OUR Saturday dispatches announce that an infernal machine had just been received at the office of Chief Justice Field, and later on, Justice Field, who was in Wyoming Saturday, said to a reporter that the machine was one that was sent to him in 1866, and that last week he sent it down to a gun factory to have the powder taken out, as he wished to stuff it and preserve it among the archives.
With the aid of the telegraph and the facilities of the Associated Press, it does seem as though we were living in an age of almost miraculous possibilities. Here is an instance where an infernal machine is sent to a prominent man, and in less than sixteen years the news is flashed to the four quarters of the globe like lightning. How long will it be before the whole bloody history of the war of the rebellion will be sent to every hamlet in the land? How long before the safe arrival of the ark, and the losses occasioned by the deluge, will be given to us in dollars and cents?
People don't fully realize the advantages we possess in this glorious nineteenth century. They take all these things as a matter of course, and forget how the palpitating brain palps for them, and how the quivering nerve quivs on and on through the silent night in order that humanity may keep informed in relation to ancient history.
A BAKEFOOTED GODDESS.
THERE'S one little national matter that has been neglected about long enough, it seems to us. If the goddess of liberty is allowed to go barefoot for another century, her delicate toes will spread out over this nation like the shadow of a great woe.
YANKED TO ETERNITY.
ONCE, when a section-crew came down the mountain on the South Park road, from Alpine Tunnel to Buena Vista, a very singular thing occurred, which has never been given to the public. Every one who knows anything at all, knows that riding down that mountain on a push-car, descending at the rate of over 200 feet to the mile, means utter destruction, unless the brake is on. This brake is nothing more nor less then a piece of scantling, which is applied between one of the wheels and the car-bed, in such a way as to produce great friction.
The section-crew referred to, got on at Hancock with their bronzed and glowing hides as full of arsenic and rain-water as they could possibly hold. Being recklessly drunk, they enjoyed the accumulated velocity of the car wonderfully, until the section boss lost the break off the car, and then there was a slight feeling of anxiety. The car at last acquired a velocity like that of a young and frolicsome bob-tailed comet turned loose in space. The boys began to get nervous at last, and asked each other what should be done.