Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1877-12-31
: MIDGETS.


There are two persons now IN New
York who are attracting good deal of
attention. The name of one is Miss
Minnie Obon1, and of the other, General
Mite. They are exhibited in a hall on
Fifth avenue, and are visited daily by
crowds of people. Miss Obom is thir-
teen years old, and weighs only ten
pounds. General Mite is also thirteen
years old, and weighs only twenty-five
inches, he says; or upon being corrected,
only nine pounds. These young persons
are justly called, in the advertisement,
the wonderful Midgets." The price of
admission is twenty-five cents. The ex-
hibition is more amusing, and much less
unpleasant than that of any dwarfs
have ever seen. The general is rldicu.
lously and unbelievably small. When
you look at him you are ready to believe
all the delightful old fairy-stories about
dwarft being sent around in pot-pies.
Lilliput ceases to by myth.
1t must be very curious thing to be
a midget; and yet great many of us
are midgets without knowing it. That
is to say, we derive our celebrity en-
tirely from accidental circumstances. l
heard miget make speech the other
evening; l did not know he was mid
get, however, till the speech was over
I went into hall where great public
question was being discussed, and
heard dapper little man making the
most proper and commonplace and silly
address on this great public question
that ever listened to in my life. When
he sat down some one whispered in my
ear; THAT gentleman's name is Julius
Caesar; he is a grandson of the true,
original, and only Julius Caesar, of
whom you have heard" Julius Caesar
is used here, of course. merely in place
of another familiar name, which imme-
diately called to mind one of the most
towering regulations in American his
tory.
Princes and princesses of the blood,
heirs and heiresses, and men who wear
their hair long, are all midgets. There
are midgets also in literature and art.
Some of our celebrated" painters and
sculptors would never have been heard
of if it had not been for their fathers,
or their grandmothers, or their wives.
Celebrity in art is sometimes reached by
no more artistic qualities than endur-
ance, push, enterprise, knack. In liter
ature the faculty of memory goes great
way toward the acquisition of a reputa-
tion. When an author has a great
memory, and can by this means make
his writings interesting and widely cur
rent we sometimes get to calling him a
great writer. Mr.. Bryant, IN his recent
speech at the Goethe Club reception,
tried to prove that he himself was
midget,-in other words poet celebrat-
ed for the accident of longevity instead
of the excellence of his poetry. 1t was
of course nothing but good joke. His
audience was intensely amused; they
were very well aware that the sly old
poet knew better.
At the exhibition in Midget Hall the
fathers of the two little people are pres
ent., They take excellent care Of their
children, and do not permit their tiny
brains and bodies to be overworked.
They are also very proud of their off
spring. and there is evidently a rivalry
between the father Of Minnie Obom,
and the father of General Mite. It is
always THE way in the families of mid
/ gets.--"TAe Old Cabinet !" Scgib'ser
for January.