M'arthur Democrat. (McArthur, Vinton County, Ohio) 1853-1865, 1857-01-22
LOCAL DEPARTMENT.
THURSDAY, JANUARY ee, 1851.

w ANHN HNNA
friends Of whom Goldsmith speaks-with
numerous queer looking communications
If, after reading four lines of each one, we
became satisfied that it was an audacious
attempt to scale the dizzy heights of Par
nassus, VIC invariably and incontihently
thrust it into our cold copy drawer This
we considered a good rule-a safe operation,
TO say the least--and our nerves always
felt calmer, our mind easier, when we shut
the drawer with an emphatic slam and
turned the key.
From the above paragraph the reader may
imagine that we have no music in our souls
but we beg TO inform such imaginative rea-
der that he, or she, as the case may be, does
not know the contents Of our 'old copy
drawer!" Music! pshaw! We were pro-
menading past a blacksmith shop, the other
evening, and heard just such music, in effect,
as could be extracted from most of the origi-
nal poetic illusions in the drawer aforesaid.
A %smithy--the picture of a young Vulcan
was rasping with might and main a piece
Of hard iron, in one part of the shop, and
a sooty imp of a boy was seated on an an
vii in another part, saving away upon an
old cracked fiddle as if Cor dear life, and
making pretty nearly if not quite as good
music as the man with the file!
The first full swell of melody between the
file and the fiddle, which occurred just as we
arrived opposite the door of the shop, had a
most wonderful effect upon our nerves and
muscles. Our thumbs were Involuntary
thrust into our ears to protect the tympans
from the gross and outrageous assault, and
the propelling muscles of our legs perform
ed their functions in a most astonishing and
vigorous manner, and we made few leaps
that would have been creditable to Gabriel
Ravel, or even the famous Samuel Patch
Holmes "Music Grinders occurred to
us, especially that part in which he speaks
of breaking the back of melody" and
"cracking the legs of time,"-and we went
to the apothecary's and took a sedative.
To return from the blacksmith or, rather
the apothecary shop, to the old copy draw
er-the latter had to be emptied, the other
day, and gathering up a huge pile of the
delectable " originals" we sat down to a
more careful inspection of the '~favors' of
our Goldsmithian friends aforesaid.
The first document opened was a despe-
rate attempt of a young man to immortalize
afeminine-dedicated ITO a Yung Lady ~
1t was, indeed a 'woful llad'-two-thirds
of the words spelled incorrectly and the
Kings English assasSinated! A %misappre-
,hension of the proper use of capital letters
seemed to have been a peculiar Characters
tic of the author-some being placed at the
wrong end of lines and others at the tail
end of words. The only punctuation marks
visible were long dashes at the conclusion
Of each verse. As to poetic measure, we
are certain that the author did not know the
Iambic from the Trochaic, nor the latter
from any other, although he gave a speci-
men of each and a general conglomerated
tumble OF all. His "poetic licenses" were
peculiar and beyond anything in that line
we ever read of in the books. Good
thoughts, even poorly dressed in words, al
ways make a respectable appearance; but
this %effusion contained not a single one-in
fact, it didn't possess a single redecming
trait-not symptom that its author was
born to be anything but n natural '%llt!-
We happen to know him. When we last
saw him he wore very tight pants and an III
tensiied Shanghai coat-sported an i'm
mense watch chain, a whalebone cane ant
long nine cigar-thought he knew every,
thing and a little more, and was allowed to
be impertinent because he had a rich daddy
He might have been a good scholar, had he
improved the excellent advantages which
his fathers wealth afforded him, but his Ia
illness at school was proverbial. Such is a
picture of the young man who aspires to
"climb Parnassus by dint o. Greek" for a
good part of his "pome" was certainly sail
Greek" to us!
ITO my Mother" was the title of the
second effusion which we happened to get
in our clutches. Had Miss, the authoress,
stopped with the title, that alone would
have brought to the mind of the reader po-
etc thoughts and excited tender emotions
in his breast. What follows it, however,
induces Us to think that Miss never had a
mother, and we therefore set her down as a
second "TOpsy."
No. 3 was written by a sweet little girl
oged only twelve years-a native of the
sunny sOuth'-the land of the palmetto and
the orange. Wegive it as the best juvenile
production we could find in our sold copy