Miss Venus De Medici, of Italy, outranges the ideas of Norwalk, Conn., Citizens and is Garbed. 

Norwalk, Conn., has just had a nude departure in the figure of Venus, which, up to a few days ago, adorned the lawn of Justice of the Peace Andrew Selleck. The statue came from Italy, and, as is usual with such statues, it had forgotten to bring its clothes with it. The Squire’s neighbors weren’t accustomed to such exhibitions and on the following morning Her Highness Venus was attired in bargain-counter remnants of the cast-off clothing of the neighborhood.

Reprinted from National Police Gazette, October 19, 1889.

There is a class of publications whose lives depend upon their successful appeal to vicious instincts. According to the later significance given to the phrase of M. Dumas, these publications are the demi-monde of newspaperdom. Journalistic prostitution furnishes real prostitution with a large part of its sustenance. There are several phases of it. The least harmful is the frankly vicious phase represented the papers of the Police Gazette brand. The most insidious phase is represented by those papers that cloak their sensationalism with moral pretensions. Such a paper largely concerns itself with police and divorce-court records. Its best head-line reads in effect: “Testimony Unfit for Publication; It Was as Follows:” It may attain distinction by selling a few of its columns to thieves and libertines for assignation purposes, or by the light-hearted realism which animates its description of the underwear of a prominent actress. “Sensational” is the mildest epithet applied to such a paper, because it occasionally dallies with politics, or heads a subscription to purchase piano-lamps for starving infants. Its spirit is so insecure and debased that, in comparison, the editorial spirit of the New York Sun is positively one of lofty morality.

Reprinted from Puck, March 22, 1893.

A terrific explosion occurred in Dr. Dows’ drug-store, at Washington and Lagrange Streets, Boston, on Wednesday evening, May 26th. The building was four stories in height, and built of brick, with a front of thirty feet on Washington Street, and a depth of seventy feet on Lagrange Street. The ground-floor was occupied by G. D. Dows, apothecary and manufacturer of soda water. It was one of the most complete and well-arranged establishments in the city.

Three persons were killed and some twenty wounded. It is feared that several are fatally injured, and that probably other bodies may be found buried in the debris.

A metropolitan horsecar was passing downtown at the time, and this was blown bodily over against the curbstone on the opposite side of the street. Every window was broken, and the passengers, some twenty in number, were rendered momentarily insensible by the concussion. Since the disaster, various theories have been advanced as to the cause of the explosion—some attributing it to nitroglycerine, some to the soda generator, and others to an escapement of gas from the pipes in the cellar; but the cause is still a mystery.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 12, 1875.

White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., Sept. 1886—A young married woman of Washington, D. C. has her health drunk by a young lawyer in slipper-full of champagne at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.

A Summer Romance

Information from the White Sulphur Springs states that a flutter has been caused by an episode at a champagne party when a young married lady of fashion pulled off her slipper, and filling it with champagne, gave it to a young lawyer in the party and he quaffed it down. It is said the young lady is a Washington, D.C., beauty.

National Police Gazette, October 2, 1886