The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-05-17

The Cunard packets
Another stanza brags on Colts revolver and
the Mccormick reaping machine, which, on its
first exhibition, had been ridiculed by the Times
as "a sort of cross between an Astley's chariot
and flying machine" The last stanza alludes
to fact that is now hardly remembered by any
body but those professionally interested, and a
few newspaper men and grubbers among old
odds and ends. A locksmith by the name of
Hobbs, attended the worlds fair with patent
lock, which he defed any Englshman to pick,
while protesting his ability to pick any lock that
any nation could show him. He proved his
boast to the letter No man picked his lock,
while he picked the celebrated Chubb and Bra
NAH locks very easily. Punch thus concludes its
Yankee Doodle panegyric
You also fancied in your PRIDE
Which truly is tarnation, IS
Them British locks of yours dehed
The roguos of all creation.
But Chubbs and Bramah's Hobbs has picked.
And you must now be viewed all
AS having been completely licked
BY glorious Yankee Doodle.
Here are five points of American superiority
very frankly admitted and commended. Ship
building. railroad enterprise, firearms. agricult
ural machinery and lock work. The year 1851
probably did more to make our national progress
and power generally known than all the years
that preceded it.
REY. MYRoN REEDS sermon of May
80 says, ''Scratch Russian and you
find Tartar was a saying of Wendell
Phillips. Very likely Phillips said it
pretty often, and others may have said it Oft
ener, but the big Napoleon was the man who
said it first, as he was the first to utter another
maxim of universal acceptance and adoption,
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a
STEP 1t occurred first, and occurs then several
times in his strange, egotistical. half-historical
speech TO the Able De Pradt, at Warsaw, on his
return from the disastrous Russian expedition.
1t happens more frequently than one would
think without reckoning up his expressions
closely, that well-informed men make very big,
ana sometimes very funny blunders in the as
criptions of authorship of noted thoughts or
phrases. "Rob Roy" of the Sentinel. not long
speech in Cato" ''My voice is still
for war" Ex-senator Mcdonald twenty
years ago ascribed to a "Roman senator
the well known sentiment: '"They make a desc
lation and call it peace 1t was sentence in
the speech put by Tacitus into the mouth of Gal
gacus, the chief of the Caedonians, at the battle
of the Grampian Hills, A. D. a. which com
pleted the Roman conquest of England under
Agricola. Senator Voorhees, once made Plato
the author Of SIR Thomas More's Utopia or
Nowhere'-that is the English of the Greek
compound-it is said. John Finley, the author of
the .'Hoosier's Nest" wrote song called '.Bach-
elor's Hail." which was published all over the
country and set to music as one of Tom Moore's
songs, and it was quite as good as some of them.
Edward A. Hanncgan's striking remark that some
one would be buried so deep that the hand of
resurrection could never reach him. has boen
oftener credited to other men than tine author
| The Journal once said of McClellans policy, at
the beginning of the war, of making West Vir-
GINA rebels take the oath of allegiance, that 'he
might as well swear skunk not to stink" 1t
went over the country to the credit, or discredt,
| of the Dayton Journal The list of mistaken
Inscriptions of this kind might be made a long
| one by adding those that have become hstor-
| cal or additionally famous, but these are too
we'll known to make their repetition here of
| much interest
| A CURRENT newspaper item speaks Of Tosso,
| the old musician and music-seller of Cincinnati,
well known in this city forty years or more ago,
as the author of the air Arkansas Traveller. "
1t is mistake, we suspect Tosso used to play
the air in his college hall concerts here, and tell
Colonel Faulkner's story with it-illustrated with
the heading of the humorous paper of Little
Rock called the "Arkansaw Traveller which
contains the notes of the air in good practicable
shape, but he told the story poorly, and played
the air with too many grases Of singh toned
music to fill the ear of q backwoodsman The
dash, and cadence. and clatter of the ''break-
down" were wanting. and there is nc
! real music In the thing to make up for that de-