National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1881-02-19
JESSIE,S JINGLE
About Newspapers, Poets, Editors, Bad
Gas, and Things.

| To The Editor Of The Republican:
l believe it was Oliver Wendell Holmes
| who said he did not dare to be as funny as he
could on accountof serious consequences to his
! friends, and by this same token would advise
| the proprietors of THE REPUBLICAN to pull the
funny man off for awhile who reels off poetry so
glibly and then credits other people with it. His
generosity is unprecedented. There are always
plenty of people to claim what others write, but
| for one to make heroic efforts day after day and
ascribe them to others / call generosity which
amounts to the sublime. Then there is the man
who writes the receipts for cooking; he is evil
IDENTIFY inspired and should be secured at once by
some enterprising boarding house. Just think OF a
| man who could make soup out of bucket of water
| and one bean. and who would pour in another
bucket of water when the bean began to worry !"
He would be an independent fortune even to
| fourth-claSs hashery in three months. 1t IS too
bad for him to waste such transeendent genius
upon mere newspaper writing. Then there is the
editor who does up the scenes and rows in Con-
gress
IN A STYLE so sIAsHING,
so tremendous, and so vivid that one almost sees
congressional blood and brains lying round by the
bushel if bushel of the latter is not an unwar-
rantable quantity to presume upon in the present
Iouse. Ofcourse one is always disappointed, or,
should say relieved, coming to the close of the
artlce 10 Hnu Lnere mas Deen no neeuIeSS WHSLE VI
brains in body so sadly in need of them; but
still have felt my back hair (which is another
| girls) and my Thompson wave making desperate
efforts to rise reading these thrilling deserip-
tions of congressional warfare. That THE REPUB-
LICAN is an ably edited and thoroughly live paper
is now conceded by all. No better evidence is
needed of its being live newspaper than that
regular old dyed-in- the-wool Democrats take it,
and when this class takes Republican paper COM
ment as to its merits is unnecessary. For the
first time in its existence The REPUBLICAN has
blood, brains, and capital combined. At times be-
fore during its life it has had one possibly two,
of these ingredients but to make thoroughly live
and successful paper the three must be united. /
| Sympathized profoundly the other day-to the ex-
tent of three cents-with small boy who begged
| me to buy Post, because he said he was
"sTUCK on EN-
that nobody would buy anything but 'PUBLICANs
any more" 1 find that the Capital is considered
very bad and the Herald very good, because when
| Congressman at our boarding house was asked
at Sunday breakfast why he took the Capital, he
said: "JuSt to see how mean newspaper can be ;;
but that he took the Herald as antidote to it"
I myself always read the Capital with prayerbook
in one hand and a bottle of holy water in the
other When the editorials on the inside are par
ticulariy bitter and scathing, when D. P. goes in
with high hand and an outstretched arm and
smites society 'hip and thigh" and grinds pet
theories and institutions to powder and scatters
| them to the four Winds 1 always know that his
kidneys are unusually bad, and wish he had
patent insides.''
AS FOR BUELL.,
the brilliant and bad," never read his pungent
editorials without sigh of regret that his mother
was not a woman of executive ability, with good,
strong wrists and saving knowledge ofthe efficacy
of slippers vigorously applied in the training of
boys. His late attack of gas is bad but not halfso
bad as the gas itself, as l am at this moment re-
minded by Pickering and uncertain light which
worries the darkness little without overcoming
it. Being aroused from pleasant dreams the other
morning by one of the street noises so common to
early morning here, fell into line of thought
which am sure will be entirely to the reader.
1t was as to the advantages which we will possess
when we are dead over those which we enjoy-or
suffer-as live Washingtonians. The first is that
we will not be awakened at unseemly hours by an
organ grinder playing "Grand- fathers Clock" or
"Sweet ye-and-Bye;" neither by
THE soAP-FAT MAN,
who comes round just at peep of day. He who says
the soap fat man is crushed Is preyaricatOr and
horse thief for the S. f. m still lives and makes
life bowling wilderness in our back alley. Nei-
ther shall we be compelled to separate the ubiqui-
tous and all -pervading Washington roach from our
ulnDrOSld dllu uecLdr, Us we are HOW OulpeLeu 10
do from our daily hash. Then We have a reaSona-
BILE hope that on the other side of the divide" a
fly can tell itself from huckleberry. Further
more, we shall have no gas bills to pay in the
LAND that is fairer than day" for gas which we
do not receive; nor any Congress which appropri-
ates millions for unheard-of creeks in unheard of
places and nothing for the great river upon which
the Capital is situated and which alternates be-
tween walking rough shod" over the Capital City
and breeding malaria and disease for want of q
mile or two of channel JESSIE.