The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-19
sPxRxT or xRH PRnss.
Editorial Opinions the Leading Journals
upon Current TopiOs-oompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph
A MATTER OF COURSE.

From the NJ ]. Tribune
The comic weekly which, under the name
of P,ncdinel0, has for the last year been
struppllnp against its fate, has succumbed. We
expect to hear the usual chorus of unthinking
citizens of Bohemia, that America cannot sup
port O humorous paper. But we are not in
clined to give so general an explanation to
this especial case We think, on the contrary,
that the autopsy of this dead weekly indicates
a state of public sentiment altogether encour-
aging.
The late hebdomadal had no reason to live.
1t was dull beyond description. The saga
cious A. Ward once said he thought it rather
improved comic paper to print a joke now
and then. But when paper is as dreary as
this was, it is even dangerous to admit
flash of facetiousness, which lights up to
frightful distinctness the dead level of sur
rounding inanity. There was always some
thing rather startling in good joke printed
by Punchtnell0. 1t affected the reader with
q sense of incongruity, like dance music at a
funeral But to say it died of dullness is not
enough The cause of its hopeless stupidity
remains to be indicated.
The publishers say, in their circular an
nounoing the discontinuance of the journal:
t"To every leading humorist in the country an
engagement was rendered upon their (sic)
own terms, but with one excep-
ton we failed to secure them for reasons,
no doubt, satisfactory to themselves. Salts
factory, we add, to everybody. PUnchSnello
was cursed from the beginning with the ill
SAVIOR of Tammany. 1t fought under the
pirate flag of that club of vulgar thieves
thus making its only friends among those
who have no capacity to appreciate any litera-
ture whatever The wit and talent of the
country are now, as always, mainly enlisted
on the side of decency and justice. How
could self-respecting journalists collaborate
in paper owned by men whose cynical dis
honesty has made our city a byword and
reproach to democratic government? The
better classes would not read or write for
Pur,cltinelgo, and the class it catered for pre-
ferred the Police Gazette 1t found, to use
it's own language again, ''but two ways open:
First, to lower the tone of the paper and
especially the character of its illustrations;
second, to discontinue it," They have
chosen wisely
We hope this lesson will carry with it the
needed warning The men who have carried
this Inflated experiment into the path of de-
struction are to great extent the same who
did to death, few years ago, the most pro-
missing humorous paper we ever had. When
the war broke out, Vanity Fair had a most
precious opportunity for glory and long life
But it was twisted out of its proper course
into an organ of doubt and reaction; it maun-
dered about Mcclellan and abused the 1ri-
6une-and horror of great dullness fell upon
t, and it died. No humorous paper can ever
live in this country which does not seek it's
audience among reading people, and its con-
tributors among the wholesome and honest
men of thought and progress The managers
of the Democratic party in New York succeed
Indifferent well in stealing railroads. buying
Judges and dancers, and stuffing ballot-boxes.
Let them be satisfied with that and not at.
tempt the impossible task of suborning wit,
and breaking with burglary into the domain
of letters