gional cility N EW LOVELL , ADA.M,WCSSO?J AND co. .^-,7^. ir/aaPA-' rfS L!3f:ARY CF T WALT DiSN'Y 7-73 22d Alden, W. L. Domestic explosives F R 41V. vVNAVE, JERSEY CITY. N> DOMESTIC EXPLOSIVES AND OTHER SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. (FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES.) BY WAL W. L. ALDEN. NEW YORK: LOVELL, ADAM, WESSON & COMPANY. 764 BROADWAY. 1877. COPYRIGHT. LOVELL, ADAM, WESSON & CO- 1877. SRLg PREFACE. THE articles collected in this volume originally appeared in the New York TIMES. A few slight changes have been made in them. Such expressions as " yesterday," " at a late hour last night," and " early this morning " are of course the very life of Journalism, but are perhaps too gaudy and brilliant to be used in a modest and earnest volume. It is proper to mention that this collection has been made at the request of a wide circle of subtle and malignant enemies. NEW YORK, June i, 1877. CONTENTS. FACE. Domestic Explosives 7 Refuting Moses 10 A Profitable Fork 13 Vulcan 1 6 Underground Classics 19 A Converted Philosopher 22 Forged Fossils 25 The Theoretical Barber 28 A Curious Disease 31 Mrs. Arnold's Rig 34 A New Point for Darwinians 36 The Early American Giant 39 A Sad Case 41 An Inconsiderate Gift 44 Pockets 47 The Kentucky Meteors 50 Glass Eyes 52 Mr. Long 55 The Road to the Pole 58 Fish out of Place 61 The Decay of Burglary 64 The Kidnapped Klamath 66 The Coming Man 69 Spiritual Candy 72 Two Recent Inventions 75 Raining Cats 78 Tennessee Pigmies 81 A New Company 83 The Achromatic Small-boy 86 Sioux Servants 89 Male Girls 91 A Growing Vice 94 Ghost Catching 97 4 CONTENTS. PACK. Superfluous Snakes too A New Society 103 A Mystery Solved 1 06 The Hat Problem. . 1 09 The Uses of Dynamite 1 1 2 A Model City 114 A Benevolent Ghost 1 18 Dr. Schliemann 120 The Circulation of Needles 123 The Young Man of Cheyenne 126 A Remonstrance 1 29 The Smoking Infant 132 A National Want ... 135 The Happy Yachtsman 137 The Boy of Oshkosh 139 Too Much Prudence 141 The Coming Girl , 144 An Unnecessary Invention 146 A Beneficent Invention 149 Smiting the Heathen 151 Thanksgiving Pie 1 54 Star-traps 1 56 Solved at Last 1 59 Boyton's Mistakes 161 Ghostly Malignity 164 Found at Last 167 Systematic Villany 1 70 The Greek Christmas 1 73 Bottled Books 175 A Steam Horse 177 A New Weapon 1 79 The Thomsonian Theory ' 1 82 A Western Tragedy 185 A New Branch of Study 187 Going to the Ant 1 90 Postal Cats 192 Psammetichus and Taine 195 Food and Poison 197 Surgical Engineering 200 The Boston Archaeologists 203 The Missing Link 206 A Warning to Brides 208 The Spirophore 210 Solar Insecurity 213 Ice-Water 219 CONTENTS. Spiritual Sport 221 The Conflict of Rods 224 Ivorine 226 Still Another Shower 229 The Subtle Tack-Hammer 232 Fossil Forgeries 234 Taming the Lamp-Chimney 237 The Color Cure 240 The " Emancipated Costume " 243 A New Attraction for Sunday-Schools 246 Arms and the Chair . . .' 249 Was it a Coincidence ? 252 The Spread of Respectability ' 255 Social Bandits 258 Going to the Dogs .' 261 " Enoch Arden " 263 Riflewomen 266 Butter-Culture 269 The Mosquito Hypothesis 272 Justice to Stoves 275 Inexpensive Girls 278 Women in the Pulpit 280 James Henry 284 Mounted Missionaries 286 The Buzz-Saw 289 The Two Browns 292 The Rival " Motors " 291 The Wheelbarrow in Politics '. . . 297 Royal Quarrels 300 The Express Evil 303 Porcine Prodigies 305 I Crushed Truth 308 I Dye and Diet 311 A Benevolent Scheme 314 A New Plea 317 Another Distressing Case 320 The Recent Calamity 3-3 Ouackery and Science 326 The Boy of Dundee 329 The Mule Abroad 332 SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. DOMESTIC EXPLOSIVES. FOR weeks before the Fourth of July the approach of the National Anniversary is heralded by the blowing up of manufactories of fireworks, and the diffusion of small par- ticles of exploded workmen over miles of startled country. The coroner wears a happy and confident expression of face, and hopefully lingers in the neighborhood of shops where fireworks are sold. Now that fulminate of silver, nitro- glycerine, and other violent explosives have been converted into playthings for juvenile patriots, the blowing up of a single small-boy may furnish business for a dozen coroners, each of whom may reasonably hope to pick up a finger, an ear, a jack-knife, or other organ of the victim, upon which an entire inquest can lawfully be held. Not long ago a manu- factory of nitro-glycerine torpedoes exploded in New York and scattered finely comminuted workmen all over the neighborhood. To-day there are scores of shops in our crowded streets where tons of fireworks are so recklessly exposed that the spark of a cigar may suddenly fill the air with vagrant rockets rushing with murderous intent upon unsuspecting pedestrians, and with flaming Catherine wheels revolving among the legs of passing horses, or dash- ing against the skirts of terrified women. In the midst of life we are also in the midst of fireworks, and no man knows at what moment his ears may be deafened by an explosion and his hat flattened over his eyes by the parabolic descent of some total though mangled stranger. 