If you’re following “Social Salad,” then your social network is complete. That is, if you’re living in the 19th century.

I recently came across a post by The Rhode Island Historical Society about a gossip column called “Social Salad” that ran in the Providence, Rhode Island Sunday Morning Transcript in 1883-1884. It seems the column was comprised of one-sentence entries that could easily be the Tweets of a modern social gossip. By the look of it, some are just about as mundane and pointless as what some people post on Twitter or Facebook. Others, however, are pretty amusing. Here are some of my favorites:

• “We know a Providence business man who has one hat for wear in Providence and another for Boston.” (Shocking!)
• “A drunken Irishman who visited the Dime Museum last Monday was as mad as a March hare because he was not permitted to jab his pen knife into the superfluous head of a double headed cow in order that he might ascertain if it was alive.” (I don’t even know where to begin…)
• “Last Thursday morning in Parker’s barber shop, a man who was looking intently in the glass soliliquised as follows -’By thunder old boy I’m tickled to death with you. In fact, I think you are just a daisy!’” (I think this guy was the nut in the “social salad.”)
• “Little Charlie Northup, the two year old son of Robert Northup, is a fine waltzer, and makes successful attempts at ventriloquism.” (Does little “Chucky” have red hair by any chance?)
• “A well known business man who attended a seance at Mrs. Allen’s recently was visited by the spirit of a sweet heart who had died a year since, and was startled by some of the communications received from the departed one.” (So it’s the communications that surprised him, not the “visit”?)

Described as “Personal Paragraphs, Pungent Particularities and Points” (only Daffy Duck could do that phrase true justice) and “Newsy Leaves of Prominent Society Events Torn from The Transcript’s Note Book,” Social Salad could easily have been written by a 19th century Perez Hilton (minus the irreverent scribblings, of course). It just goes to show that some concepts are never really new.

-Tori

Tags: 19th century, Daffy Duck, Facebook, gossip columns, Perez Hilton, Providence, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Historical Society, social networking, Social Salad, Sunday Morning Transcript, Twitter