noticed one unvarying peculiarity of furniture--there were in no single
parlor any two chairs of the same pattern--but they were of all shapes,
sizes, dimensions, capacities, and degree of discomfort--from the
damask-covered to the unvarnished, which looked as if they had strayed
in from the kitchen. The effect of this arrangement is to impress a
stranger with the idea that the owner of the establishment has been
compelled to furnish his drawing-room from the chaotic assortment of a
second-hand furniture store.
And, notwithstanding the recent election of a Maine Law Governor, in
nearly every house, wines, brandy, punches, "hot stuff," and various
inebriating drinks abounded, and every guest was compelled, on pain of
slighting his host, to partake--the inevitable result was, that before
night, many a youth, whose head might have withstood the attack of a
single bottle, not being able to endure a twenty hours' siege, gave in
dead-drunk--while others of harder heads and stronger stomachs, reeled
from parlor to parlor, proclaiming the obituary of their respectability
and decency, by exhibiting the noisy clamor, or idiotic gibber of
beastly drunkenness, to the refined and polished ladies of "our best
society"--in many cases rewarding the pseudo-hospitality of their fair
entertainers by liberally sprinkling the marble steps to their noble
mansions, with an unclean baptism from their aristocratic stomachs.
Kept Sandie awake until we entered a hack, and then let him relapse into
a refreshing slumber, which continued until we reached home--entered the
parlor, and took a seat in a corner, from which, unobserved, I could get
a fair view of the various performances.
Every young lady is skilled in music, and an "elegant player" upon that
tortured instrument, the piano--each can sing an assortment of "glees"
from beautiful operas--transposing her voice into a vocal cork-screw,
and opening her mouth so that, as a general thing, you can see those
unmentionable articles, which are used, in fireman's phraseology, to
"light up the hose"--and these songs, these delectable morsels of
harmony, varied by such extemporaneous discords as the agitation or
forgetfulness of the moment may occasion, are always "executed" for the
entertainment of evening visitors.
Mrs. Griggs' daughters are no exception to this general rule.
First call-bell rings--enter bashful young man--evidently his first
attempt at a fashionable visit--came in with his hat in his hand--put
it behind him to make his bow--dropped it--tried to pick it up--stepped
in it--put his foot through it--fell over it--and in his frantic
struggles to recover himself, burnt his coat, fractured his pantaloons,
untied his cravat, demolished his shirt collar, and was finally borne
away to the hall by his sympathizing friends; minus his patent
moustache, one-half of which was afterwards found in Laura Matilda's
scrap-book and the rest discovered in the coal-scuttle.
Crowd of young men came in together, (it is customary here, for young
gentlemen to club their funds, hire a carriage by the hour, and go
calling in a drove; stopping at every house where one of the company
happens to be acquainted; so that when a lady keeps open house, for
every person whom she knows or desires to see, a dozen unknown
individuals annoy her by their uninvited presence,)--every one asked the
young ladies to sing, and the young ladies _did_ sing--generally opera,
but sometimes varying the entertainment with the touching ballad of "Old
Dog Tray," or the graceful and genteel melody, "Jordan is a Hard Road."
On this occasion the programme was somewhat as follows:--Gent. No. 1 was
treated with a "gem from Norma"--No. 2, a Grand March--No. 3, "Old Dog
Tray"--No. 4, "Prima Donna Waltz"--No. 5, "Norma"--No. 6, "Jordan"--No.
7, "Norma"--No. 8, "Prima Donna," again--No. 9, "Norma"--No. 10,
"Norma"--No. 11, "Dog Tray"--No. 12, "Norma," &c.; "Norma" being always
ahead, and evidently a favorite of the field.
I have no doubt that in the whole city, yesterday, "Norma" must have
been entreated to "hear my prayer," at least fifteen thousand distinct
times, by probably five thousand imploring females--and these harmonious
supplications, if blended and consolidated into one powerful, entreating
scream, would have been sufficient to raise the ancient Druids from
their graves, only to find that, although the final trump had not
sounded, it was by an imitation by no means to be despised, that they
had been fooled into a premature resurrection.
