The Weeks Without Internet/My Favorite Editorial Abridged

The Life*

So ends an internetless interlude spent splashing in two frigid oceans and an over-chlorinated swimming pool.  I return now to my neglected blog with a breezy reminiscence of the greatest editorial ever written.  (Editor's note: this may not be the greatest editorial ever written, but I love it.) 


I am forever grateful to Mayor Fernando Wood.  Near the outset of the American Civil War, Mayor Wood floated a dubious scheme to cut the Big Apple out of the Union.  Retort, oh silver-tongued editor:

To any dyspeptic sufferer, who requires a good laugh to put his blood
into more active circulation, we recommend the moderate perusal of
Mayor Wood's Message to the Common Council.  It will be found a
somewhat violent remedy, but if no more than three paragraphs be taken
at one sitting, there can be no danger of bursting a blood vessel.
Taken, however, in homeopathic doses of one paragraph at a time, the
document will prove a mild and perfectly harmless stimulant of smiles.
 It commences with what it terms a "prophetic quotation," in which
there is no prophecy,--and has for its bulk a string of "arguments,"
in which there is no logic...

The whole drift of the document, so far as it can be said to have any,
is an incitation to rebellion on the part of the citizens of New York
against the authorities of the State and of the United States, for the
purpose of declaring Manhattan Island an independent sovereignty,
subject to no control outside of her own borders, and with liberty to
import foreign goods to any extent and in any quantities, "free of
duty..."  Verily, if his Honor's description of the good time that is
coming could by any stretch of fancy be regarded as a "prophetic
quotation," we might believe that the juvenile millennium of streets
paved with gold and houses thatched with pancakes was at hand...

Secession Gone to Seed.  New York Times (1857-Current file); Jan 8, 1861; ProQuest Historical
Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003) pg. 4 

So it goes. 

*Image from the talented Famous Dinosaurs.