Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 21, September 11, 1858

Transcriber Notes
Volume I.—No. 21.SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1858.Price 2 Cents.
The great Cable celebration at the Crystal Palace was apparently a cut and dried affair, for the few speeches transmitted to us by the press were not only written, but printed in advance of delivery—a comfortable method of reporting, very satisfactory, but not quite literal, as well as undignified in the orator of the day reading off his speech, schoolboy-like from the crown of his hat. Peter had his say, and a very funny say it was, so much so that we are inclined to believe that Archbishop John, while “stuffing” at Long Branch, intentionally quizzed that venerable duck. Peter, when it came to his say, was chuck full of electricity; he sparkled and snapped like an aurora borealis; he was better charged than the cable, and his eloquence went off with a series of flashes like the detonations of a Leyden jar. He told us “his labors which required the indomitable courage, the far-seeing and electrifying mind of Cyrus W. Field to inspire and stimulate.” Cyrus then is the electrical eel of this new era, and should be carefully preserved within non-conductors from fear of shocking accidents. Then Peter got poetical, and travels in the great garden of the world within and the world without, and clothes a man there with power. This great garden could not be that of Eden, for there nobody went clothed with anything. And then Peter got surgical, and goes into midwifery, calling the cable “the umbilical cord that binds the mother continent to the child.” Then Peter grew prophetical, and tells us what electricity will do some day or the other. And then Peter got enigmatical, and didn’t know what he did say, and then he said that language failed him, and upon this giving out he sat down and looked profound at everybody and everything for the remainder of the exercises, bestowing on the audience an occasional yawn.
So the repairs to the City Hall are to be made by the jobbing system. The contract system, money-making as it is, is too liable to be exposed to the inspection and judgment of the people, but a large job that is split up into a dozen or more little ones and given out to as many individuals, pays better, and can be more secretly conducted; therefore this job which might be done reasonably low by a contractor, is to be highly jobbed out piecemeal. Verily, we live in a great age, have great city fathers, an illustrious Mayor and plenty of paint and putty.