8 SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. There is something to be said in defence of ornamental fireworks as a means of celebrating the Fourth of July. They are frequently beautiful in themselves, and the extent to which they set buildings on fire endears them to me- chanics in search of employment. Mere explosives, how- ever, are utterly indefensible except from the coroner's point of view. Fire-crackers, torpedoes, and toy pistols are the instruments with which the small-boy's love for noise makes deafened millions mourn. That the small-boy frequently puts out his eyes, or ruins a dozen insurance companies by burning up a whole city, cannot be pleaded as a sufficient compensation for the torture which he inflicts during the twenty-four hours of Independence Day. If there has been any decay of patriotism among Americans of late years, the cause is to be sought in fire-crackers. No man, outside of a deaf and dumb asylum, who is awakened at midnight on the 3d of July with a hideous din that he knows will grow worse and worse for the next twenty-four hours, can help feeling that the Declaration of Independence was a terrible mis- take, and that slavery and quiet are infinitely preferable to freedom and fire-crackers. This feeling is, of course, of only temporary duration ; but its annual indulgence cannot but dull the patriotic instincts of the noblest men. Why does the small-boy delight in fire-crackers ? Obvi- ously because they make a noise. The Fourth of July is the one day when he is licensed to make unlimited noise, and accordingly he calls in the aid of the benighted heathen of China, who furnish him with fire-crackers, and of the less excusable heathen of our own land, who are not ashamed to pander to his depraved passions with fulminate of sil- ver and picrate of potash. While there is no hope that public opinion can never induce the small-boy to abandon his prescriptive right to make the Fourth hideous, it is pos- sible that he might be made to achieve his noisy ambition in some other way than with the aid of explosive compounds. The thoughtful and studious small-boy is already aware that he can make noises of the most exasperating character without the aid of a particle of gunpowder. Why should we not point out to our little ones the safe and cheap instru- ments of uproar with which every house hold is provided, DOMESTIC EXPLOSIVES. g and prevail upon them to accept these in exchange for the fire-cracker that burns by day and the " nigger-chaser " that kindles in the night-time? The ordinary front door has enormous capabilities for noise. One small-boy can produce more noise by violently and persistently slamming it than can be produced by a whole pack of fire-crackers. There is also the familiar species of dining-table with swinging leaves, the rapid up- setting of which rivals in deafening results a regimental volley of musketry. Every man who has " moved " on the ist of May is familiar with the magnificent effect in point of noise which is produced by loading a small-boy with an assortment of coal-scuttles and directing him to carry them carefully down stairs. If this experiment were to be re- peated say at half hourly intervals on the Fourth, and es- pecially if a few worn-out articles of tin ware were placed at the bottom of the stairs to receive the loaded boy, the crash and rattle that would ensue would far eclipse the best efforts of the largest "giant crackers." The common domestic baby can in skilful hands be made to yield noises of great variety and penetrative power ; and the ear-piercing results of saw filing are so notorious, that the advantages of celebrating our nation's birthday by a carnival of saws ought long ago to have been recognized. Time would fail were the attempt made to give a com- plete list of domestic instruments of patriotic noise. Those that have been mentioned are alone sufficient to give expres- sion to the wildest juvenile patriotism. Let us then discard the dangerous explosives sold by pyrotechnists and substi- tute for them the harmless front door, the innocuous dining- table, and the safe but satisfactory baby and saw. What a sublime spectacle would be presented on the ensuing Fourth were the small-boys of this happy land to celebrate our national independence by the unremitting slamming of doors, the upsetting of tables, the filing of saws, and the pinching of babies. Of course the selfish and scoffing coroner will say that such a method of celebration would be wholly unworthy of the day ; but we all know that what he calls his love of country is only a love of inquests, and that when he