amendment.
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The Maine Question in Massachusetts.
If New-York has had but little skating during the past winter, Massachusetts just now displays a good deal of backsliding. Her legislators have "gone back on" their liquor-bill, which they have modified to suit their habits, and, should it become law, the druggists of the Bay State will be at liberty to sell Bay and every other kind of rum in quantities to suit purchasers. Sic semper Massachusetts! the English of which is, that Massachusetts will always keep Sick so long as liquor is to be had for physic.
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Trying to the Patients.
It is widely stated, though we cannot vouch for it as a fact, that the poultices used in St. Luke's Hospital are supplied from the too celebrated pavement of Fifth Avenue.
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"Cometh up as a Flower."
It is stated that Père HYACINTHE is about to take a wife.
That's right--Pair, HYACINTHE.
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THE EPISODE OF JACK HORNER.
Probably there is no choicer specimen of English literature than the familiar stanza which we herewith reproduce:
"Little JACK HORNER sat in a corner, Eating his Christmas-pie, He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"
Although comprised in merely four lines, it contains more instructive truths and rarer beauties than some volumes whose pages can be enumerated by the hundred. The opening line is singularly beautiful:
"Little JACK HORNER sat in a corner."
Here we hare the subject gracefully introduced without unnecessary palaver or reference to family antecedents--the simple name given without a long rigmarole of dazzling titles or senseless adjectives. The Muse is neither pathetically invoked nor anathematically abused, but the author proceeds at once to describe his hero's present situation, which, it strangely appears, is in "a corner." The indefiniteness of the locality--a corner--is not of the slightest moment; for it does not concern the general reader to know in what corner little JACK was stationed. Suffice it, as is apparent from the context, that it was not a corner in Erie, nor in grain; but rather an angle formed by the juxtaposition of two walls of an apartment or chamber.
Now, truly the subject of the poem must have been possessed either of an extraordinary modicum of modesty or of a bitter misanthropy; or possibly he had been guilty of a misdemeanor, and was cornered to expiate the punishment justly due; yet conjecture is at once made certainty in the second line, by which all doubts as to the reasons for his being in a corner are immediately cleared up:
"Eating his Christmas-pie."
The occasion was indubitably the universal annual holiday, and his object in going to the corner was manifestly to eat the pie. Perhaps the object had an antecedent. Perhaps he stole the pie, and therefore wished to avoid observation; or, more possibly, supreme selfishness was his ruling passion, and he wished to eat it all by himself. As to this, however, we are left slightly in the fog.
In the third line, we are afforded an insight into the manner in which he partook of the Christmas delicacy:
"He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum."
Interesting scene! Here we have at least an inkling of the hero's powers of discrimination, and his regard for the little niceties of life. We have also a beautiful metaphorical allusion to the postulate that "fingers were made before forks," an assertion respecting the truth of which some antiquarians have expressed a doubt. We are not prepared to decide as to the propriety of leaving the substantial of life and employing sweets and frivolities to pamper the appetite--and there are other questions that naturally arise from the interesting circumstance noted above by the poet, but we will not dwell upon them here.
We proceed to the concluding verse.
The descriptive part of the narrative is ended, and we naturally expect a catastrophe in the denouement. We may at least suppose that HORNER made himself sick, if he did not actually choke to death from one of the plums he was voraciously eating. By no means. We are spared so painful a recital. All we know is, that he made a remark, evidently in soliloquy,
"And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"
This concluding line, pointless as it may appear, partially clears up the mystery as to his being in a corner. He certainly was not there for misdemeanor; for he was a "good