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~JUMBLES~


PUNCHINELLO has heard, of course, of the good time coming. It has not
come yet. It won't come till the stars sing together in the morning,
after going home, like festive young men, early. It won't come till
Chicago has got its growth in population, morals and ministers. It won't
come till the women are all angels, and men are all honest and wise; not
until politicians and retailers learn to tell the truth. You may think
the Millennium a long way off. Perhaps so. But mighty revolutions are
sometimes wrought in a mighty fast time. Many a fast man has been known
to turn over a new leaf in a single night, and forever afterwards be
slow. Such a thing is dreadful to contemplate, but it has been. Many a
vain woman has seen the folly of her ways at a glance, and at once gone
back on them. This is _not_ dreadful to contemplate, since to go back on
folly is to go onward in wisdom. The female sex is not often guilty of
this eccentricity, but instances have been known. It is that which fills
the proud bosom of man with hope and consolation, and makes him feel
really that woman is coming; which is all the more evident since she
began her "movement." The good time coming is nowhere definitely named
in the almanacs. The goings and comings of the heavenly bodies, from the
humble star to the huge planet, are calculated with the facility of the
cut of the newest fashion; and the revolutions of dynasties can be fixed
upon with tolerable certainty; but the period of the good time coming is
lost in the mists of doubt and the vapors of uncertainty. It is very