The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1873-01-30

feat of more errors than the roar of battle
I Woe to the cheat, the Ounce, the wind bag
when great laugher is let loose on the plan
ct! Bad customs, which all theoretically
condemn, though society may still condone
or exact them acts of wickedness whose
very daring secures them exceptional impu-
nifty; all those polite delinauences that shell
ter themselves under the garb of deeency.
and that flourish most rankly in the most
advanced periods of civilization, Against
these it is that the hum orist hurs his shafts.
and society cries "All Hail !'' to it's deliver
err.
What moralist in old Rome did so much to
repress the vulgar innocence of newly acs
CURED Wealth,-the airs and pomposity of
the parVenue,-as Horace when he babe him
take note, as he strutted along the street,
Ut ora vertat hue ct hue GU ntium
| Liberrima indignatio?
Did any Aristippus, with his bran-bread
and saw-dust theories OF diet, do so much to
lessen the luxury of his age as the sarcasm
that turks beneath the poets bombastic ac-
count of banquet, or the epic grandilo-
quenee of the monster turbot Would
Luther's battle-axe, mighty though it was,
have struck so fatal blows at Popery had it
not been preceded by the keen arrows of
Erasmus? Or would not the monks and
priests have had a far more desperate resist
ance had not the EpiStoIe ObscurOrUns Vjro-
rum, keenly satirizing their vice. before they
could be denounced, been widely circulated,
and prepared the way for the Reformers
Might not the JesuitS have defed the club of
PascaPs logic, had he not also sho wered UP
on them the ieathered shafts of his rdicule
Who can doubt that the brilliant and spark
ling satirist of the Dunciad, the little wasp
of Twickenham," vengeful and venomous
| though he was, did more to provoke feel
ing of revolt and contempt against the wees
Of his time than all the dictates of morality
or the denunciations of the pulpit? How
many match making mothers have paused
as they have followed the miserable episodes
of Hogarth'S Marriage a la Modew And
how many would-be-fne gentleman in our
own day, tickled with vanity and inclined to
vulgar ostentation, has been impelled, by
the keen irony of Thackeray, to avoid the
sorrows OF gentility,' and, by living inside
of his income, to keep out of the 4" Book of
Snobs p
The yeoman service which that prince of
wits, Sydney Smith, did to Catholic Enamel
patton, by his Lett rs to Peter PIymley. D
is familiar to all. BY what sylloglsms In
Barbara or Celarent could he have so effectu.
ally annihilated the influence of Percival and
Canning, as by declaring of the latter that
: when he is jocular, he is strong when he
IS serious, he is like Sampson in wig" and
by holding up the former to ridicule as the
protector of "the great plan of conquest and
constipation, ''-as the statesman "in whose
mind was first engendered the idea of de.
stroying the pride and plasters of France, D
and "who would bring the French to rea.
son by keeping them without rhubarb, and
exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle Of a
nation deprived of neutral salts ~
1t was but yesterday at.duellinglwas prevalen,
throughout the civilized world. In vain the puI
pit Numbered, and the press denounced the prac-
tice; Christian mer still continued to expose thei
lives for the merest trlHe, to the accident OF q
lucky shot. 1t was only when the ''code of honor,
was made the but Of ridicul., and so became Con
temptbe in'the eyes Of those who wsre.its slave.
and whS were more sensitive to sarcasm than t.
logic, thatuhey ceased to make their bodies tar
gets for the bullets of anyloully or braggart VIII,
chose to consider himself aggreved or whom ,
craven fear Of public opinion impelled to send ,
challenge. Butiwe need not cross the Atlantic fol-
illustrations. Who has forgotten the powerful
aid rendered to the North In our late civil war b.
petroleum V. Nasby,' of the ''Confederats Cross
Roads" Though he'assumed 'thescap sand ibells
Rabelais was not more terribly in earnest. Az on
of his admirers has well said, whenever his lou,
and often beisterous laugh wassheard, there wa
sure to be q funeral procession In some dark CO,
, ner OF the land Like the grave-digger in Ham
4 let," he made fun, but he kept digging graves
the while His rib-tickling irony sheered the.p,
triots2asiwell as ccnfounded the Copperheads an
the Rebels. President lLncoln found relief fro,
the wearing anxeties Of office in rea,
ing the letters this Toledo blade. Ora,
t declares that he couldn't get through a sunds
without one - anc secretary Boutwell, public
ttributed the overthrow of the Rebels to thre
great forces, the Army and Navy, 1.-The Republics
Party, and the Letters of Petroleum " Nasty.
: What was the secret OF DR.. Motifs power oy
. bad meD,-what, but his contagious, lresistless b
NOR BE would dispense any mob sooner ths
q the Mayor with his drilled Tpolice. He woul