pretends that the fire-crackers of pagan China I0 SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. are better adapted to honor the memory of Washington and Franklin than are the saws and files of Christian America, he is secretly longing for scorched corpses and shattered limbs. His business lies with contemporaneous bodies, and his profession of interest in the corpses of the men of 1776, who are now far beyond the reach of inquests, is obviously a hollow mockery. REFUTING MOSES. THERE is no question that geology is a delightful science. It can be studied with less expense and inconvenience than any other science. Chemistry is expensive because it cannot be studied without a laboratory in which the stu- dent can blow himself up. Astronomy requires costly telescopes ; mathematics are inseparable from slates, and " mumble-the-peg" cannot be mastered without a jack-knife. Geology, on the other hand, is a science which any one can study by simply going out of doors and looking at the profuse strata which beneficent nature has lavished upon us. Persons who are confined by ill-health to their homes can even study geology by examining the coal measures and kindling-wood strata in their cellars, and there are encouraging instances of amateur geologists who have re- futed Moses simply by investigating the stratification of their ash-barrels. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the refutation of Moses is one of the imperative duties of the geologist. No man can hope to obtain any considerable reputation as a learned geologist unless at stated intervals he rises up and remarks that Moses was possibly a well-meaning person, but he was grossly ignorant of the paleontology of the mes- ozoic period. Whenever a new fossil is discovered, it is promptly thrown at Moses' head, and thus, in one way or another, he is constantly and completely refuted. The friends of Moses may dislike this sort of thing, but it is apparently an inevitable result of studying strata or med- dling with fossils. REFUTING MOSES. H A new and violent blow has just been struck at the Mosaic account of creation by the discovery of an extremely important fossil in a coffee-sack at Baltimore. In the cen- tre of this sack was found the skull of a monkey. There can be no doubt as to the facts. The coffee was of the variety called Rio, and the skull was perfectly preserved. It is well that Moses died while he was yet esteemed a truth- ful person, and that his wife and brother have been spared this bitter, bitter blow. Let us dwell for a little upon the meaning of this dis- covery as interpreted by the principles of geology. The coffee-sack was 12 (say 123^) inches in diameter, and four feet in height. The skull, which lay in the middle of it, was therefore two feet below the surface. To suppose that it was violently forced into the sack after the latter was full, would be eminently unscientific. No one imagines that the fossil birds of the Old Red Sandstone, dug down into that locality through the superincumbent strata. Noth- ing is more universally conceded than that fossils are always found where they belong. The animals whose re- mains we find in the rocks of the paleozoic, the meso-Gothic, and the Syro-Phcenician strata, belong, respectively, to those several systems. The fossil monkey-skull was, there- fore, deposited in the coffee-sack when the latter was half full, and the two feet of coffee which rested upon it was a subsequent deposit. Now, it follows from this premise that monkeys existed during the early part of the Rio coffee period. It is the opinion of most geologists that the Rio coffee period suc- ceeded the tertiary period, and immediately preceded the present period. Now, no tertiary monkeys have yet been found ; but the Baltimore discovery shows that monkeys existed as early as the middle of the Rio coffee period, a date far earlier than any which has hitherto been assigned to them. We may feel sorry for Moses, but we cannot shut our eyes to this plain scientific fact. The monkey lived during the greater part, if not the whole, of the Rio coffee period ; and yet that venerable Hebrew would have us believe that the world is only six thousand years old! IZ SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES, We are now in a position to inquire what is the least period of time which must have elapsed since the skull of the Baltimore monkey was the property of a live and active simian. The answer to this question must be sought by ascertaining the rate at which coffee is deposited. It is the opinion of Mr. Huxley, based upon a long and care- ful examination of over three hundred garbage boxes, that coffee is deposited in a ground condition at the rate of an inch in a thousand centuries, but that the deposition of unground coffee is almost infinitely slower. He has placed bags, coffee-mills, and other receptacles in secluded