TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EXCLUSIVE INTELLIGENCE. INVASION OF WINTER !—THE TIMES WRONG!
" Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, the dog will have his day."
WE have positively to announce the arrival of Christmas. The fact has been made known to us by authority which has never deceived us ;* and notwithstanding the contradiction of almanacks, and the dates of other journals, we shall in number after number repeat the tidings, that this is Christmas week, till time gives proof of the unri- valled accuracy and unimpeachable authenticity of our intelligence. To the turkey and sausages of the corrected season, we exclaim, in the gammon of bacon—Esto perpetua /I, We exclaim it without the slightest fear of being whipped for bad grammar or misquotation, because it is holyday-time, and at this season birch has no power.
Others have experienced our fate, and been scoffed at for announcing facts which have yet come to pass. Thus, the boy was snubbed for calling " wolf," and yet the wolf did make his appearance at last, and prove the correctness of the neglected warning. People are apt to call positive clocks, that resolutely stop, wrong; but no chronometers are so right when their time does come. Once in twenty-four hours they may glorify themselves ; at 'other periods their intelligence is ex- clusive, and of enviable priority.
When the world confesses that the week of our publication is the third week in December,—which fact we shall repeat till it is admitted, —we shall change our name, and style ourselves THE AT-LAST, or ATLAS to a T ; a title which will bespeak the character of our news— the forwardness of its announcement, and the lateness of its truth. We shall also set up a wood-cut, in which the boy who cried " wolf " shall figure as our City porter ; and while he blows his horn, he shall carry the world on his back, like the big man of the ancients,—thus typifying how facts should be posterior, and annour.ziemeuts ante.
SECOND EDITION.
THE LARGEST TRUTH EVER PRINTED.] WE stop the press to announce that the days will in all human pro- bability shorten. Cold is confidently to be expected ; and we pledge our reputations that fires will be lighted. As MILTON says, • "The Times are out of joint, oh happy wight
That I should thus be born to set them right."
*A Dun.—Printer's Devil. t Wits jump :—" To the ratified principles of the reconciled belligerents, we exclaim in the phrase of Lord Bacon—Esto perpetue "—Atlas. t The lines are as much Milton's as the "Esto perpetua" Bacon's. Printer's Devil
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