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About Southern literary gazette. (Charleston, S.C.) 1850-1852 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 18, 1852)
288 POINTED PARAGRAPHS. A DOCTOR AS IS DOCTOR. A country physician was called upon ! to visit a young man afflicted with apo -1 plexy. M. D. Bolus gazed long and hard, felt his pulse and pocket, looked at his tongue and his wife, and finally gave vent to the following sublime opinion : “1 think he’s a gone feller.” “No, no!” exclaimed the sorrowing , wife, “do not say that.” i “Yes,” returned Bolus, lifting up his i hat and eyes heavenward at the same time, “Yes, 1 do say so; there arn’t no hope, not the leastest mite; he’s got an attack of ni hi I fit in his lost frontis ” “Where?” cried the startled wife. “In his lost frontis, and he can’t be cur ed without some trouble and a great deal of pains. You see his whole planetbry i system is deranged ; firstly, his vox pop i uli is pressing on the ad valorem ; se condly, his cutacharpial cutaneous has swelled considerably, if not more ; third ly, and la tly, his solar ribs are in a con cussed state, and he arn’t got any money, and consequently he is bound to die.” [ Western Lancet. HARD TOAST TO FINISH. The celebrated Dr. Brown, of London, paid his addresses to a lady tor many I years, but unsuccessfully ; during which time he was accustomed to propose her health in company when called on for a ‘toast. But Leing observed one day to i omit it, a gentleman present reminded him that he had forgotten to toast his fa vourite lady. “Why, indeed,” said the doctor, “1 find it all in vain. Since 1 have toasted her so many years, and still can not make her Brown , I am resolved to ! toast her no longer.” TRILES. How much are we indebted to acci dent. Pythagoras owed the invention of music to the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer. Newton, his first idea of grav itation, to the fall of an apple —Voltaire | tells us that Milton got his first idea of Paradise Lost from a ridiculous Italian burlesque, styled Adamo, or the Fall of i M an —Goldsmith’s comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, was suggested by an acci dent which occurred to him on his way ito college. Verily, as the song says : “We little know what great things From little things arise.” A PUNSTER PAID OFF IN HIS COIN. Old Thomas Fuller, who was a very lively writer, but rather addicted to pun ning, was occasionally repaid his pun, with interest. He was exceedingly cor pulent, and as he was with a friend named Sparrow-hawk, he could not resist the opportunity of cracking a joke upon ihitn. “Pray, what is the difference,” SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE. said he “between an owl and a Sparrow hawk ?” “An owl,” replied his friend, “is fuller in the head, fuller in the body, and fuller all over.” Instantaneous crystallization. All experiments for the production of crystals are both interesting and beauti ful; they show that all matter will as sume, under favourable circumstances, a definite and regular form or shape. Crys tallization is a species of vitality belong ing to, and inherent in, what are gener ally called earthly substances, perfectly analogous to the regular form assumed by plants and animals. A certain crystal will produce crystals of a like kind, but not of another; just as the seed of one plant produces its kind, but no other. Crystallization is the first link of the chain that unites man with the “dust of the earth.” The slower the crystals are formed, the more beautiful and regular they appear; but as it is interesting to see them form quickly, though not of good shape, we give the following experi ment, by which a liquid is made to be come almost solid iu an instant. Take half a pound of Glauber salts, (sulphate of soda,) crush it to powder, and pour upon it half a pint of boiling water; as soon as the salt is dissolved, pour off (he clear hot liquor into a warm glass tumb ler, and set it in an undisturbed place ; now, as quickly as you can, put a table spoonful of sweet oil on the surface of the solution, and let it stand till quite cold In this state it will remain liquid ; but if touched with a piece of wood, or if any thing be dropped into the glass, the whole will instantaneously crystal lize. If a bottle be quite filled with the hot solution, and corked up while hot, it will remain liquid when it becomes cold ; but when the cork is drawn, crystals will be rapidly formed. a hint. A young gentleman, a short time since, was about making an excursion for fi-h, and on one of the thoroughfares of the lake met and made the acquaintance of a lady, Mary Pike , by name, with whom he became very much pleased, and from whom he could not part without some pangs of sadness. He expressed a hope that he might hear from her occasionally. To which she replied, that “if he was not successful iu taking fish at the lakes, she had not any objection to his dropping a line to her.” not afraid. A western editor, in commenting upon the statement that diseases may be com municated by bank notes, remarks very coolly that his subscribers need not neg lect to “pay up” on that account, as he is willing to run his risk of “catching” any thing in that way. On the other hand, he fears that if the bank bills are not forthcoming the sheriff will catch him. RANDOM READINGS. —“Has a man,” asked a prisoner of a magistrate, ‘‘a right to commit a nui sance ?” “No, sir, not even the mayor.” “Then, sir, 1 claim my liberty, 1 was ar rested as a nuisance, and as no one has a right to commit me, I move for a non suit.” —As a canal boat was passing under a bridge, the captain gave the usual warn ing by calling aloud “Look out!” when a little Frenchman, who was in the cabin, obeyed the order by popping his head out of the window, when he received a severe thump by coming in contact with a pillar of the bridge. He drew it back in a great pet, and exclaimed: —“Dese Americans are queer people —dey say ‘Look out’ when they mean ‘Look in !’ ” —Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a public lecture, in New-York, a short time since, said that “a lecture must be con fined within the hour, whatever be the subject discussed, or all over that, like extra baggage on a public conveyance, must be at the risk of the owner. It must not be too fine spun, or its effect will be lost on a promiscuous audience, and, like the heads in a fresco painting, must be larger than life to be correctly apprecia ted.” —The Pope is about to receive a pre sent from the hands of an American gen tleman, who has made a fortune of seve ral millions of dollars in California, and is just arrived in Rome for the purpose of offering to his Holiness a specimen of the yellow metal, valued at about eighty thousand dollars. —As a sailor who had lost an arm w'as travelling through the country, he stopped at a house for refreshment; the curiosity of the landlord was excited to know in what manner it was lost. • “I’ll tell you,” said Jack, “if you won’t ask me any other questions about it.” The landlord agreed. “Well, then,” said Jack, “it was bit of” The Yankee wmuld not forfeit his word, but anxionsly replied : “Darnation, don’t 1 wish 1 knowed what bit it off.” —Madame de Fencm, with the sweet est manners in the world was an unprin cipled woman, capable of any thing. On one occasion, a friend w r as praising her geutieness. “Ay, ay,” said the Abbe Imblet, “if she had any object whatever! in poisoning you, undoubtedly she would choose the sweetest and the least disa greeable poison in the world.” [December 18
