Page:American art its awful altitude by Frankenstein, John.djvu/16

 EXPLANATORY.

As I may possibly have readers not acquainted with our town and its history, I would state to them that the erection of the Pioneer Monument, and, of course, the delivery of the speech of Billem Sorry, Esq., are pure fictions. The Pioneer Association ac- cepted a secondhand design offered by Tremendous Dead Bones, Esq., Sculptor ; but with this effort their monumental energies ex- pired. Aside, however, from his allusions to this erection, the speech by Billem Sorry, Esq., deals in nothing but facts, except that the ancient maiden of the Ladies’ Academy of the Fine Arts is also an invention, and that the hoops of the fat member may appear a year or so before the fashion.

None of the facts and opinions, none of the likes and dislikes it contains, are Billem Sorry’s, but my own—all except the sublime self-conceit ; that is Billem Sorry’s. To exhibit this in its per- fection I was obliged to resort to the machinery I have employed.

The other statements in the poem affecting real persons are liter- ally true. Where an individual is speaking in the first person, all the words used, placed within quotation marks, are actual quota- tions from the mouth of that person.

The names also are all real but those in the list below. I changed these only because such was my whim. In order to be strictly im- partial, but chiefly because I want the real names to be known, I give them opposite the nickname in the order they appear.

Nickname. Real name. TREMENDOUS DEAD BONES, Hsa., .. THOS. D. JONES, Esq., Sculptor. Sculptor. BILLEM SORRY, Esq., WM. M. CORRY, Esq.,

Democratic copperhead politician. NICK LITTLEWORTH,. The late NICHOLAS LONGWORTH,

Millionaire of Cincinnati.

