We group under this heading a pile of leaves that seem, as they lie upon
the desk, to be constantly quivering with horror lest some form of tobacco
might be used in their vicinity. We are quite safe critics in this respect,
as the weed does not flatter and tone down feelings of the highest propriety,
and we write at a pinch, but not in consequence of one. Perhaps it would
be presumptuous to hint that we ruminate only “the cud of sweet and bitter fancies.” There was a period in our college career — if considerable
careering may be thus strictly designated — when a cloud seemed to us, as
to Ixion, loveable: but, profiting by the disappointments of that unenlightened heathen who did not appear to smoke his error, we tried to learn
to blow our own cloud. How we used to recline, with eyes half shut in a
surmise of pleasure, to wink out of consciousness our one-armed and stiff-runged family rocking-chair, and a much stiffer exercise of differential calculus: for in those days we could not ride to the pure mathematics on a pony or with a coach; and the only “joker” we knew was the instructor who
pretended that calculus was learnable. But our efforts at narcotizing the
entire absence of cushions to our chair and rank to our course, were always
closed suddenly by searing the lips or extinguishing the right eye: we
could never learn to shift our cigar along the “hedge of the teeth” with
that Olympic abandon of the born smoker; it had to be held with great circumspection, the drift of the curls to be narrowly watched, all talk suspended on pain of choking, all thought centred upon each judicious whiff.
We remember faintly that occasionally our delicious repose was marred
by a revulsion of feeling that expected to find something timely in the
closet: that day we smoked no more, nor read, for that matter, either. On
the whole, we never fought our way through the jungly belt of Terai up to
the cloud-land where your predestined smoker lies pillowed upon his fatuity, “careless of mankind.” Indeed, it became with us a question whether the
pituitary glands would continue to moisten Mrs. Scrimpflint’s otherwise
unboltable rations, or whether we should grow up capable of spitting upon
any politics or theology we might despise.

We are ready, therefore, to take high ground upon the matter of tobacco,
and to declare its essential incompatibility with the moral sense. Here we have “an appeal to Lord Renfrew, the Prince of Wales, on the
pernicious eiiects ot his cigar and pipe.” He is addressed as “a prospective monarch,” whose “likeness is among us in daguerreotypes by thousands:” he is told that his habit may not only disable him, but, through
him, future kings on his throne, — “we desire no extinction of this royal
line” — drop therefore “your meerschaum and its affinities.” If we knew
what effect this appeal has had upon the Prince, we should feel more competent to recommend the series of papers to untitled smokers.

Wood-cuts are also pressed into the service of Mr. Trask’s crusade.
Here is a picture of a “boy who first smoked a paper cigar, then a grape-vine, then the real article,” — favored child, in these days of oak-leaves and
fillings: he is confessing at his mother’s knee, but he does not look haggard enough to satisfy our own vindictive recollections of the vice.

Here are “Twenty Reasons why ministers of the everlasting gospel
should not use Tobacco.” And we are told that “dying saints, well nigh
suffocated with the poisonous odor, have, with trembling hands, waved
pastors from their bedsides.” Alas, Mr. Trask, if dying saints would only
wave from their bedsides the suffocating doctrines that their pastors bring,
we should be inclined to waive the matter of a smoke whose torment does
not ascend forever and ever.

Well might a saint say to his pastor,—

“O, search beyond this earth — search regions of the blest;
Can ye not find some place where we unsmoked may rest?”

But clergymen are warned upon one point of considerable importance.
”Many tobacco-users fall dead suddenly. You may fall dead in your pulpits. Some preachers have.” Yes, how many, and they stay stone-dead,
not knowing it, but without having used tobacco! It occurs to us to ask
whether in such cases the use of tobacco might not act, as ammoniacal
salts, or burnt feathers, and wake the preacher from his deathly swoon. It
would be certainly legitimate to try a post-mortem experiment of this
nature. Several kinds of Siberian and Flat-head wizards prophesy under
fumigation. Let it be tried, as a last resort before sepulture, wherever
there is a pulpit whose recumbent has ceased to breathe the breath of
life. Goethe has a verse, in his West-Easterly Divan, that hints how the
original process of informing bodies with souls, might be cheaply imitated
by us with a pinch of snuff alone:

“The Elohim into his nose
With best of spirit breezing,
Some sign of life the creature shows
By hearty fit of sneezing.”

