THE FREE BATHS.
| PUNCHINELLO begs to congratulate the Hon. W.M. TWEED upon his inestimable boon to the public--the Free Baths. With regard to a certain class--and a very large class--of the public of New York City, it has sometimes been cynically asked, "Will it wash?" Since the establishment of Free Baths under the Department of Public Works, that question has been satisfactorily replied to in the affirmative. Hardworked mechanics at once recognized the chance for a wash, and went at it with a rush. It was Coney Island come to town, with the roughs left behind, and the extortionate bathing-dress men, and the other disagreeable features of that lovely but desecrated isle. In recognition of the decided success of the new baths, and of the vast benefit that must be derived from them by a large portion of the community, PUNCHINELLO begs to invest the Hon. W. M. TWEED with the Blue Ribbon of the O.F.B., or "Originator of the Free Baths." |
THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.
| CENTRAL PARK GARDEN is the subject of this article. It is all very well for the editor of PUNCHINELLO to require me to write about the Plays and Shows, but how would he like to do it himself, with the thermometer at 103 degrees, and the Fourth of July only just over? And then, inasmuch as I am not a white-hatted philosopher, writing of "What I know about Farming," how can I be expected to write of things which have no existence? For, with the exception of the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN, and one or two minor places of amusement, there are no plays and shows at present in this happy city. We certainly owe the managers a debt of gratitude for closing their hot and glaring theatres during this intolerable month. Of course nobody was obliged to attend them while they were open; but then, when people were told that the theatres were crowded to an uncomfortable extent, they felt an irrepressible desire to go and be uncomfortable. |
It is one of the peculiar characteristics of Man, as distinguished from the higher animals, that he will go through fire and water to get into a theatre which he is told is crammed to the point of suffocation, whereas he won't deign to enter one where he is sure to find a comfortable seat. Now the charm of the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN consists in this: that the visitor can take his vapor bath in the Seventh Avenue cars on his way to the Garden, and can enjoy the sweet consciousness of being jostled and sat upon in the search for amusement, while he is still certain of finding pure air and plenty of room at the GARDEN itself.
By the bye, it has just occurred to me that the Fourth of July is properly a show. It might be called a burlesque, but for the fact that it is unaccompanied by the luxury of legs. Indeed, after the celebration is over, there are always fewer legs in the nation than there were at its commencement. There is no canon of criticism which would expurgate legs from the theatrical burlesque, but there are cannons of Fourth of July which do their best to abolish the incautious legs of patriotic youth. I reconsider my purpose of writing of the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN, and will devote this column to the national show.
I have somewhere read--not in BANCROFT'S History, of course; no man ever did that and lived--that the Fourth of July was established in order to commemorate our deliverance from a government which taxed us with stamp-duties. How happy ought we to be when we reflect that, thanks to our noble fathers who fought and bled at Long Branch. I should say Nahant,--well, at some watering-place, I really forget precisely where,--we have no taxes, and know not what a revenue stamp is like! Thank fortune, we have no share in the national debt of Great Britain, and have no national debt of our own that is worth mention. Besides, we are going to found the little debt that we do owe, so that nobody will ever be bothered about it again.
I like this plan of funding debts; but, curiously enough, sordid capitalists and miserly landlords don't. I offered the other day to fund all my personal debts, in the shape of a long loan at three per cent, but my creditors did not take kindly to the idea. Such is the sordid meanness which is too sadly characteristic of the merely commercial mind. But to return to our subject, which is, I believe, the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN.