The Portland daily press., 1878-11-30
Yorick's Drawer

Cooking is the fashion now, and Brillat-
Savarin and Soyer the great masters. In
stead of decorating pots and pans aesthetic
New York is engaged in filling them. Will
cleaning them follow, and the scullery be-
come the next school of ait?
jenkins the fashion reporter and his
brother who delights to gossip about the hab-
its and peculiarities of those who are much
before the public are peculiarly supposed to
be products of our modern civilization. The
belief however does not seem to be
well-founded: for we are told that Julius
Caesar wore long-sleeved shirts, or tunics,
with tringes at the wrists that his successor,
Augustus, wore four shirts at time in cold
weather; that Caligula had a scarf, or chlamys
stitched with gold thread, and Alexander
Severus one of bright crimson. Cicero re-
proaches Catiline Second oration) with being
effeminate enough to wear long shirts. Car
acalla is spoken Of as wearing the causia, a
hat with broad brim something after the
Buffalo Bill style. The newspapers tell many
trivial things about our public men, but
they have never yet undertaken a de-
scription OF General Grants or Lord Lorne's
shirts. That garment is left to grave and an
cent gossips like Suetonius, General Scott's
trowsers did however figure conspicuously in
one Presidential campaign.
Obituaries are always instructive reading,
but oftentimes humiliating for they force us
to believe, if we believe them, that gross in
Justice has been done to the dead unless
men, like cutie fish, are best when dead, and
chiefly good as furnishing food for canaries
and writer's of threnodies. Perhaps the shad-
ow of death has the same effect that shadows
falling on mountains have-it exaggerates
the height and we do not see clearly. Some
times too the thought will intrude itself that
the lamentations in print serve the same pur-
pose as the hair on the head of Spitz dog
to conceal the eyes; we cannot see there are
no tears in them. But these are better than
the unregretted cases of death where the
door not only wears grapefruit does all the
moaning, as in the nursery ballad of Hittery
Tlttery.
"A correspondent, writing of the "curious
hatred' of the Germans entertained by
Heine (there is nothing curious about it
when we consider how the Jews were treated
in Germany and how France came to their
relief, gives one or two instances of the
whimsical way in which it found expression,
thus: "The young girls say, The gentle
man must lie very rich, for he is very ugly
In like manner the public says, the man
must be quite. learned, fer he is excessively
dull.' This, in many instances, accounts for
the success of Germans in Paris" Again:
German y alone produces those colossal fools
whose caps reach unto the heavens, and de-
light the stars with tie ringing Of their
BELLS"
The correspondent might have added
Heine's bitter words on Prussia, written in
1882, and echoed by all Frenchmen forty
years later: 81 distrust Prussia, the tall,
canting, gathered hero, with the big belly,
and loud mouth, and corporaps staff which,
before using it, he dips into holy water. 1
am displeased with this hodge-podge of
weissbier, falsehood and sand. Stiff, hypo-
critical canting Prussia-this Tartuffe among
natioIsm
To Heine belongs the credit of originat-
ing favorte st. Louis jest. For Gottingen
he had strong dislike and wrote: 81 have
especial fault to find that the conception has
not been sufficiently refuted that the ladies
of Gottingen have large feet. Yes, have
busted myself from years end to years end
with the earnest confutation of this opinion;
and have to this end attended lectures on
comparative anatomy, made extracts from
the rarest works in the library, studied, for
hours at a time, the feet of the ladies who
pass over the Weender Strasse; and in the
profound treatise which shall contain the
results of these studies speak III of feet
generally; (2) OF the feet of the ancients; (3)
of the feet of elephants; (4) of the feet of the
women of Gottingen; ~ collect all the re-
marks have heard about these feet in the
music gardens; (6) regard these feet in re-
lation to their proper bodies; (O if can get
paper of sufficient size, will add thereto
some copper plate engravings, wit h portraits,
life-size, of the women's feet of Go!tingen."
For Gottingen please read Chicago.
We are all familiar with the sight of
small boys who hang about the entrances Of
places of amusement and greet those who
come out with "Pease gimme check" No
one can be found who has given them checks.
Do they ever get the coveted pieces OF paste
board, or are they led to their patient waiting
by some tradition handed down through gen.
erations that once upon time man who
stepped out to see friend gave his check to
boy he met on the way?
1t was Charles Kingsley who said: I'VE
cannot safely combat the errors OF any man
or system without first giving them full credit
for whatever excelences they may RETAIN"
Our writer's and speakers on politics, the men
who edit newspapers or address public as
semblages, might profit by this hint-in dis
| cussing the theories of the Greenbackers, for
| example.
Milwaukee is making great ado over
the discovery that her brewers use rice IN the
making of their beer. The excitement is
fearful aud at one time mob law was talked
Of The Mil 6aukee people do not know
that their brewers are becoming cultured and
returning TO classical models. Virgil has an
account of beer made from rice and
other grains. The Milwaukee beer however
more closely resembles the Egyptian drink