BLIC, 1870.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO:--If America has any "bowels of compassion" it is fit
that they should yearn now. This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that
ebb where national "extreme unction" must be administered speedily, else
the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without
the benefit of clergy. I feel as if I would like to get the whole nation
on a toasting-fork before a slow fire, and roast it into a realizing
sense of what the devil is doing for it. To see BISMARCK feeding on
shrimps with anchovy sauce, and drinking champagne, while TROCHU and
JULES FAVRE fight domestic treason within the walls, and the Prussians
without, upon stomachs that feebly digest Parisian "hard tack" and
gritty _vin ordinaire,_ is enough to make the spirit of liberty lay over
the mourner's bench and perpetrate a perfect Niagara of tears. When
FLOURENS bagged the whole government at the Hotel de Ville the other
day, my feelings got the better of me, and I went for him.

"Idiotic Frenchmen!" I exclaimed, in a voice that must have sounded like
an echo working its way through a thick upper crust of doughy
apple-dumplings; "Idiotic Frenchmen, do you know what you are doing?
Have you the feelings of a man, or of a mad dog? Which is it that it is,
that you should be worrying the life out of this croupy infant of
liberty, as is hardly able to waggle its head, barring all hope that it
will ever get upon its pins and take its 'constitutional' like other
mortals in distress? Where is the ghost of MIRABEAU, that it does not
come upon you all of a sudden, to confiscate the very marrow in your
bones and set up a candle factory in spite of the tax on tallow? Where
is LAFAYETTE? Where is REGINALD DE LYLE? Where is ROBESPIERRE and GEORGE
FRANCIS TRAIN? Where is the DUKE DE MONTEBELLO, or the Count of MONTE
CHRISTO, that they don't hang round you like aggravated wasps, and sting
you into that appreciation of the fitness of things whereby some razor
may be slipped across your wizzen, and Paris follow your corse to the
_Pere la Chaise_ with joy and gladness? Why, in the name of all the
torments--"

I stopped for want of breath, in time to see that the crowd paid no
attention, and that, to say the least of it, I had been making an ass of
myself. Not that there was no wisdom in my words, but these Frenchmen
are the most "dog gorned" insensible people to right up and down, plain,
everyday gospel truth that Providence ever permitted to