wooden smiles; farewell, ye viviparous bedsteads, ye emaciated feather
beds, and ye attenuated bolsters; a long good-bye to scant blankets and
mattresses stuffed with shavings; farewell to hirsute butter and to
ancient bread; good-bye (I say it with a tear,) ye immortal, everlasting
beef; farewell to sloppy coffee and to azure milk (Damphool says, not
yet); farewell ye antediluvian pies, and you lilliputian puddings;
farewell you two-inch napkins, and ye _holy_ table-cloths; farewell ye
empty grates and rusty coal-scuttles; farewell ye cracked mirrors which
make a man look like a drunken Satyr; farewell ye respectable chairs
with dislocated limbs; farewell ye fractured teacups, ye broken forks,
and knives with handsaw edges; farewell, in fact, all ye lodging houses,
where you _can't_ have a latch-key, and where you _can_ tell when they
get a new hired girl by the color of the hairs in the biscuit.
(I noticed this last remarkable fact a long time since.)
Give us joy, for we have found a place where things are done up right,
where we can choose our own viands, where the beef is positively tender,
where there are no little red ants in the sugar, where the potatoes are
not waxy, and where, if anything goes wrong, we can inflate the waiter.
In fact, we are suited; if anything runs short, "John gets particular
_fits_" and "nuthin' shorter;" where we can eat _when_ we please, and
call for _what_ we please; where charges are moderate, and it is
permitted to grumble at the waiter for nothing.
And here, in this Elysian spot, have Bull Dogge and I taken our daily
bread (beans and butter included) for the past month, "without fear and
without reproach."
As our poetical friend, Thomas Plus, has remarked,
"Joy, joy, forever, our task is done,
Our trials are past, and our Restaurant is _some_."
Damphool says my concluding quotation is not strictly correct, but what
does he know about it?
VIII.
The Potency of Croton Water, or an aqueous
quality hitherto unknown.
It has been a cherished superstition of our ancestors that water as a
beverage is innocuous; I myself was laboring under this infatuated
delusion when I left the shades of private life, and the sweet retiracy
of the swamps of Michigan, to become a denizen of the Island City.
Believing that my previous experience in the article justified me in
drinking freely of the treacherous liquid, I did not hesitate on my
arrival here to imbibe on various occasions as much of the undiluted
Croton as my thirsty body seemed to need.
How I was deceived in the potency of the fluid a single night's
experience will show; I am confident that on this particular occasion I
was bewitched by the mischievous God of the stream called the Croton,
and that, if I had given him any further opportunities to exercise his
craft, my name would positively have appeared in the Police Reports some
morning, and Doesticks would have been therein stigmatized as "_Drunk
and Disorderly_."
But the imputation would be slanderous,--I will lay before the public
the events of a single night, and its verdict shall be a triumphant
vindication of my character,--shall exculpate the Deity Bacchus (now
resident in Ohio,) from the grave charge of leading me astray,--and lay
the entire blame of the transaction upon the rascal River God.
Only once in my life have I been drunk. It was a youthful inebriation,
caused by partaking too freely of cider made from apples with worms in
them. At present I am sober. If, since my sojourn in this city, I have
been intoxicated, then the time has arrived when any person who wishes
to have a regular "drunk" need only apply to the nearest hydrant.
Heretofore I have supposed water to be a beverage innocent and harmless;
but now--well; no matter--I will not anticipate. Listen while I relate a
"plain, unvarnished tale."
I left my boarding-house in company with a friend, intending to witness
the Shakspearian revival at Burton's--the "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Before leaving the hotel, at his suggestion, we partook of a potable,
known, I think, as punch--_whiskey punch_. I watched attentively the
preparation of this agreeable beverage, and I am certain that there
entered into its composition a certain amount of water--Croton water, as
I have every reason to believe; and I am also sure that in that
treacherous draught I imbibed the first instalment of that villanous
liquid which produced the diabolical state of facts I am about to
describe; and also that the second and third of those ingenious
inventions (both of which we drank on the spot) were as guilty, in this
respect, as their "illustrious predecessor!"
And I furthermore conscientiously state that _my_ glass of brandy (one
of a couple we ordered soon afterwards), and which, according to my
invariable custom, should have been "_straight_," was also
surreptitiously diluted with the same detestable fluid by the malicious
bar-keeper, for I remember experiencing a slight confusion on going out,
and mistaking a topsail schooner for the Broadway theatre.
We immediately entered another saloon to procure the wherewith to
steady our nerves, when we partook of two gin cocktails and a brandy
smash individually, and I state, according to the best of my knowledge
and belief, that our principal ingredient in each and every one of these
compounds was water--Croton water--culpably introduced therein by some
evil-disposed persons without my knowledge or consent.
On leaving this saloon, I noticed that my friend, although a single man,
had by some mysterious process of multiplication become two. I kept fast
hold of both, and, after doubling, with a great deal of difficulty, a
great number and variety of corners, we reached Burton's. Tickets being
mysteriously procured, we entered, and eventually obtained seats.
Finding, after prolonged trial, that it was impracticable to put my hat
in my vest pocket, I placed it on the floor, and put both feet in it.
The theatre generally seemed to be somewhat mixed up. The parquette,
gallery, and dress circle were all one; and the stage was whirling round
at a rate which must have been extremely inconvenient to the revolving
actors.
At length, after a liberal allowance of overture, the curtain went up,
and I was enabled, by the most unremitting attention, to concentrate the
actors sufficiently to understand the performance. And many things which
I hitherto deemed dramatically incorrect were presented to my wondering
vision then and there.
"Hippolyta" was dressed in knee-breeches and brogans, and "Titania" did
not, to me, present a very fairy-like appearance in a fireman's red
shirt and a three-cocked hat. "Oberon" was not so objectionable (being a
gentleman,) in a talma and plaid pantaloons, though even he might have
blacked his boots and omitted the spurs. I fear I did not properly
appreciate the rest of the fairies, who had their heads decorated with
sunflowers and their hands full of onions.
At last the entertainment was concluded, and I remember consulting with
my duplicated friend as to the feasibility of a return to Brooklyn, to
our boarding-house. On our journey thither we witnessed many strange
things about which I desire information.
In the first place, is it the custom, as a general thing, for the City
Hall and Barnum's Museum to indulge in an animated contra-dance up and
down Broadway in the middle of the night, accompanied in their fantastic
movements, by the upper story of Stewart's and the Bible Society's
building? For they certainly did on that eventful evening, and I feel
called upon to enter my solemn protest against these nocturnal
architectural saltatory exhibitions, as unworthy the dignity of the
Empire City.
And I would, with all humility, suggest, that if the stony goddess of
Justice, whose appropriate place is on the top of the City Hall, will
desert her responsible post, she might choose a more becoming amusement
than sitting cross-legged on the top of a Houston street stage, playing
the jews-harp.
I am _now_ convinced that Bowling-Green fountain is not _permanently_
located on the top of Trinity Church cross; but that it _was_ on that
memorable night, my wondering eyes bore ample testimony.
I am sufficiently well acquainted with the city to know that the Astor
House should be found on the corner of Barclay street, but I am ready to
take my oath that on that particular occasion it plied as an opposition
ferry-boat between Whitehall street and Hamilton avenue. The last thing
I distinctly recollect is trying to pay the fare for three on this novel
craft, with a single piece of money (which I _now_ know to have been a
Bungtown copper), and demanding two-and-sixpence change, which I didn't
get.
In the morning I found myself in bed with my overcoat on, and
afterwards discovered my boots under the pillow--my hat in the grate,
with my pantaloons and hair-brush in it--my watch in the water-jug, and
my latch-key in the bird-cage. I presume I had tried to write a letter
to some one with my tooth-brush, as I found that article in my inkstand.
Now, if Croton water interferes with my susceptible system in this
unaccountable manner, what shall I drink? I would resort to milk, but I
fear our city edition of the lacteal contains sufficient of the aqueous
enemy to again upset my too delicate nerves. I exclaim, like Caesar, when
he, too, was afflicted with superfluity of water, "Help me, Cassius, or
I sink!"
What would be the effect of brandy and water without any water, and a
little lemon?
IX.
Modern Witchcraft.
