Pearls of Price.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

Pearls of Price.

Mr Ruskin* has in a recent letter described railroads as " the loathsomesb form of devilry now extant; animated and deliberate earthquakes, destructive of all wise social habits' or possible natuial beauty, carriages of damned .souls on the lidges of their own graves.'' Here aie a few more elegant extracte taken by anticipation from his own Particular Common Place Rook:-— Fi\e o'Clock Tea: " A festering consenus of male and female foul-mouthed fiends met together to jabber their hell gibberish one toltnother with a white-livered disregard of their own inevitable damnation." A Penny Steamboat Company: "A shrieking, mud-crushing and spluttering concern, designed by its bedevilments to churn up the lilthy ink of a metropolitan Taitarus, and cany its infernal human cargo into utter outer darkness economically." The British Muflin: " Cursed and riddled paste of Cerberus fitted to choke the deliberate and gluttonous voluptuai i^s who feed on it." The Three per Cents: "A diabolical device of financial jugglery involved in which Government and investors clutching at each other's throats, go clown to the bottomless pit howling together." Army and Navy Co-operative Stores: " A Mammoth Tophet, wheie blasted and blighted shareholders haggle in hysterics over the cheapening of their own coffins, in sight of the infernal fires that await them when the bargain is over." Saturday Pops: "The yelling of midnight cats, and the baying of barking hell-hounds, mingled for the satisfaction of the godless aud fatuous fools who can be cozened into listening to them." Riding in an Omnibus: " An altogether damnable method of locomotion, destructive of all wise, social habit, or possible natural beauty, in the pauperised moods of those who, as a fitting preparation for a ride in their own hearses, have recourse to it." The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race : cc The loathsomest form of diabolical athleticism extant, wherein sixteen devils, Jike animated and deliberate volcanoes, disport themselves in the presence of a roaring and infernal mob, who would not care a single brazen farthing were they to fcce them slip off their sliding seats into the ridges of their own graves." A Recent Letter on Railroads : " The silliest bit of idiocy that has lately found its way into print ; a rhodomontade of violence and balderdash stuffed with phrases of 'devilry' and 'damnation' that ought quickly to relegate it to its own particular grave—and the sooner the better."— « Puuch."