places, and left them for months at a time^ without finding the slightest traces of coffee in them. Although Huxley does not hazard a guess at the rate of deposition of unground Rio coffee, Prof. Tyndall does not hesitate to say that it is at least as slow as the rate of deposition of tomato cans. Let us suppose, as we are abundantly justified in doing, that 30,000,000 of years would be required to bring about the deposition of a stratum of tomato cans one foot thick all over the surface of the globe. An equally long period must certainly have elapsed while a foot of unground coffee was accumulating over the skull of the Baltimore monkey. We thus ascertain that the monkey in question yielded up his particular variety of ghost and became a fossil fully 30,000,000 of years ago. Probably even this enormous period of time is much less than the actual period which has elapsed since that monkey's decease ; and we may consider ourselves safe in assigning to his skull the age of 50,000.000 years, besides a few odd months. In the light of this amazing revelation, what becomes of Moses and his 6,000 years ? It will hardly escape no- tice that he nowhere mentions Rio coffee. Obviously, this omission is due to the fact that he knew nothing of it. But if he was unacquainted with one of the most recent forma- tions, how can we suppose that he knew anything about the elder rocks the metamorphic and stereoscopic strata ? And yet it is this man, ignorant of the plainest facts of geology, and of its very simplest strata, who boldly assumes to tell us all about the creation ! Whether the Christian religion can survive the discov- A PROFITABLE FORK. I3 ery of the Baltimore monkey remains to be seen. Inas- much as it has survived hundreds of previous refutations of Moses, it may perhaps last a few more years ; but it can hardly count upon the patronage of any really scientific person. Well-meaning theologians may attempt to con- vince us that a foot of coffee was deposited on the monkey's skull by a boy with a scoop-shovel in three minutes, but the facts of geology cannot be overthrown by such puerile sentimentalism. The theories of science are infallible, and scientific persons are incapable of error. Sooner or later the Protestant who believes in the infallible Bible, and the Roman Catholic who believes in the infallible Pope, must perceive their error and admit that Scientific Truth is the only variety of truth, and that a monkey's skull in a sack of coffee can give more real comfort to the questioning soul than can all the creeds of the Christian world. A PROFITABLE FORK. AFTER all that is said about industry and brains, a bold man can make a better living with the aid of his simple stomach than he can in any other way. Some years ago a Canadian soldier, who had a little " difficulty " with a rifle- ball, by which the front elevation of his stomach was carried away, obtained an easy and abundant income by exhibiting the great moral spectacle of human digestion to enthusiastic medical men. In spite of his success, his ex- ample has never been followed until very recently, and the fortunate Frenchman who the other day invited the Paris Academy of Sciences to a private view of his stomach is the first and only imitator of the famous Canadian. The Frenchman in question became a stomach exhibitor from accident rather than design. More than a year ago he undertook to imitate with a silver fork the world-re- nowned knife-swallowing feats of the eminent statesman of the West. Unfortunately, as he then supposed, he lost I4 SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. his hold on the handle of his fork, and instead of success- fully withdrawing it from the interior of his person, as the Western statesman withdraws his skilful knife, he unin- tentionally and completely swallowed it. The event created a degree of enthusiasm in medical circles which has rarely been equalled. How to deal with an abnormal development of fork in the stomach was a problem which no physician had ever been required to solve. The homceopathists claimed to have specifics in their mater ia medica for acute or chronic attacks of marbles, coins, hair-pins, and false teeth in the stomach, but they acknowledged that they had no remedy of which they could prescribe little enough to cure the symptoms of the fork. Moreover, their method of diagnosis dissatisfied the patient and exasperated the restaurant-keeper, who was the real proprietor of the fork. They refused to entertain the idea of the absolute existence of any such entity as a stomachic fork, and asserted that what the old school physicians called the symptoms produced by the presence of a fork consti- tuted the whole difficulty under which the patient suffered. As for the latter class of physicians, they were as much at a loss how to deal with the case as were their rivals. One doctor thought that if the man were