It has been asserted, that no humbug can be invented which is so
improbable that it will find no believers. No theory is too ridiculous,
no folly too great to turn the stomach of the modern wonder-seeking
Public; it opens its staring eyes, perhaps, a little wider than usual at
some transcendent tomfoolery, but its sapient optics have as yet
discerned nothing in all the superfluous deceptions and jugglery of the
age, too hugely nonsensical to be swallowed without even a single qualm.
Hence, all the "pathies" and "isms" of medical Empiricism, all the
newly discovered charlatanry of the legal trade, and even the latest
form of religious quackery, that new device of bashful, half-grown,
bastard Infidelity, denominated Spiritualism, which would be impious if
it was not idiotic, have all received from the wise ones of the
nineteenth century belief and credence.
For at this time of triumphant and successful humbug--when
indiscriminate puffery is freely used to boost into notice all kinds of
sham, deception, and deceit, which thereupon grow fat and thrive--when
vermin exterminators, lucifer matches, and patent blacking employ such
high-flown language in commendation of their merits, that inventions of
real merit and importance must resort to the basest bombast to keep pace
with the foolery of their neighbors--when solid merit which _would_
succeed, must vie in euphuistic phrase with brainless emptiness which
_will_--when, in Literature, inane collections of stolen wit, diluted
humor, and feeble fiction are spawned in scores from weak-brained fops
and aspiring women, inflated by unsparing puffery into a transient
notoriety, and palmed upon the public as works of sterling merit--when
even these Doestick Letters are purchased and perused, it may easily be
imagined that no impudent humbug, if properly managed, will turn the
stomach of the enlightened Yankee Nation.
It is not astonishing, that, in a sort of gross imitation of the
clairvoyants and spirit-seers, other persons not quite so intellectual
perhaps, but fully as reliable should also profess to hold converse with
invisible beings.
The _fortune-tellers_ of the city are these, and they certainly deserve
praise for attempting to apply their pretended knowledge to some
practical use, instead of dealing entirely with abstractions. In New
York these people are numerous, and they pick up as many coppers in
quite as honest a way as their fellows in the art of table-tipping
notoriety.
Having read the advertisement of a Grand street fortune-teller, who
advertised herself the "seventh daughter of a seventh daughter," a
lineal descendant from some one of the Egyptian magicians who couldn't
kill the frogs--I straightway resolved to pay her a visit.
Since that memorable day my destiny is no longer a mystery. I know it
all. I know what kind of a woman I'm to marry, how many children we're
to have, how many will die of measles, and how many will be choked with
the croup, and can calculate to a quart how much castor oil I shall have
to lay in for family consumption. I've had my fortune told by a witch.
The witches of modern time do not frequent graves and gibbets at
midnight--they hold no nocturnal orgies with dancing skeletons and
corpses, brought by the black art back to temporary life--they
now-a-days take no pains to conceal their trade, but advertise it in the
daily papers.
Their believers are not now the great men and wise women of the earth
alone, but chamber-maids and servant girls who want love-powders to win
some noble swain--or some verdant countryman anxious to recover the
pilfered eelskin which contained his treasured pennies. They easily
satisfy these gullible customers, by promising the first no end of rich,
handsome princes, who are to appear some day and carry off their brides
in four-horse coaches; and the latter by an extemporaneous description
of the thief, and a wish that he may suffer pains in his head, heart,
liver, and all other important parts of his body, until the property is
restored.
Witchcraft is rife in our midst, and we do not hang or burn the hags and
beldames who practice it, or stick them full of needles, or duck them in
the horse-ponds, as in the good old days of Salem--more's the pity.
In this day of railroads and three-cent stages, they have no occasion
to perform their journeys upon broomsticks; and in our city, where cream
is only traditionary, they cannot bewitch their neighbors' churnings, or
throw their dire enchantments over the incipient cheese--so the
protective horse-shoe is of no avail.
They have robbed the trade of all its mystery and romance; we hear no
more of mighty magician, with hoary beard and flowing robe, with magic
wand and attendant spirits; no more "weird sisters," with talon fingers
and sunken eyes; not even romantic wandering gipsies--but ugly women,
with unwashed hands, who can't spell.
The calling has degenerated, and the necromantic trade has passed into
the hands of unworthy successors, who would steal their living, if
cheating wasn't easier. And the trade thrives, and the swindling
practisers thereof flaunt in silks, while honest virtue staves off
destitution by making "hickory" shirts at eight cents a piece.