As evening came on, the guests who came showed signs of the day's
indulgences--I was particularly edified by the movements of three of
them, whom I noted with peculiar care--the first shook hands cordially
with the servant girl, called her "Mrs. Griggs," wished her many happy
returns, and on being told of his error, made an humble apology to the
piano stool, and immediately sat down in a spittoon.
The next made his bow to the hat-stand in the hall, swaggered into the
room, called for a brandy "smash"--tried to rectify his mistake by
begging pardon of Mrs. G. for mistaking her parlor for a bar-room, and
assured her, if he had done anything he was sorry for, he was
exceedingly glad of it.
The third stumbled on to the sofa, and, after steadily contemplating his
boots with much satisfaction for fifteen minutes, he picked up a Chinese
fire-screen, and with an irresistible drunken sobriety, he tried to
decipher the mysterious characters inscribed thereon, at the same time
calling the attention of Mrs. G. to the capital story in "the Magtober
number of Harper's Octazine."
Refreshments--first man often essaying to wipe his nose with his
umbrella, which he afterwards placed in the music rack--poured his
coffee into his ice-cream, put his cake and sandwich into its place,
stirred them up with a tea-spoon, and tried to drink--the effort
resulting in a signal failure, he passed his cup to the chandelier for
"a little more sugar."
The next spilled his wine in Laura Matilda's neck, begged she wouldn't
apologize, and offered to wipe it with his pocket handkerchief--by
which appellation he designated the door mat, which he had brought in
with him from the hall.
The other, after carefully depositing his plate on the floor, dropped
his gloves into his saucer, and tried to put his over-coat into his vest
pocket, made a great attempt to eat his cup of coffee with his knife and
fork, and then resolutely set about picking his teeth with the
nut-cracker.
After some complicated man[oe]uvring, they bowed themselves out as best
they could--but the last one, having mistaken the door and gone down
cellar, instead of out-doors, was found next morning reposing
complacently in the coal-hole.
In fact, New York, every New Year's Eve, goes to bed with a huge brick
in its municipal hat, and, as the legitimate effect of such
indiscretion, awakes next morning with a tremendous corporate
headache--"Young America," for once, is unstarched in appearance; and in
deportment, meek as the sucking dove.
XXI.
Amusement for the Million--A 2.40 Sleigh-ride.
Sleigh-riding is an amusement to which I was never partial, for I cannot
appreciate the pleasure there is, in a man's deliberately freezing his
feet, and congealing his fingers into digital icicles; and for my own
part unless there was some unusual charm beyond the ride itself, I would
as soon think of seeking an evening's amusement by sitting a given
number of hours on a frozen mill pond with my pedal extremities stuck
through a hole in the ice into the water below. And in the city there
are even more discomforts attending this popular penance than in the
open country.
The man who would trustingly endeavor to draw a sherry cobbler out of a
clam-shell, make a gin sling from cold potatoes, lard oil from railroad
spikes, or a mint-julep out of sea weed and chestnut burs--or hopefully
essay the concoction of a satisfactory oyster stew from
jack-knife-handles and bootlegs, is the only person I can conceive of,
sanguine enough to anticipate an evening's pleasure from a city
sleigh-ride.
I can readily conceive that in the country, give a man a fast team, a
light sleigh, a clear sky, a straight road, a pretty girl, plenty of
snow, and a good tavern with a bright ball-room and capital music
waiting at his journey's end, the frigid amusement may be made
endurable--possibly, to a man enthusiastic enough to seek for pleasure
with the thermometer at zero, even desirable.
But in New York, we can't get an unadulterated country sleigh-ride, any
more than we can get genuine country milk--neither will bear
importation. In both cases some unbargained-for dash of cold water
interferes with the purity of the article, and nips in the bud our
delusive anticipations.
