Scope and Contents:
This collection contains two volumes of handwritten satiric poems by an anonymous author, but evidently given to Edwin Dudgeon around 1873. The larger volume, entitled "The Stale Trout, 1873," contains a story about mailing several smelly fish to various people in Chicago. Allusions in the story suggest that the author had been a Union soldier in the Civil War; that he worked at the United States Express Company, a delivery company, in Chicago (205 Monroe St.), under an agent named Colvin (identified through city directories as Harvey D. Colvin), and that the fish were mailed to General Mac, at 504 Monroe (identified as Gen. John McArthur, perhaps a former superior officer). One section contains much mock-Norwegian as uttered by two servants aghast at the smelly fish. The second volume, dedicated to Dudgeon, is entitled 'The Lead Mine, or "How We Are Hurt"' and tells the story of a man who derailed a train on the Central Pacific line in hopes of robbing it but lost the loot to some nearby miners.
The volumes were donated to the Library in 1943.
Subjects (links to similar collections)
Submit request (Aeon)
