1830 Predictions for Woodville, Mississippi in 1900

The following tongue-in-cheek prediction regarding life in Mississippi in 1900 was published in The Woodville Republican and Wilkinson Weekly Advertiser, June 5, 1830.


City of Woodville, Feb. 28.

My Dear Tim, — Who would have cogitated, a hundred years ago, that such vast meliorations would have been effected in the language, arts and sciences of our natal state! Nearly every irregular verb is banished the language, or obsoleted. — “Concept, inment,” and a variety of other words are prelated to “think;” we use “form and manufacture” for the old verb “to make” — “strike” is changed for “inflict” and “batter” — “sleep” for “recumb” — “tell” for “narrate” and “relate.” Instead of inviting a friend to “drink,” we ask him to “imbibe” — “to eat” is “to consume,” or more, and a hu[n]dred, or more properly a centum, of mutations I might cite, equi variant.

However, some abuses have gained inveteracy in the language — evidence the following specimen of conjugation:

But the improvements in the mechanic arts, with the aid of science, have been most wonderful. The Flea Trap would have procured its inventor 50 years ago, a title to both fame and fortune. The insecticide has nearly ridded the state of moscheettos. The locomotive vapor car yester[day] arrived in one third of a minute, from Fort Adams. The Thunder & Lightning Vapor car, volates, it is related, at a rate of a mile in four seconds; the captain states that now the circumglobular railroad is complete, he can perpetually enjoy the cool of the evening.

Voyages to the moon are now quite common — the Aerial Car effects two trips thither, mensually. As it is satisfactorily demonstrate[d] that our globe will be destroyed in the year 2000, the most strenuous efforts are devoted to form an aerial car capable of transporting all the goods of this globe to some other. Venus will best suit the Americans; but Brittania lays claim to it, based on the observations of it by their ancestors, in the Pacific ocean in the year 1769. Our title is certainly the best, as during its transit, in 1874, we verified its habitability, without which it would now be inutile to either power. — By the census just taken by steam, it appears that our population is 1,493,737. — Vicksburg contains 50 thousand, Natchez 37, and Woodville 22.



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