The conditions necessary to a thorough-bred sleigh-ride can never be
present in a great city. In the first place, the snow (an item of some
importance) cannot even reach the earth unsullied; it is met in its
quiet journey by some aspiring chimney, some impertinent roof, or
ambitious spire, all dust-covered and smoke-begrimed, or by some other
of the spontaneous nuisances indigenous to a city, and is robbed of its
maiden purity, as its first welcome to the lower world--then, mixed with
ashes, soot, and pulverulent nastiness of every sort--tainted with
dainty perfumes of gas, garbage, markets and slaughter-houses, besides
all the volatile filth of six hundred thousand perspiring bipeds (not
mentioning hogs, horses, rats, dogs, and jackasses), it comes from upper
air to us, expectant citylings--and even then we have to take it
second-hand, for it is stopped in its airy transit by countless awnings,
the tops of innumerable houses, stages, drays, and hackney-coaches, and
the hats and outside apparel of the peripatetic multitude--from all
which meddling mediums, it is transferred to the cold charity of the
stony pavement, where the first installment, in sorrow for its sullied
purity, dissolves itself in discontented tears, and sulkily seeks, by
some narrow down-hill track, its grave--the common sewer.
But a persevering snow-storm, which gives its whole attention to the
work, sometimes succeeds in covering the streets of Gotham with a
pepper-colored mixture, which we accept as snow.
When the air is cold, this peculiar substance cuts up into a kind of
greyish sand, as much like real snow, as wild geese are like wooden
legs--and when the weather is moist, it degenerates into a muddy,
malicious mixture, in which the city flounders, until a drenching rain
dilutes the mass into a coffee-colored flood, which sneaks into rivers
through back lanes and dirty alleys, leaving the thoroughfares once more
practicable. One week last winter eight inches of snow set our city
people crazy, and turned Broadway into a horse purgatory. From
Bloomingdale to the Battery, the street was filled with sleighs,
cutters, pungs, jumpers and every variety of sled, all full of
screeching, screaming men, women and children, in different stages of
frigidity and voluntary discomfort, but all seeming, by their actions,
to reiterate the cockney sentiment--"Wat's the hodds, long's you're
'appy?"
Every man who could hire or buy a transient interest in a string of
bells and a horse, jackass or big dog, went in for an independent ride
on his own hook--and those who could not compass this luxury, piled
pell-mell into the stage sleighs, a hundred in a heap, each bound to
have a sixpence-worth of slushy, slippery, horse locomotion.
At this crisis, Sandie proposed to me to join a company who were going
to undertake an evening's pleasure, calculating to ride through the
city, see the sights, go out of town to a ball, and dance till morning.
Agreed to go, put on my tightest boots, and got ready--time came, sleigh
arrived, got in, received a promiscuous introduction to seventeen young
ladies, by the light of a street lamp. Couldn't of course distinguish
their faces so as to tell them apart, and so was continually calling
Miss Jones, Miss Snifkins; Miss Loodle, Miss Vanderpants; and addressing
Miss Faubob and Miss Wiggins by each other's names; which, as they were
ready to scratch each other's eyes out for jealousy, and hadn't been on
speaking terms for a year and a half, made the matter decidedly
pleasant.
Found a place for my feet among the miscellaneous pedal assortment at
the bottom--sat down, held on with both hands, and prepared to enjoy
myself. After a great deal of whipping of the spirited horses, and some
curiously emphatic observations by the driver, we got under way. Driver
(an enthusiastic Hibernian with one black eye) took the middle of the
street, resolved to give the road to nothing--met a young gent in a
cutter, _he_ didn't turn out, _we_ didn't turn out, collision ensued,
young man got the worst, his hat was smashed, and his delicate person
left in a snow-bank--his horse started, hit against a lamp-post, then
ran away, distributing the ruins of the cutter all along the road,
leaving a piece at every corner and telegraph pole, until there wasn't
enough left in any one spot to make a rat-trap--finally dashing through
the show window of a confectioner's shop and being brought to a
stand-still by the shafts sticking in a soda fountain.
Met a charcoal cart, run against us and distributed a shower of
pulverized nigritude over the company, to the great damage of the clean
linen of the gentlemen, and the adornments generally of the ladies,
especially those little white rosettes which they had tied on the backs
of their heads, and dignified with the fabulous title of bonnets.
