1.59. NAMES.
Any name which is suggestive of a joke, however poor the joke may be, is often a nuisance. We were once "confined" in a printing- office with a man named Snow. Everybody who came in was bound to have a joke about Snow. If it was Summer the mad wags would say we ought to be cold, for we had Snow there all the time—which was a fact, though we sometimes wished Snow was where he would speedily melt. Not that we didn't like Snow. Far from it. His name was what disgusted us. It was also once our misfortune to daily mingle with a man named Berry, we can't tell how many million times we heard him called Elderberry, Raspberry, Blueberry, Huckleberry, Gooseberry, &c. The thing nearly made him deranged. He joined the filibusters and has made energetic efforts to get shot but had not succeeded at last accounts, although we hear he has been "slewd" numerously. There is a good deal in a name, our usually correct friend W. Shakespeare to the contrary notwithstanding.
Our own name is, unfortunately, one on which jokes, such as they are, can be made, we cannot present a tabular statement of the times we have done things brown (in the opinion of partial friends) or have been asked if we were related to the eccentric old slave and horse "liberator," whose recent Virginia Reel has attracted so much of the public attention. Could we do so the array of figures would be appalling. And sometimes we think we will accept the first good offer of marriage that is made to us, for the purpose of changing our unhappy name, setting other interesting considerations entirely aside.