The Portland daily press., 1877-04-02
[Chicago Tribune,J
Boston HQmOr.

The inimitable Tom Corwin could in his day
skip Jokes which would convulse Western
man into Boston audience, and not provoke
smile. He used to get very much provoked
aooue.l~ The trouble was that he didn't have
Ine precise straw with which to tickle the ribs
Oh that peculiar people. 1t has now come in
Iue person of the Rev. Joseph Cook, one of
whose sermons appeared in the Tribune yester
oay. Imagine a vast audience of smooth
shaved burghers, with bald heads, spectacles
On their noses, and hereditary gravity on their
faces, sitting before preacher and going off in
great applause over such paragraph as
this
wearing organisms; and we are to adhere, in spite
Of all theories to the Aradne eew 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 Stun"
Such statement brings down the house. AGAIN
the sacred orator put it thus: Throughout the
whole series OF living beings, we find aga.
mogenesis, or non-sexual generation" He an
piled this fact of science to the theological doc
trne OF the miraculous conception, and the au-
oience was stirred with profound sensation"
a quotation from Huxley stating that "a mass
OF living protoplasm is simply molecular ma
chine OF great completely produced 'sensa-
ton, and the added observation that if Her
mann Lotzs were living, he would tear the
Huxleyan statement to atoms, brought out
great applause" What right have L to know
anything about physiological and microscopical
lesesrch?' cries the Rev. Cook, and he is an
swered by Laughter" 81 regard Hermann
Lotze as the living, and Herbert Spencer the
setting, star in philosophy" remarks Cook,
and great applause" succeeds. "EkastO sum-
mdkoi pdntesP" shouts Cook, and the Boston
men shut up like jack-knves, convulsed with
emotion. Generation by fission and gemmation
are not confined to the simplest form of life,"
ne lnslnuates, and each son of Puritan tucks
his thumb into the waist of his neighbor and
all go off" together. "The protoplasm or Sar-
code theory that albuminous material is the
sctive substratum of all vital phenomena,
serenely remarks Brother Cook, sis sound to
Inc core Are you shy about accepting"
lie archly asks, and forthwith seventeen of the
Rolid men of Boston have to be carried out IN
apoplectic shivers where fresh air will revive
them. The fact is that these people have al
ways been like other mep, mirthful ard en-
thusiastic, but nobody has known how to
rouse them. 1t takes protoplasm, bioplasm
and all that sort of thing to waken them. Let
Western ministers of oratorical ambition, who
contemplate visiting the modern Athens, make
q note of this. Give the Hubites no ordinary
humor, approach them with no common argu-
ments, but put it to them thus: True NOR
biological units, without cell-wall or primor-
dial utricle, but endowed with bioplasmic en-
tlty and protoplasmic longevity, filled with the
glowing possibilities of agamogenesis, clad in
indicated shell, aggregated by the eternal Atm
lty OF morphological units, sanctifed by fisson
and gsmmation. gloriied by molecular attrac-
lion, and born in Boston, shall inherit life ever
lasting. Such sentence as that will clean
quicker than lightning 1t will knock his skep-
tlcism into flinders in minute, and cause him
to below for salvation as the OK loweth for its
masters crib.