Met a stage sleigh, got jammed with us--and during the three minutes
preceding our violent extrication, I had leisure to take particular
notice of the inmates.
Now, even in ordinary times, any kind of an omnibus is a purely
democratic institution, but an omnibus sleigh containing ordinarily,
anywhere from fifty to a hundred and twenty people, is a most effectual
leveller of aristocratic distinctions.
In this particular vehicle, a fashionably dressed Miss, had from
necessity, taken her seat in the lap of a Bowery boy, who, in his
anxiety to make her comfortable, had put one arm round her waist, and
one hand into her muff.
An up-town merchant was carrying a washerwoman's baby, while a dandy, in
patent leather boots, was holding her bundle of dirty linen.
A news-boy, stealing a ride, was smoking a Connecticut cigar, and
puffing the smoke into the faces of the incongruous assembly.
A negro woman was sustaining her position on the edge of the slippery
craft, by holding on with one arm round the neck of a clergyman in a
blue cloak with a brass hook and eye at the neck, who had a basket of
potatoes with a leg of mutton in it, which a sailor was using for a
shield to protect him from the shower of snow balls, fired by the boys
on the corner--naughty boys--one hit one of our ladies on the head, she
made a very pretty faint, but was soon revived by a piece of ice which I
slipped down her back--one blacked the driver's other eye, and a
particularly and solidly unpleasant one, hit Sandie in the mouth and
waked him up.
Began to be sensible of the pleasures of my situation--felt as if my
boots were full of ice water, my nose a Croton water pipe, and my
fingers carrot-shaped icicles. Each leg seemed a perpendicular iceberg
my feet good sized snow-drifts, my head a frozen pumpkin, and the inside
of me felt as if I had made my supper on a cast-iron garden-fence.
As, however, these peculiar but unpleasant sensations are inseparable
from the sleigh-riding performances, I tried to warm myself by imagining
volcanoes and conflagrations; and, indulging in a hope of hot brandy and
water at my journey's end, endeavoured to bear my trials like a frozen
martyr, as I was.
Got to the hotel at last, waiters rescued us and got us into the house,
which was full of parties ahead of us. Burnt the skin off my throat
trying to thaw my congealed digestive apparatus, by drinking brandy and
water boiling hot; ladies imbibed hot gin sling all round "_ad
libitum_," gentlemen ditto, and "_Da Capo_."
Ready for a dance; got into the ball-room, which was so full
already that each cotillon had only a space about as big as a
pickle-tub--"balance four" and you stepped on somebody's heels and tore
off the skirt of some lady's dress--"forward two" and you poked your
nose into the whiskers of the gentleman opposite, and felt his neck-tie
in your eye, and "promenade all" was the signal for an animated but
irregular fancy dance upon the toes of the bystanders.
But this quadrille was voted by most of our ladies to be altogether too
antiquated and energetic--the truth is, city dancing is no more like a
country jig than a dead march is like a hornpipe--in the one case the
ladies slide about with a die-away air, as if one lively step would
annihilate their delicate frames; and in the other, they dance, as if
they were made of watch-springs and india rubber.
The only way to get an ordinary city girl really interested in a dance,
is to have some moustachoed puppy put his arm round her waist, hug her
close up to him, spin her round the room till her head swims.
But the dancing couldn't last for ever, and at length we had to prepare
for the ride home.
Towards morning the music got tired, the leading violinist was fiddling
on one string on the wrong side of the bridge, and the ophicleide man,
unable from sheer exhaustion to convey his potables to his mouth, was
pouring them into his instrument, which he had regaled with four mugs of
ale and a brandy smash, and the little fifer, with his foot in the big
end of the French horn, was wasting his precious breath in trying to
coax a quick step out of a drumstick, which he mistook for a flageolet.
Compelled to stop dancing. Ladies went to a private room and repaired
their damaged wardrobe with pins and other extemporaneous contrivances,
known of them alone. Gentlemen put on what hats and great-coats the
preceding parties had left, paid the bill--woke up the driver, and all
started for home.