The subject is however too grave for jesting. Wherever under the present condition of the clerical profession, we could find a live minister, we
should be tempted, notwithstanding our old grudge at honest smokers, to
attribute some etherial influence to his cigar.

But let us not be misunderstood. We like clean and healthy ways. And
we like to see a tract upon some pernicious habit written without cant and
coarseness, so that laughter might not come in to half betray the cause.
These little papers are too evangelical for us, and are pitched to the senses
which cannot appreciate “the real article” of tobacco or theology. What
benefit, for instance, will the Republic reap from such a verse as this,
thrust into the hand on every railroad, and proffered at the street-corners?

“The jaws then give a flirt,
The tongue, too, takes a tuck;
The pucker lets a squirt,
That drains it of the truck.”

      J. W.

Apropos of the recent metoric [sic] showers and the explosion of steam boilers in every part of the country, Professor Loomis suggests an uncomfortable theory in regard to the safety of the earth itself. He thinks it is not impossible that sufficient steam might be generated in the burning centre of the world to blow the world to pieces. A volcanic eruption under the sea, or near it, like that of Vesuvius now in progress, may at any moment convert the earth into a huge steam-boiler by letting the water in upon the central fires, to be followed for ought we know, by an explosion that shall rend it apart and send the fragments careening through space as small planets or meteors, each bearing off some distracted member or members of the human family, to make, perchance, new discoveries and acquaintances in other parts of the planetary system now revolving with us. So that the final catastrophe may, after all, be only a boiler explosion on a magnificent scale of grandeur and destruction.

What the Greek Reader tells of Sybaris is in three or four anecdotes, woven into that strange, incoherent patchwork of “Geography.” In that place are patched together a statement of Strabo and one of Athenæus about two things in Sybaris which may have belonged some eight hundred years apart. But what of that to a school-boy! Will your descendants, dear reader, in the year 3579 A.D., be much troubled, if, in the English Reader of their day, Queen Victoria shall be made to drink Spartan black broth with William the Conqueror out of a conch-shell in New Zealand?

A musician of this city has contrived an apparatus which he calls a “Pianautomaton,” and which is designed, as its name implies, for automatically playing upon a pianoforte any piece of music desired. The instrument is described externally as a box of the width and length of the keyboard to which it is clamped. Through a slot runs the piece of music which is to be played, and which has this peculiarity, that all the notes are perforated through the sheet. The box has a crank which sets in motion a magneto-electric apparatus and by its means a series of axial bars protruding below the box, strike the pianoforte keys and correctly perform the musical composition indicated by the holes in the paper. This contrivance rather belies its name in that music is ground out, as in the better known street instrument of humbler pretensions; but in another form, the apparatus is entirely self-acting, the insertion of the perforated paper causing a small lever to come in metallic contact, thus completing the electric current, the instrument then continuing to play until all the music paper has passed through the aperture, when the lever being no longer held up, the circuit is broken and the performance terminated.

The axial bars strike the key notes with four different degrees of strength, either with a legato or staccato touch, and with a suitable connection with the pedals, all degrees of musical expression are attainable. It is apparent that this instrument can be made to produce effects of execution which no living artist could think of attempting. For example, a chromatic scale in octaves, thirds, or tenths; or produce the effect as if four, six, eight, or more hands were performing. There is no hesitancy in “reading at sight,” and the variety of pieces need not be a limited repertoire, like a hand organ.

A fiddle improves by age and use; a piano does not, neither does a bell. There is, perhaps a slight improvement for the first few years, but afterwards the quality deteriorates. Metal, we know, is altered, by repeated and long continued hammering. Thump a piece of iron, and you change the quality of its magnetism; the shock of the waves modifies the magnetism of an iron ship; and some of the music is knocked out of a bell by long continued use of the clapper. A peculiar effect is noticed in the bell of Cripplegate Church when it strikes twelve. The first two or three strokes are distinct and clear, then a discord begins, which accumulates with every stroke, until with the eleventh and twelfth a complete double sound is produced.–Chambers’ Journal.