Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-06-05
For the Yorkville Enquirer.
IDOLS IN THE STOMACH,
OR
How to produce night and day dreams.


SCENE.-A house in London Doct ABERSETHY
seated at a ta6lc, and sofa on the opposite
side Of ii. Enter corpulent maiden lady on
the shady side Of forty, painting for breath.
Lady.-Good mor-(a long drawn breath ming,
Doctor.
Doctor ABERNETHY Good morning, madam
Pray be seated. LADY sits.)
Lady, wish to consult you, Doctor. (Laysa
guinea on the tuble. My appetite is very bad,
Doctor,-especially of evenings, (another long in
spiration.)
Doctor.-Be composed madam, and state your
case
Lady.-My appetite is failing very fast, Doctor.
can dine nearly as we'll as ever; but at tea, there
is sad fallingof, of late, covers her face with
her handkerchief, and pause rs if overcome with
emoton.)
Doctor.-Proceed, madam
Lady-Last evening only eat four slices of
pound-cake, three salt herrings, piece of smoked
beef not than twice that size (holding up her
hand and laying her left fore finger on her wrist
to indicate the quantity and one loaf of bakers
bread buttered and toasted and 1 only drank
three cups of tea, and two pints Of ale; and, if
you will believe me, Doctor, when went to SLEEP
dreamed of my grandmother. (Weeps.)
Doctor.-Well, madam, tonight double the dose
Of salt herrings, beef and ale and you will dream
of your grandfather also.
Recollections Of A6srnethy.
Man, in his conceited vanity, claims to be but
little lower than the angels. However this may
be, (and it has good authority,) think one thing
is certain: if he ever gets any higher, either in
this world or the next he must worship more
exalted Divinity than his Stomach. Look, now, at
the above picture of DR.. Abernethy's fair patient
her rotund form-her face, round and red as
turnip-beet, net work of turgid veins, imparting
a fiery hue to the whites Of her eyes,-the mus
cuar action upon the lachrymal glands, forcing
out streams of involuntary tears, upon the hy-
draulic pressure system her expanded sides,
which have completely absorbed her waist, once
her prde-alternately contracting and expanding
like blacksmith's bellows her breath, as it
comes and goes, making sort of Kissing sound
as it passes through the nasal pipes, like air es
Gaping from an air pump ;-whatis she? Almost
IN angel, eh? Rather butter frkin-a sausage
machine-a malt-liquor cask-a stomach-idol wor-
shipper! But the soul of this aggregation of
stale beer, gingerbread and lobster sauce-what
is it where is it?-what is its doom? Let the
curtain drop, and let the Orchestra strike up
''Sweet Home" .....
**
Chow is your father this morning Charley?"
asked kind country lady to little orphan-look-
ing boy, who just then approached her door timid-
ly, and whose father had converted his stomach
into grog bowl and worshipped it az an idol
Every poorly, warm" said poor little Charley.
"Ie holers all night and says folks are trying
to kill him, and that bad spirits are coming to
take him down to the fire and birthstone"
"That is indeed very sad," said the good lady
sympathizingly. "But how is his appetite, Char
ley"
ellis appellee" responded Charley sis very bad,
but his drinkstits is orful good"
"Drinketite"-a word coined by the untaught
drunkard's child. How expressive! 1t is not o
word drawn from the almost unfathomable depths
of classic lore-not Word, for instance, to i'm
mortalize the discovery of an infant world which
may have just taken its place in the stallor sys-
tom of Gods Universe; but word, lowly and
humbly born, and representing an idea which pic
lures to the wind beastly sot, upon the floor
Of miserable hove, his whiskey jug beside him,
and his beggared, starving wife and children
grouped around him in all the abjectness of squaid
poverty.
This miserable wretch is one Of the stomach
worshippers of our times. His stomach is at once
his altar and his God; and half the devotion he
pays to that beastly idol would give to his heart
broken wife and poverty stricken children hus-
band and father; and to the Deity, penitent
and a worshpper.- But true to his idol and trait
orous to his Creator there he lies, writhng squir-
ming and shrieking through all the moods Of
thoroughly developed case Of mania apotu What
spectacle. But little lower than the angels?
How far is he from the abode of the Devil and
the damned?
Doctor Abernethys fair patient deemed it on
unbearable evil to dream of her grandmother,
while asleep His dreams are only waking dreams,
night and day; for he cannot sleep. He is wide
awake; and the scenes change from the horrible
to the still more horrible, not only with lightning
speed but, with the speed of mind which far e1-
ceeds it; and not with the speed of mind alone,
but with the speed of mind agonized by the de-
mon Of. delirium, which is swifter still. The
abode of the just is shut out from his view. That
blessed region has no place in such IN internal
panorama, sweeping thus horribly by. Oh, no!
bis idol, red with wrath and nfuriated against its
devotee is holding festival within him. Legions
ofdemons dance in his melted brain, and the imp
choristers play with red.hot fingers upon his
vibrating heart-strings Instead of blessed visions
the lurid flames of the bottomless pit writhe about
him-the tortures of lost souls are in the dream
the groan of anguish-the shrek of despair-the
wild start and plunge to halfwakening con-
sciousness, which makes reality even less horrible
than the vision of doom from which he struggles
to escape. Hear the yell of torment, then. See
how he struggles, with On unnatural strength, to
break away from his keepers, vainly seeking to
flee from the unutterable horrors in which he
floats and founders, and to which his words of
blasphemy are revolving and shocking accom-
pauiment. But no relief is possible. His night
dream, unrelenting, pursues him STILL Surroun-
ded, above, beneath, around, with red-hot impen-
etrable walls, from which there is no outlet-the
flames in thick waves of liquid red-hot fire, heav-
ing, swelling, roaring and cracking rs they hiss