Went up town, found the house, rung the bell, and was shown into a
shabby room by a stuttering girl, who informed me by instalments that
her mistress would see me presently. Examined the furniture--rickety
table, ditto chairs, bare floor with knot-holes in it, unctuous mirror,
two hair trunks, a clothes basket, and a hat-box.
Enter mistress--minus youth, beauty, hair-pins and clean stockings.
She wore no flowing robe figured with cabalistic signs, she bore no
sable wand of magic, but she was clad in a calico dress, and had a brass
candlestick in her hand--she drew no mystic circle, she performed no
inscrutable incantations, she spoke in no unknown tongue--but she put
the candlestick on the rickety table, sat down in a cane-bottomed chair,
and asked me what my name was, and what I wanted.
Told her I wanted to find out who I was going to marry, and wanted her
to tell me a lucky number in the lottery, which should draw a prize big
enough to support the family--also wanted a description of the man who
stole my jack-knife, and a knowledge of the place where I could find the
same.
Now she began to work--she did not consult the stars--she did not cast
my horoscope--she did not even ask me where I was born, or what my
father did for a living--she exhibited no strange paraphernalia of
sorcery and conjuration--no obscure language, suggestive of a divination
or enchantment, fell from her prophetic lips.
She only asked me if I had any moles on my person, and what I dreamed
about last night--then plunging her hand through a slit in the side of
her dress, she fished out from some unknown depth a pack of cards.
Greasy were they, and well worn--the knave of spades had his legs torn
off, the queen of diamonds had her face scratched with a thimble, two of
the aces were stuck together with beeswax, and the king of clubs had
evidently been used to skim flies out of the molasses.
After much shuffling of the royal and plebeian members of the pack, she
got them fixed to her satisfaction, and I proceeded to draw therefrom
nine cards, which she disposed in three symmetrical piles; then looked
them over--bit her lip--stamped her foot; then told me that my knife had
been stolen by a squint-eyed Irishman, who had disposed of it to his
uncle for a dozen cotton night-caps, sixty cigars and thirty cents ready
money, and that if I was anxious to reclaim it, I would find it at No. 1
Round the Corner.
Asked her if I was big enough to lick the Irishman, at which she waxed
indignant, and for a moment I half feared she would turn me into some
horrible monster; that, like Circe of old, she would exercise her magic
power, and qualify me to play a star engagement at the Metropolitan
Theatre by transforming me into an elephant, a she-wolf, or a Bengal
tiger.
But, as my mouth didn't get any larger, my toe nails grow any longer, or
my fingers change to claws; as I felt no growing appetite for blood, and
my nose didn't elongate into a trunk, I soon recovered my equanimity.
Then she went on to say that No. 67 would draw me a prize in the
lottery, and that I could get it of "Sam"--that I would marry a
red-haired woman, who would die and leave me with a nursing baby--that I
would then be "jilted" by a widow, and finally wed a lady whose
description corresponds exactly with my present washer-woman; our family
is to increase to seventeen; my second son is to be President, and my
eldest daughter is to run away with the Czar of all the Russias. She
wasn't exactly positive about the manner of my death, but from the looks
of the jack of clubs, she "judged I should break my neck coming home
from a clam-bake."
Gave her a dollar, and left. A month has passed--67 seems a promising
number--hav'n't got my knife yet, but live in hope--have seen my future
wife, hav'n't yet proposed, but have reason to suppose she would not
object.
She was in Catharine street, and had a basket on her head full of
shrimps.
[Illustration: City Target Excursion.]
X.
City Target Excursion.
