MR. PUNCHINELLO: Having the most unbounded respect for your Gudgment i wanto know whether you think ther is rely gonto be mutch fiting between the french and the Prooshuns. It will be a important question to me this Year, as i hev Raised over 100 bushel of weat and i think it wood make a differns of over $20 to me, and i think if NAPOLIN gives up without fiting he isen't mutch of a man eny how.
[Our correspondent will understand that the question of the continuance of the war depends altogether on the comparative merits of the needle gun and the Chassepot. Possibly our correspondent has not a supply of either of these weapons at hand, but he can test them as follows: Arm yourself with a sewing-machine as a representative of the needle gun; then let one of your neighbors arm himself with a _chasse café_ to represent the Chassepot, and then fight it out on that line until the best weapon wins.--ED. PUNCHINELLO.]
Perusal of the last Annual Report of the Mercantile Library Association--the forty ninth annual, by the way,--convinces PUNCHINELLO that matters are all serene in that favorite resort of his. The only "burst" about it appears, according to the report, to arise from a plethora of books, which are bursting each other off from the shelves for want of room. There is something funny in this statement when we read, elsewhere, that 250 copies of "Little Women" have been added to the shelves. Little women are notoriously pugnacious, and, as a matter of 250 copies of the "Old-fashioned Girl" have also found lodgings on the library shelves, no wonder that there was a "muss" on the premises.
So far as the Reading-room is concerned, PUNCHINELLO is glad to know that the reserve with which magazines were kept behind the desk for a year or two past, has given place to a new and better arrangement. One can take up his magazine, now, from a table appropriated to periodicals, just as if he were in his own house--only more so, as there are not many private mansions that can boast of a supply of 174 magazines, which is just the number taken in at the Reading-room. The only objection to this arrangement, according to PUNCHINELLO'S way of thinking, is that it debars a fellow from the opportunity of addressing himself to one of the fascinating ladies in charge of the room, and having a private lark with her under the pretext of obtaining a magazine.