The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1877-05-17
BOSTON HUMOR.


The inimitable Tom Corwin could in
his day skip jokes which would convulse
q Western man, but in Boston audience
not provoke a smile. He used to get very
much provoked about it. The trouble
was that he didn't have the precise straw
with which to tickle the ribs of that pc
cuiar people. 1t has now come in the
person of the Rev. Joseph Cook, one OF
whose sermons appeared in the Tribune
yesterday. Imagine vast audience OF
smooth shaved burghers, with bald heads
spectacles on their noses and hereditary
gravity on their faces, sitting before a
preacher, and going off in great applause
over such a paragraph as this:
"We stand before structureless bio.
plasms and see it wearing organisms,and
we are to adhere in spite of all theories,
to the Ariadne clew that every cause is
to be interpreted by its effects, and that
all changes must have adequate causes" "
Now, this is what the Boston men call
"fun." Such a statement brings down
the house. Again the sacred orator puts
il thus: Throughout the whole series
of living beings we find agagmogenesis,
or non-sexual generation" He applied
this fact of science to the theological doc
trine Of the miraculous conception, and
the audience was stirred with a profound
sensation"
A quotation from Huxley stating that
"a mass of living proioplasms is simply a
molecular machine Of great complexity,"
produced Sensation" and the added
observation that if Hermann Lotze were
living, he would tear the Huxleyan state
ment to atoms, brought out great ap-
plause. "What right haye / TO know
anything about physiological and micro
sCopical research" cries the Rev. Cook,
and he is answered by laughter. II re.
gard Hermann Lotze as the living, and
Herbert Spencer the setting star in phi
losophy," remarks Cook, and great ap-
plause succeeds. "EEdSto sOmdkiO pGnteSP
shouts Cook, and the Boston men shut up
like jack knives, convulsed with emotion.
"Generation by fission and gemmation
are not confined to the simplest forms of
life" he insinuates, and each son of a
Puritan tucks his thumb into the waist
OF his neighbor, and all go off together.
"The protoplasm of Sacode theory that
albuminous material is the active sub
stratum of all vital phenomena" serene
ly remarks Brother Cook, lis sound to
the core. Are you shy about aCCepting2"
he archly asks, and forthwith several of
the solid men of Boston have to be car
ried out in apoplectic shivers where fresh
air will revive them.
The fact is, that these people have al
ways been like other men, mirthful and
enthusiastic, but nobody has known how
to rouse them. 1t takes protoplasm, bio
plasm, and that sort of thing to awaken
them. Let Western ministers of orator.
ical ambition, who contemplate visiting
the modern Athens, make note Of this,
Give the Hubbites no ordinary humor,
approach them with no common argu-
ments, but put it to them thus: "True
merphological units, without any cell
wall or primplasmic utricle, but endow-
ed with biplasmic entity and protoplas-
mic longevity, filled with the glowing
possibilities of Arrangements, clad in nu-
Cleated shell, aggregated by the eternal
affinity Of morphological units, sanctifed
by tission and gemmation, glorifed by
molecular attraction, and born in Bos-
ton, shall inherit life everlasting" Such
a sentence as that will clean the buttons
off a Beacon street burgher's vest quick
er than lightning. 1t will knock his in
fidelity into flinders in minute, and
cause him to below for salvation as the
OK loweth for his masters crib Chicago
Tribune,