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[Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.]
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Volume I.—No. 10.] SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1858. [Price 2 Cents.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
STEPHEN H. BRANCH.
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.
Life of Stephen H. Branch.
Westport, Connecticut,—that he boarded at No. 24 Bleecker street, with
Mrs. Mallory, and that he was a clerk for Perkins, Hopkins, and White,
in Pearl street, near Hanover Square. I carried some beautiful books to
his place of business, and requested him to accept them. He sweetly
smiled, and opened the books, and warmly thanked me, and said he would
be pleased to receive them, but that as I was a stranger, he would
rather I would see his guardian, Morris Ketchum, a Banker in Wall
street, and give him my name and address, and if he were satisfied with
my references, and approved of his acceptance of the generous gift, he
would be most happy to receive the books. I was fascinated with his
modesty, and caution, and I took the books, and repaired to the Banking
House of Mr. Ketchum, to whom I briefly imparted what had transpired,
and left my references and departed, and called again, when Mr. Ketchum
said that he had inquired respecting my character, and that young Jesup
was prepared to receive my books, which I soon placed in his hands, and
our acquaintance began under the most favorable auspices. I soon invited
him to dine with me at Mrs. Tripler’s, when all the boarders were
enchanted with his beautiful person, and pleasing manners, and highly
cultivated mind; and I shall never forget how proud I was, as he sat
beside me. After dinner, I invited him to my room, where I gave him cake
and lemonade, and filled his pockets with delicious oranges. I then
played “Washington’s March,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Hail Columbia,” for
him on the piano, and he departed for his place of business. He went
with me to Niblo’s Garden, then in its glory, and as we strolled
arm-in-arm in the meandering paths, and inhaled the exhilarating perfume
of the flowers, I was charmed with his chaste society, and enraptured
and inspired, and I breathed the music of language in his ears, and we
both were invested with the purest and loftiest and happiest emotions.
In a week from that joyous evening, he was seized with bleeding of the
lungs, caused by excited feelings, during his enthusiastic efforts to
please his employers, in the sleepless business season of early autumn.
He was borne to his mother’s abode in the country, where he soon calmly
resigned his soul to the Saviour, whose sacred virtues he had always
strove to imitate. Although I had briefly enjoyed the pleasure of his
society, yet his premature demise created a void in my bosom that made
the world a desolation. His mother soon removed to New York, and
occupied No. 39 Bond street, where I gratuitously taught her children in
English and the classics. But the invisible germ of consumption has
borne to the grave her pure, intelligent, and lovely Caroline, Charles,
Richard, and Frederick, and Morris, Arthur, Samuel, and Sarah anticipate
the same remorseless destiny. And may God cheer and bless their mother
in her loneliness and tears. The father of this interesting and
unfortunate family, was prostrated in the commercial crash of 1837, and
his depressed and spotless soul fled for refuge to the bosom of his God.
Morris Ketchum was his early business associate and friend, and has
educated his children, procured them lucrative clerkships, afforded them
facilities to visit nearly every nation, for health and general culture,
established them in houses of commerce, and has clung to them, in sun
and storm, like Pythias to Damon, and like Washington to his country. At
this period of my eventful career, I taught colored and Irish servants,
and those of all countries, in their kitchens in the evening, and
sometimes by daylight. Some paid me one shilling a lesson, and some two,
according to their wages and generosity. I taught the servants of the
Reverend Doctor Wainright, the Reverend Doctor Orville Dewey, Daniel
Lord, James T. Brady, Mr. Bowen, of Brooklyn, (of the firm of Bowen &
McNamee, of New York,) and the servants of other distinguished citizens.
I obtained scholars by going from door to door, in the basement, and
asking the servants if they would like to learn to spell, read, write,
and cipher. My health had been miserable since I left Columbian College,
and I often expected to fall dead in the street, or suddenly expire in
the presence of my pupils. For a long period after young Jesup died, I
was very gloomy, and became utterly helpless and bed-ridden, and called
oftener on my father for money than I desired, to pay for board and
medical attendance. I got better, and crawled out into the open air, and
went in pursuit of scholars in a snow storm. I began at the Battery, and
applied at every door, until I came to No. 70 Greenwich street, when I
was asked to come in and warm myself, by a daughter of the lady of the
house, who kept boarders. After a long conversation, by a cheerful fire,
I was engaged to teach the daughter in the English branches, for my
breakfast and tea, and a very small dark room as a place of lodging,
which I could not conveniently occupy without a candle in the day time.
