The Rev. Dr. John Hall once suggested that an artist might paint “Enchantment” as “a bright young girl, on the deck of an ocean steamer at the wharf, chattering to the friends around her, grandly directing her bouquets to be sent to her room, full of the joys of the voyage and her first trip to Europe.” He adds that a companion picture might be called “Disenchanted,” representing the same girl, “like Jonah, gone down to the sides of the ship, not like him, asleep, but with great inward trouble, like that in the venerable sea story, ‘The first hour I feared I would die; the second hour I feared I would not.’ The faded bouquets, disordered garments, and a very crowded foreground would complete the scene.”
Juxtaposition
Dr. Henry Gibbons describes a kiss as “the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction.” Upon this, a newspaper editor remarked, “A kiss may be one of those things, but it doesn’t taste like it. We once heard a young man describe a kiss as ‘bully,’ and he had quite as much experience in the osculatory business as Dr. Gibbons, but he didn’t have so much education.”
Niagara
An American tourist was visiting Naples and saw Vesuvius during an eruption. “Have you anything like that in the New World?” was the question of an Italian spectator. “No,” replied Jonathan; “but I guess we have a mill-dam that would put it out in five minutes.”
Compliant Courts
Edwin Booth, as Richelieu, once said, in a Chicago theatre,—
“France, my mistress, France, my wedded wife,
Who shall proclaim divorce ’twixt me and thee?”
And, after a solemn pause, somebody in the gallery said, “Most any Chicago Judge.”