handkerchief from his hat to dry his eyes, he pulls
out with it several very large lumps of sugar
which he abstracted when he took his coffee,
and showers them over my legs—exceedingly
to my confusion, but not at all to his. The
drop-curtain being, to appearance, down
for a long time, I think I will step on a
little further—say to the Theatre of the
Scavengers—and see what they are doing
there. At the Theatre of the Scavengers, I
find Pierrot on a voyage. I know he is
aboard ship, because I can see nothing but
sky; and I infer that the crew are aloft from
the circumstance of two rope-ladders crossing
the stage and meeting at top; about midway
on each of which hangs, contemplating
the public, an immovable young lady in male
attire, with highly unseamanlike pink legs.
This spectacle reminds me of another New
Year's Day at home in England, where I saw
the brave William, lover of Black Eyed
Susan, tried by a Court Martial composed
entirely of ladies, wearing perceptible combs
in their heads: with the exception of the
presiding Admiral, who was so far gone in
liquor that I trembled to think what could
possibly be done respecting the catastrophe, if
he should take it in his head to record the
verdict "Not guilty." On this present New
Year's Day, I find Pierrot suffering, in
various ways, so very much from sea-sickness,
that I soon leave the congregated Scavengers
in possession of him; but not before I have
gathered from the bill that in the case even
of his drama, as of every other French piece,
it takes at least two men to write it. So, I
pass this New Year's evening, which is a
French one, looking about me until midnight:
when, going into a Boulevard café on my way
home, I find the elderly men who are always
playing dominos there, or always looking on
at one another playing dominos there, hard
at it still, not in the least moved by the stir
and novelty of the day, not in the least
minding the New Year.

A NEW ODDITY.

In science nothing is absolutely new;
because everything which is the subject of
science has had a previous existence ever
since the world began. Before Chemistry was,
the elements were; before Astronomy could
be taught, the moon and the planets had
long been shining and revolving in their
orbits. But, humanly speaking, everything
undiscovered is new at the time of its
discovery. Gravitation, without which the solar
system would be chaos, was new to those
who listened to Newton's sublime revelations.
Microscopic organisms, although mountains
are built up with their shells, although ponds
and lakes are tinged with their hues, and seas
are made luminous by their phosphorescent
lights, were startlingly new to the first
possessors of powerful lenses. Electricity and
its modifications—which has existed ever
since the lightnings have flashed and the
thunders rolled, and which is old to such
humble creatures as torpedos and their
brother fish—was new to Franklin, Galvani,
and Volta, and no one knows how much
more that is new in it still remains to be
displayed to a wondering world. It is in
this light only, namely, newness to human
apprehension, that, together with other New
Year's Gifts, we present our readers with A
New Oddity.

Did you ever have your tooth-ache cured by
the application of creosote? If so, you owe the
alleviation of your pain to Reichenbach, the
inventor of creosote. It is right you should
know that the person of whom we are about
to speak devotes his time to perfectly legitimate
and orthodox investigations. He is learned
on the subject of meteoric stones and other
topics which are allowed to be pursued without
the charge of charlatanism. Well; this
German philosopher, Doctor Von Reichenbach,
diving into the depths of the unknown
—far deeper than SchÅ“nbein went to fetch
his Ozone—has fished up a universal principle
which, he says, is new to men, and to which he
has given the briefest possible name, videlicet,
—OD. Its etymology seems a little forced;
Va, in Sanscrit, means to suffer; Vado, in
Latin, is to go; in the old language of the
north, Vado signifies to go quickly, to run, to
flow or steam rapidly; whence Vodan conveys,
in the ancient German tongue, the idea of a
thing of force which penetrates everywhere.
In different old idioms the word is transformed
into Voudan, Odan, Odin, in which
last shape it has been personified in a
German divinity. OD is therefore the vocal
sign of a force which penetrates or darts
rapidly into everything, and throughout
all nature, with incessant energy. Following
the analogy of such words as electricity,
galvanism, gravitation, it ought to
have been odity or odinity, odiuisrn, or
odination. The master chooses that it should
remain Od.

Simultaneously, the Doctor discovered that
certain individuals, both men and women, are
gifted with a faculty which we will call
sensitivity; because sensitiveness means
something which is not sensitivity. The set of
phenomena of which those sensitive persons
are cognisant, are quite distinct from those
of animal magnetism or clairvoyance. No
attempt is made to modify the habitual
condition of the sensitives concerned. There
are no mesmeric passes performed, nor any
manœuvres of any sort. Whenever magnetism
is mentioned, it is the magnetism of the magnet,
and nothing else.

When the Congress of German naturalists
assembled at Vienna, some five-and-twenty
members of that learned body, accompanied
by their ladies, paid a visit to Doctor Von
Reichenbach, at his château at Reisenberg,
to see his collection of aërolites, as well as