made to swallow a pint of mercury, it would unite with the silver of the fork, and when subsequently sublimated by putting the patient in a crucible, would leave the silver in the readily accessi- ble shape of a finely comminuted precipitate. Feasible as this plan undoubtedly was, it was vehemently opposed by the restaurant-keeper, on the ground that it would ruin the fork and by the friends of the patient, on the ground that it would spoil him. These unscientific objections prevailed, and the physicians, after having vainly experimented upon the fork with blisters, vermifuge, ergot, and the exhibition of a tramp famous for producing the disappearance of silver plate, abandoned the case as one which was abso- lutely incurable. But it so happened that the patient had swallowed better than he knew. After being abandoned by the phy- sicians, the surgeons took him up, and stimulated by the agonized entreaties of the restaurant-keeper, proposed to A PROFITABLE FORK. I S cut the patient open and thus regain the fork. By this time that unhappy man had become so much discouraged by colic that he was willing to try any remedy, no matter how unpleasant it might be. He therefore consented to have the front wall of his stomach removed, and the sur- geons, having performed that feat with great hilarity and skill, rescued the long imperilled fork and restored it to its owner. Not only did the patient survive the operation, but he soon found that his stomach was worth far more to him than it had ever been. No sooner was it noised abroad that his wound had healed, leaving an opening in his abdomen, than all the physicians of Europe suddenly found out that he was a fine, genial, open-stomached fellow, whose acquaintance they were anxious to make. But the Frenchman was not to be caught by any such medical chaff. He promptly decided to undertake the profession of a showman, and to throw open his stomach for exhibi- tion to all who might be willing to pay him a moderate fee. He has already put this project into execution, and his daily entertainments are now crowded by admiring audiences, who watch the thrilling performances of the gastric juice, and burst into thunders of applause when specimens of American pie, imported for the exhibition at immense cost, slowly yield to the indomitable digestive forces of the heroic Frenchman, and thus furnish what the audience believes to be a new demonstration of the superi- ority of the gallant French stomach to the sordid and per- fidious stomachs of the English race. To all those who desire to earn a living without per- sonal exertion the story of this successful Frenchman may be commended, with the advice to go and do likewise. The tramps who are now compelled to undergo the trouble of asking for their food, have only to open their stomachs and to place them on exhibition in order to live in idleness on the best of food. They need not even incur the ex- pense of a surgical operation. Every tramp who possesses nerve and a sharp knife can prepare himself for exhibition without delay or expense, and the world is full of charitable persons who will gladly put their knives at his disposal, in case he should have mislaid his own. Those tramps who 1 6 SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. attended the Philadelphia Exhibition, and lived on the surplus food of Centennial boarding-house keepers, can easily surpass the most difficult feats of the French ex- hibitor by digesting articles which he, lacking their experi- ence, would find as indigestible as forks. As for the good taste of the public exhibition of the human stomach, there can surely be no valid objection made to it by a community which has patronized the anatomical displays of the opera bouffe. There is a vast and fruitful field waiting to be reaped by the stomach-exhibitor, and it is unfortunate that it is now too late to place in the Centennial Exhibition a few well-selected American stomachs, and thus humiliate Europe by compelling a comparison between the free and vigorous stomach of the New World, which easily digests both pie and pork, and the feeble stomach of effete Europe, which is unequal to the digestion of a simple silver fork. VULCAN. FOR many years ambitious astronomers have been in the habit of announcing the alleged discovery of a small planet revolving in a quiet and obscure orbit, situated within the orbit of Mercury. Their fellow-astronomers have, however, unanimously declined to believe in the existence of this planet, and have scoffed at its discoverers as men who are not interested in sea-side hotels scoff at the pretended dis- coverers of the sea-serpent. In fact, the alleged planet Vulcan was looked upon very much in the light of an as- tronomical sea-serpent. " Vulcan may possibly exist," said the conservative astronomers, "but Professor So-and-So never saw it ; " and then they would hint, with sneering