Humble as were to be my accommodations, my feelings were extremely
buoyant, and my ghastly form trembled with delight at my unexpected
resurrection from the depths of indigence and despair. Mr. Ditchett,
(subsequently a very efficient Captain of the Fourth Ward Police, and a
brave fireman, and an honest man,) had just married the eldest daughter,
whose sister was to be my pupil. I was kindly treated, and remained
until the first of May, when I went to Dey street, and afterwards to the
Graham House, at No. 63 Barclay street, where I saw the lean Horace
Greeley, one of the founders of the Graham System. The boarders were
mostly skeletons, and several were limping about the house, like frogs
or lizzards or grasshoppers, and among the limpers, was Horace Greeley,
who had what the Grahamites called a boiling crisis, or crisis of boils,
which was the result of youthful indiscretion, shower bathing, and
eating heartily of bran bread, mush and molasses, squashes, turnips,
beets, carrots, parsneps, and onions, for a long term of years. Although
I had been a miserable invalid a large portion of my days, yet I fancied
a speedy restoration to health, by eating unbolted wheat bread and
vegetables, and frequent bathing. I entered into a spirited conversation
with Greeley, who was reclining on the sofa, and in a loquacious mood,
who told me that he expected to be quite smart after the disappearance
of a large number of boils then all over his person, which he attributed
to salt rheum, that he inherited from his father, and which was recently
driven to the surface of his skin by a rigid adherence to the Graham
System, and three shower baths a day; and he advised me to begin to
bathe immediately, and to eat nothing but Graham bread for one month,
with warm water, milk, and sugar. I asked Greeley if he was sure it was
the secondary or inherited salt rheum that had come to the surface of
his snowy flesh in the form of boils, and he said he was quite sure it
was, as his father had it from his boyhood. I asked him if his secondary
or inherited salt rheum ever itched, and he said yes, sometimes, but he
was sure it was not the secondary itch, as he never had the first itch.
I then looked him dead in the eye, and asked him if he was positively
sure his boils were not the result of itch, and he asked me what I meant
by such severity of scrutiny. I replied, that I once had the itch, and
read many books on the subject, and knew all about it, and that his
boils (he had two on his pale nose) looked very much like secondary itch
blossoms. He cast searching glances, and sat in paralytic silence, save
when he scratched his boils, and the bell summoned me to my first Graham
dinner, and Greeley hopped to the table on one leg, and sat near Mrs.
Goss at the head of the Graham festive board. About forty skeletons were
present, and among them were Sylvester Graham (Bread,) himself, on a
lecturing tour from his country seat at Northampton; John McCracken, of
New Haven; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Abby Kelly; Fred Douglas and lady;
Francis Copcutt, mahogany dealer, who used to eat raw oats, and ride 30
miles a day on a hard trotting horse for dyspepsia; Jeremiah O.
Lanphear, tailor, and now first deacon and missionary of the Fulton
street Dutch Presbyterian Church, who had a gravel nearly as large as
General Winfield Scott’s, which was the largest that ever emanated from
a human bladder; Mrs. Farnham, the accomplished lady and genuine
philanthropist, and wife of the noble and famous California traveler,
who was the rival of Fremont as a mountaineer; Mrs. Anna Stephens, the
fertile and genial authoress; the celebrated Doctor Shew and lady; Mrs.
Storms, of Troy, and long a writer and foreign correspondent of the _New
York Sun_, and now of Texas; poor MacDonald Clark, the poet; Galutia B.
Smith; Matthew B. Brady, the daguerreotypist, who married his sweetheart
at the Graham House, and the room being crowded, I saw the exercises
through the key hole; Mrs. Travis; Albert Brisbane, a moonlight dreamer;
Mrs. Andrews, a strong Unitarian, (ninety-eight years old,) and her
grandson, Albert L. Smith, a nervous and catarrhal gentleman, who now
keeps a Graham House and Water Cure Establishment in West Washington
Place; Dr. John Burdell, brother of Dr. Harvey Burdell, who was
assasinated at No. 31 Bond Street; Leroy Sunderland, a Mesmeriser and
Pathetic lecturer; John M. King; George Foss; Dr. Henry W. Brown; E.
