I Sat Up During The Evening, Reading By The Light Of The Fire The
Scraps Of Newspapers In Which Some
Party had wrapped their
luncheon; the prices current in New York and Boston, the
advertisements, and the singular editorials which
Some had seen
fit to publish, not foreseeing under what critical circumstances
they would be read. I read these things at a vast advantage
there, and it seemed to me that the advertisements, or what is
called the business part of a paper, were greatly the best, the
most useful, natural, and respectable. Almost all the opinions
and sentiments expressed were so little considered, so shallow
and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the paper must be
weaker in that part and tear the more easily. The advertisements
and the prices current were more closely allied to nature, and
were respectable in some measure as tide and meteorological
tables are; but the reading-matter, which I remembered was most
prized down below, unless it was some humble record of science,
or an extract from some old classic, struck me as strangely
whimsical, and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme,
such as youths write and after burn. The opinions were of that
kind that are doomed to wear a different aspect to-morrow, like
last year's fashions; as if mankind were very green indeed, and
would be ashamed of themselves in a few years, when they had
outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover, a singular
disposition to wit and humor, but rarely the slightest real
success; and the apparent success was a terrible satire on the
attempt; the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best
jokes.
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