Feline Lap Dogs

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Feb 21 22:41:39 UTC 2011


No, really--this is the header (as much as it is a header) of an
indignant short bit in a 1834 paper:

Headline:
Paper: Salem Gazette; Date: 10-28-1834; Volume: XII; Issue: 86; Page:
[2/2]; Location: Salem, Massachusetts
> Feline Lap Dogs. The N. Y. Parlor Journal, the editor of which
> periodical is supposed to be /at home/ in all that relates to
> fashionable life, says that "on a fair calculation, there about thirty
> thousand pussies in the city of New York ; five thousand of which are
> employed as mousers, and the other twenty five as '/lap dogs/' for
> young ladies." If the brute of an editor does not get his face
> "incontinently scratched" for making such a disclosure, "more's the pity."


This is followed by another short take:

> At a late military dinner in Boston, the following toast was heartily
> received :
> "/Our Borthers in Arms/.--We prefer their sisters, [in arms."]

     VS-)

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