Gould Buffum, and his brother, William Buffum, now Consul at _Trieste_;
Mrs. Horace Greeley; Mr. Clutz; Mrs. Van Vleet; Messrs. Tyler, Bennett,
(a tailor), Otis, and Ward; Mrs. Gove; C. Edwards Lester; Mr. Danforth,
a spurious reformer; the brothers Fowler, phrenologists; father Miller,
the Millenium impostor; Mr. Seymour, a journeyman hatter at Beebe’s, who
got among the noisy methodists, who frightened him into a dangerous
nervous affection, and in bed one night, poor Seymour felt cold and
strange and numb, and pinched himself in the arms and legs, and it
didn’t hurt him, and he thought he was dead, and he got up, and kindled
a match, and lit a candle, and looked in the glass to see whether he was
dead or alive, and when he saw his eyes roll, and his jaws open and
close, he got into bed, and went to sleep. This was the gang at table,
and for dinner, we had bran bread and crackers, bean soup, roast apples
and potatoes, and boiled squash and carrots, but not a particle of meat,
grease, nor spices. All grabbed violently at the Graham viands, and
brought their teeth together like swine, and with similar grunts and
squeals. I calmly surveyed the motley and hungry group, and saw many
small piercing gray eyes, hollow cheeks, and sharp chins and noses, and
the voices of nearly all were husky and fearfully sepulchral. The themes
discussed were Anti-Slavery and Grahamism, and I soon perceived it
extremely perilous to breathe a word against the ultra views of the
susceptible and long-haired Graham spectres, who seemed united to a
ghost on these prolific themes. So, I listened and breathed not a
syllable in opposition to the crazy views advanced. I took a stroll
after dinner, and returned at sunset, and seated myself for my evening
meal, when we had Graham-bread-coffee, milk porridge, apple sauce,
Graham mush, and boiled rice, sparingly saturated with molasses and
liquid ginger. I ate and drank freely of this light food, and arose from
the table in excellent spirits, though I belched frequently. My belly
soon began to swell, and I got alarmed, and I asked Mr. Goss, the Graham
host, what it meant. He seemed perfectly cool, and said that his
boarders were often affected in that way, in passing suddenly from
greasy meats to the pure food of Grahamites, which was chiefly of a
vegetable and somewhat of a gassy and flatulent character. Goss then
left me. I thrice paced the parlor hurriedly, and began to feel choleric
and crampy, and went down stairs into the kitchen, and asked Goss to
send for a physician immediately, which he declined to do, as he thought
I was only a little spleeny, which would soon pass away, and advised me
to go to bed. He got me a Graham candle, and up we went, and did not
stop until we reached the roof, where he put me in a little room, with
two cots, on which there was a straw mattress, and a straw bolster, and
scanty covering. He said good night, and shut the door, and I got into
bed, and strove to sleep. I squirmed like an eel for about two hours,
and could endure my pains no longer, and arose and awoke my room-mate,
and asked him to escort me to the sleeping apartment of Mr. Goss. He did
so, and I knocked at his door, and out he came in his nightcap and white
apparel. I told him that I had cramps, and had an awful quantity of
frantic wind in my stomach, and felt as though my belly would burst
before morning, and that I was deathly sick, and asked him what on earth
I had eaten at his table to give me such violent cramps and flatulence
and diarrhœa, and nauseous and strange emotions. He told me that I was
nervous, and not accustomed to Graham food, but that I soon would be,
and urged me to again retire, and strive to sleep. He spoke these words
with kindness, and they soothed me, and I shook his hand, and off I went
up stairs to bed again. But in about ten minutes, I had a severe spasm,
with choking sensations, and I leaped from my nest like a man in his
last gasp, and unconsciously cast myself on the cot of my room-mate, who
instantly emerged from a profound sleep, and sprang like a tiger from
his bed, and threw me severely to the floor, and cried murder to the
pinnacle of his voice, and began to pelt me in the most brutal manner,
leveling the most savage random blows at my head and stomach. Goss and
the spectral boarders rushed into the room, and Greeley soon came
limping in, and they searched in vain for knives, revolvers, and human
blood. And they soon learned the cause of the cry of murder, and raised
me from the floor, and put me into bed, with a bloody nose and dark eye,
that my room-mate gave me, who apologised for his blows on the ground
that he always slept soundly, and was only partially awake when he beat
me. I accepted his apology, and Goss and Greeley, and half-a-dozen
attenuated Grahamites left me, for their beds again, and my chum took a
seat by my cot, and strove to soothe me. But the cramps returned, and I
became faint and giddy, and began to vomit profusely. I soon filled
basins, pitchers, spit boxes, hats, and boots, and deluged every thing
we had in the room, and my chum got a pitcher and basin in the next
room, and I soon flooded them, and I vomited until I thought I felt my
entire bowels struggling at my throat to get out, which nearly strangled
me. At last an enormous chunk came out, which proved to be the core of a
stewed apple, and the crust of Graham bread combined into a sort of
petrified substance, and I began to breathe again, and slowly improved
till daylight,
When I embraced a sweet repose,
And snored like thunder through my nose.
(To be continued to my last scream.)
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Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
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