A photographer once, describing his mode of taking pictures, said, “Then we replace the slide in the shield, draw this out of the camera, and carry it back into the shadowy realm where Cocytus flows in black nitrate of silver, and Acheron stagnates in the pool of hyposulphite, and invisible ghosts, trooping down from the world of day, cross a Styx of dissolved sulphate of iron, and appear before Rhadamanthus of that lurid Hades.”
A certain doctor once, conversing about the romantic scenery of Westmoreland, said, “In that magnificent county you see an apotheosis of nature, and an apodeikneusis of the theopratic Omnipotence.”
Mr. Paxton Hood tells of a minister who described a tear “as that small particle of aqueous fluid, trickling from the visual organ over the lineaments of the countenance, betokening grief.” Of another, who spoke of “the deep intuitive glance of the soul, penetrating beyond the surface of the superficial phenomenal to the remote recesses of absolute entity or being; thus adumbrating its immortality on its precognitive perceptions.” Of another, an eminent man, head of a college for ministers, when repeating a well-known passage of Scripture, “‘He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his’”—here he paused, and at last said, “Well, out of his ventriculum shall flow ‘living water!’”
One altiloquent rendered “Give us this day our daily bread” as follows: “Confer upon us during this mundane sphere’s axillary revolution our diurnal subsistence.” And another, instead of saying, “Jesus wept,” said, “And Jesus the Saviour of the world burst into a flood of tears;” upon hearing which Dr. Johnson is said to have exclaimed in disgust, “Puppy, puppy!”
A minister once, speaking in the presence of a few friends met for the purpose of promoting the interests of a certain Young Men’s Christian Association, relieved himself in the following: “When I think of this organization, with its complex powers, it reminds me of some stupendous mechanism which shall spin electric bands of stupendous thought and feeling, illuminating the vista of eternity with corruscations of brilliancy, and blending the mystic brow of eternal ages with a tiara of never-dying beauty, whilst for those who have trampled on the truth of Christ, it shall spin from its terrible form toils of eternal funeral bands, darker and darker, till sunk to the lowest abyss of destiny.”
A physician, while in his patient’s room, in speaking to the surgeon about him, said, “You must phlebotomize the old gentleman to-morrow.”
The old gentleman, who overheard, immediately exclaimed in a fright, “I will never suffer that.”
“Sir, don’t be alarmed,” replied the surgeon; “he is only giving orders for me to bleed you.”
“O, as for the bleeding,” answered the patient, “it matters little; but as for the other, I will sooner die than endure it.”
I have read of an Irishman who, speaking of a house which he had to let, said, “It is free from opacity, tenebrosity, fumidity, and injucundity, or translucency. In short, its diaphaneity, even in the crepuscle, makes it a pharos, and without laud, for its agglutination and amenity, it is a most delectable commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the neighbours have none of the truculence and immanity, the torvity, the spinosity, the putidness, the pugnacity, nor the fugacity observable in other parts of the town. Their propinquity and consanguinity occasions jucundity and pudicity, from which and the redolence of the place they are remarkable for longevity.”