In this City, which, even in cholera seasons, is most heroically
nasty, when the filth in Broadway gets so deep as to stop the stages and
throw the cars off the track, men are sent round by the City to expend
an infinity of labor in hoeing it into symmetrical heaps, like miniature
fortifications. In fact, if plenitude of mud could avail to protect a
town from invading foes, New York might bid the world defiance, for all
the allied powers of all the earth could no more reduce our (in that
case) impregnable City, than the late chivalrous Lord Forth could take
Sebastopol, by lying flat on his back, and calling for his ma to come
and take him home. As the City authorities content themselves with
_erecting_ these picturesque monuments, and do not trouble themselves to
remove the same, but leave them to adorn the landscape, of course the
first rain metamorphoses the fragrant mass from an embryo mountain to a
diminutive lake, almost disgusting enough to make a street contractor
sick. No lady attempts the perilous navigation of our streets, unless
she has been a couple of seasons at Newport or Rockaway, and learned to
swim like a mermaid. And any man who would black his boots in the
morning, would be taken to the Lunatic Asylum before night. A search for
a dry crossing would be a hopeless pilgrimage, and he who would find a
get-over-able-without-getting-your-shoes-full-of-mud street in this
metropolis, would wear his life out in a fruitless exploration, and be
prematurely planted in Greenwood, with his object unattained. In
ordinary times the ladies sweep the sidewalks tolerably clean with their
trailing skirts, but now they seem to have thrown up their contract.
Coming down town the other day in a stage, our reckless driver tried the
depth of one of the above mentioned municipal lakes--the wheels stuck
fast--the vehicle settled into the hopeless depth--one scream from the
ladies--one unanimous curse from the men--one frantic, furious,
ineffectual struggle of the horses, and in another instant we were
floating a hopeless wreck. Every one for himself. I saw one of the
ladies dragged safely out by the hair--men eventually reached the land
in safety, but I rejoiced to see a malignant baby, (which during our
journey had screamed and kicked one half the time, and the other half
persisted in calling me "Daddy," and soiling my shirt-front with its
sticky fingers,) go to the bottom amid a universal chorus of
thanksgiving from the company. Got ashore myself, with my coat spoiled,
my hat minus, my boots full of water, and my whole person "dripping from
the recent flood," like a he-Venus rising from an odoriferous ocean.
As a consequence of my involuntary bath, I have since been afflicted
with a severe toothache, pleading which comfortable and soothing ail, I
obtained leave of absence for a day from the popular establishment where
I have the honor to sell peanuts and pop-corn to the confiding public,
and I resolved to employ the unusual holiday in attending one of the
peculiar institutions of grown-up New York, denominated a "TARGET
SHOOT."
From the incongruous population of the village aforesaid, target
companies spring up with the rapidity and profusion of mushrooms in an
old pasture. In all other cities they are exotics, and never have a
vigorous and healthy existence--here only are they indigenous, and on
Manhattan Island do they flourish in native luxuriance.
The materials are varied--the ingredients sometimes curious--a company
being sometimes composed entirely of journeymen tailors, blacksmiths'
apprentices, master carpenters, clerks, porters, coalheavers,
stagedrivers, candy-peddlers, pop-corn men, or those persevering
individuals who roast perpetual chestnuts on the sidewalk in tin
pans--fire companies, express companies, policemen, gangs of men from
all kinds of mammoth shops--for wherever thirty or forty individuals
work in the same house, they form themselves into a military company,
and once or twice every year go to Hoboken and shoot for whiskey and
other prizes.
When they want to make a full turn-out, the places of any missing
members are filled by extemporaneous volunteers. It was in this capacity
that I proposed to go. In these companies there are always more officers
than men, more epaulettes than muskets--always a big band of music, and
two darkies to carry the target. As to their marching, no two ever step
together, and they always put a tall man by the side of a short one, so
as to have the average length of steps come right. They go forth in the
morning in high spirits, and return at night surly, dusty, discontented,
dilapidated, and drunk. As the target is always carried in triumph
through the streets, and afterward exhibited in the drill-room, the
darkey invariably carries an auger with him, with which explosive weapon
all the best shots are made. Every member has a whiskey-bottle in his
cartridge-box, or a brandy-flask in his knapsack.
As a general thing, they turn their toes in, and are bandy-legged--they
carry their guns over their shoulders at all conceivable angles, and so
little do they know about fire-arms, that probably, if called to load
their muskets in a hurry, two out of three would put their cartridges in
their breeches pockets, and stick their percussion caps on the ends of
their ramrods.
When they fire salute, and mean to all shoot together, the report is so
near simultaneous that a stranger would think they were firing minute
guns. They always select for judges of the shooting, the men who will
give the most whiskey, and make the shortest speeches.