Excerpt
"HALF a year, half a year, half a year onward," has PUNCHINELLO advanced since he wafted his first number to the four quarters of the globe.
His road has not been a very easy one to travel.
Bad characters lurked behind the fences, from which they would sometimes take a sneak shot at the Showman as he passed. These fellows were awfully bad shots, though, never so much as hitting the van in which the show travels. PUNCHINELLO'S return fire always set the scamps a-scampering, and all they had for their pains was the loss of their ammunition, and the discovery that the row kicked up by them had attracted crowds of people to the spot, so that PUNCHINELLO'S show was capitally advertised by their noise.
PUNCHINELLO'S First Volume, then, is a substantial fact. It is an entirely new, original, and complete article, which no family should be without.
Read what the New York Moon that Shines for All says about it:
"Put a head on yourself by reading PUNCHINELLO, Vol. 1. It is by far the best tonic bitters in the market. It cured the editor of this paper of a very malignant attack, (made by himself on PUNCHINELLO,) after three applications."
Several gentle critics predicted an early death for PUNCHINELLO on account of the buff color selected by him for his full dress costume. Ha! ha! gentlemen, many a blow falls harmless on the wearer of a buff-jerkin. As the old poet, whose name we have forgotten, might have said, had he been in the humor—"He who will cuff it, Eke should buff it,"—a maxim to which PUNCHINELLO gives his cordial adhesion.
And now comes PUNCHINELLO to the beginning of his Second Volume, encouraged by the success of his First.
If Vol. I of PUNCHINELLO was a Chassepot, (and it did make some havoc in the ranks of the enemy,) Vol. II is intended to be a mitrailleuse. It will be so arranged as to combine total annihilation with bewitching music. For instance, by turning one of the cranks by which it is worked, PUNCHINELLO will be able to project a shower of such mortiferous missiles against all abettors of crime and vice, all quacks, political and social, all corrupt officials, all Congress, (except the Right Party,) all torpid fogies and peddlers of red tape, all humbugs of every size and shape, in fact, as will speedily reduce them to ashes. Then, by skilfully manipulating the other crank, he can produce from it strains of such mellifluous harmony that the very telegraph-poles will throng around him, as erstwhile did the trees of the forest around ORPHEUS, and tender their services for the transmission of his melting music to all the beautiful places on Earth. It is hardly necessary to say that "Hail Columbia" is the very first tune on the cylinder of PUNCHINELLO'S musical mitrailleuse.
With his mind's eye, (an apparatus expressly constructed for and fitted to his mental organization by a renowned necromancer,) PUNCHINELLO sees his Public surging towards him, and grasping with outstretched hands at the showers of bon bons with which he plentifully supplies them from an inexhaustible casket.
Among them are thousands of familiar forms, and these are mostly in the front. After these come several thousands of new forms, all pressing forward upon the heels of the others with an eagerness that augurs for PUNCHINELLO Vol II a tremendous and unparalleled success....