NP: June 18, 1864 Raleigh Confederate: What will he Show Next

Editor’s Note: This article was transcribed by Brett Schulte.

What will he Show Next.

The Macon Confederate furnishes the following apt and humorous illustration of Grant’s assault on Richmond:

It seems that the enemy have enough of Gen. Lee for the present.  Grant has tried every portion of his line, had ten or fifteen thousand more of his mercenaries slaughtered, and, as Lee says, is now “unusually quiet.”  He reminds us of the country boy who attended a show for the first time.  The boy had a very stingy old fellow for a father, who never would give him money to spend a a show or anything else.  One day the boy read the great and small bills of a showman with inexpressible delight.  Upon those bills it was set forth that wonderful things would be performed at the Courthouse that night.  The boy went to his father and so persistently begged him for a quarter, that the old man yielded.  Of course he was the first in the house and when the show went off he gazed in perfect wonder.  Among the rest of the pictures was a miniature representation of the burning of Moscow, the blowing up of its Kremlin and palaces, firing of cannon, etc.  In order to give the thing effect the showman had small pop-guns charged with sure enough powder, which he let off occasionally.  Indeed, he had a keg of powder behind the curtain, which accidentally caught, blowing up house, audience, show, and showman.  The boy fell in the street, and scrambling up from the dust, exclaimed: ‘I wonder what that d–n fool will show next?’¹

Source: