Boxing Day!

Porcupine received a remarkable Christmas gift this year - a copy of his own creation! A copy of Porcupine's Gazette for November 15, 1797!

The paper, a heavy weight using cotton or linen as part of its makeup, has four sheets. The two exterior sheets are entirely ads. Foreclosed property, a new shipment of fine Madeira, a dozen cases of Jamaican Pimentoes at a reasonable price, a new legal office setting up. Thee is a self-congratulatory notice for a girls deportment and boarding school which had been entirely able to avoid any virulent illness in the past year, due to their emphasis on hygiene and good manners. And, a notice that a Negro woman was being sold to settle an estate - but Philadephia was rather further south than Boston, and such sales were still common.

The two interior sheets have news stories, and what struck Porcupine the most was how some subject matter remains a subject for debate. A Dr. Priestly had recently written a pamphlet debating the Divinity of Christ, and Porcupine roundly excoriated such an idea, fit for nothing but those newfangled Unitarians. Porcupine had composed a satiric lecture on 'The Fine Art of Bragging', in the voice of his enemy, Thos. Jefferson, rather in the spirit of The Colbert Report. And most timely, Porcupine reported on a Lottery, sanctioned by the State of Delaware, to raise $4,000 to replace a burned out factory building, and a schedule of the expected payouts for the tickets.



Still, the best thing of all was to see Porcupine's logo once again - a puffed out Porcupine, with an expression of feral glee, excitedly turning his head for the latest rumor and news. Indeed, a mere 210 years has meant fewer changes than one might expect!