FIZZ AND FUSS.
Once more America "takes the cake" for grotesque absurdity. Mr. James Payn tells us the teetotal folks there are shocked at the idea of christening ships with champagne! Well, perhaps it is a waste of good liquor. "The rosy" in any form must surely be as completely "thrown away" on the hull of an ironclad as titillation on a turtle's back or (as Sidney Smith put it) the dome of St. Paul's. The total abstainer, it seems, "on the occasion of baptising a new liner," sent the President (who was to perform the ceremony) "a bottle of water as a substitute." The Irishman supplied with whiskey to clean windows with drank the liquor and breathed on the glass! Perhaps the President may see his way to taking a leaf out of Paddy's book. Let him drink the fizz (if it is good enough) and "blow the water-drinkers!" Foolish fanatics! They surely forget that for every bottle of "the boy" bestowed on an insensible, unappreciative ship, there is one less left to "gladden the heart of man."