as- tronomic smiles, that too much tea sometimes plays strange pranks with the imagination, and that an astronomer who cannot tell a planet from a fly that walks across his object- glass is not the sort of man from whom any discoveries of moment need be expected. This determined hostility to VULCAN. I7 Vulcan finally made it a hazardous matter for an astrono- mer to profess a belief in its existence. Public astronomic opinion insisted that there was quite enough planets be- tween the earth and the sun already, and that to have this miserable little Vulcan take the first place on the list, and crowd the Earth back to the fourth place, would be little less than an outrage. Indeed, it is said that no scientific person has latterly been admitted to any astronomical society without previously renouncing Vulcan and all his phases, and professing his belief in only two inferior plan- ets, possessing phases and the power of making transits. But now comes M. Leverrier, the discoverer of Nep- tune, and confessedly a crack shot with the long-range telescope, and announces that he has positively discovered Vulcan, and will before long exhibit it in the act of making a transit across the Sun. This announcement has been received in grim silence. M. Leverrier is too well known to be sneered at. The man who hunted Neptune with his nose so to speak following the mathematical scent of that shy planet till he flushed it in the vicinity of Uranus and brought it down with his unerring telescope, cannot be accused of confounding accidental flies with actual planets. When he firmly asserts that he has not only discovered Vulcan, but has calculated its elements, and has arranged a transit especially for its exhibition to doubting astronomers, there is an end to all discussion. Vulcan exists, and its existence can no longer be denied or ignored. The Earth must henceforth be ranked as the fourth planet from the sun, and the children in the public schools who have been taught to recite their planets after the old-fashioned order, must be required to commit Vulcan to memory and insert it in its proper place. That Vulcan is an extremely small planet there is every reason to believe. Moreover, it must be excessively hot, and its inhabitants ought to be very thankful that its day is so ridiculously short. Precisely what is the length of a Vulcanic day M. Leverrier has nbt yet announced, but in all probability it cannot be more than four hours. If its working men have obtained the passage of an eight- minute law, and are careful not to overheat themselves by 2 l8 ' SIXTH COLUMN FANCIES. undue activity, they can doubtless accomplish as much in the course of a day's work as does the earthly plumber, and with little more fatigue. On the other hand, the life of a Vulcanic editor, who has to issue a morning paper every four hours, must be a terribly laborious one, and as for the editor of a Vulcanic evening paper he can hardly find time to write the formula, " the news of the morning papers was substantially anticipated by our fourth edition of yesterday," before he is required to prepare a powerful and convincing list of "hotel arrivals" for the first edition of next day's paper. There is, however, one great advantage which the inhabitants of Vulcan have over the Tellurians. The Fourth of July, on that happy planet, lasts only eight hours, and a Vulcanite can make a day's visit to a Centennial Exhibition without more than four hours of acute suffering. Still, even as to these matters, the brevity of Vulcanic time has its discouraging features. The Fourth of July must return with maddening rapidity, and the Vulcanites must be scourged with Centennial Exhibitions at least four times as often as the inhabitants of any part of our slower and more considerate planet. In spite of the unreasonable opposition which astrono- mers have shown to the discovery of Vulcan, that event ought to fill them with joy, and to bring a corresponding sadness upon the unscientific part of mankind. Hitherto, Venus and Mercury have been the only planets which had the habit of making periodical transits across the disc of the Sun. Mercury has rather overdone the matter, and made its transits so frequently that the astronomers have lacked the assurance to pretend to take any exceptional interest in them. The infrequent transits of Venus, on the contrary, have been scattered along at such wide intervals that it was possible to assume an immense amount of appar- ent enthusiasm concerning them. Thus, whenever a transit of Venus was about to occur, astronomers who wanted to visit all sorts of out-ot-the-way places would inform their Government with every, appearance of sobriety, that unless they were sent in a man-of-war, with vast quantities of tel- escopes and cigars to Kerguelen's Land, or Japan, or Mount Chimborazo, the transit could not be properly observed, UNDERGROUND CLASSICS. !