Shower came on, making the ladies look like damaged kaleidoscopes, and
taking the starch out of the gentlemen's collars--the gum out of their
hats, and the color out of their whiskers.
Upset--females got scattered round loose (horses didn't run away, not a
bit of it), one young lady had her foot in my overcoat pocket, and both
hands clinched in my hair--got out of the snarl at last, and found that
I had traps enough hanging to me to manufacture a small-sized new
married couple--a set of false teeth in my fur glove--two pairs of
patent moustaches, with the springs broken, in my hat-band, half a head
of glossy, ringleted hair in my button-hole, a lace collar hanging to my
pantaloons, and my boots full of puff combs.
Righted up at last, hurried over mile-stones, curb-stones, and
pebble-stones, till we reached the city--took the young ladies home, and
was immediately after arrested by a moist watchman for being a
suspicious character, and only identified by my friends in the morning,
just in time to keep my name out of the papers.
Am completely disgusted with sleigh-riding--the enjoyment is purely
imaginary, and the expense not at all so. Excitement ain't pleasure, any
more than sawdust pudding is roast turkey--and then too, the girls are
so different--girls here are such touch-me-not creatures, that no one
understanding the nature of the animal would venture on a kiss, unless
he wanted to get his mouth full of magnesia and carmine; fuss, feathers,
furbelows and flummery, will never make a _woman_ out of any of these,
until a new saddle and pair of gilt spurs will transform a sucking-calf
into a race-horse.
A modern belle stands no kind of a chance with a country beauty--pale
cheeks and dingy complexions may be _alleviated_ by chalk and
vermillion; but artificial hues are always evanescent, nature alone
paints _cheeks_ in fast colors. Sitting up late and guzzling brandy
punches won't put the same kind of crimson in the face that is placed
there by getting up in the morning, feeding the chickens, chasing the
pigs out of the garden, and drinking sweet milk for breakfast. And not
only in looks do they differ, but they
"have yet
Some tasks to learn, some frailties to forget."
An affected giggle won't pass muster for a hearty laugh--superficial
boarding-school "finishing" is not education, for bad spelling will
show, though the pen be held by jewelled fingers--and bad French, bad
Italian, and worse English, are miserable substitutes for conversation,
though uttered by the fairest lips that ever lisped in fashionable
drawl.
It is true that in the circle of my limited acquaintance I have the
honor to number some ladies whose unaffected manners, natural grace, and
true politeness place even my usual awkwardness at perfect ease, while
their superior intelligence causes me to feel most deeply my extensive
_non-acquirements_--but to every one of these I have met twenty who,
although they could dance, sing, play the piano; paint on velvet, or
work in worsted, flowers unknown in botany, and animals to which
ordinary natural historians are strangers; couldn't write an
intelligible English note, or read anything more difficult than easy
words in two syllables; and if told that wheat bread is made out of
kidney potatoes wouldn't know the difference.
I repudiate all this tribe of diluted milk-and-water misses, and should
I ever feel matrimonially inclined shall commission some country friend
to choose me a wife who can darn stockings, and make pumpkin pies
anyhow, and hoe and chop cord-wood, if in any case the subscriber
shouldn't be able to meet current family expenses.
XXII.
Cupid in Cold Weather.--Valentine's Day.
In accordance with some heathen custom, the origin of which is unknown
to moderns, a certain day is selected in the year, when people send
hosts of anonymous letters to other people, generally supposed to be on
the subject of love, but which are not unfrequently missives containing
angry, malicious, or insulting allusions. This is a day to rejoice the
hearts of the penny postmen, who always get their money before they give
up the documents. This glorious day is, as most people are aware, the
fourteenth of February--time when young ladies expect to receive
sentimental poetry by the cord, done up in scented envelopes, written
upon gilt-edged paper, and blazoned round with cupids, hearts, darts,
bows and arrows, torches, flames, birds, flowers, and all the other
paraphernalia of those before-folks-laughed-at-but-in-private-learned
-by-heart epistles known as "Valentines."
A time when young gentlemen let off their excess of love by
lack-a-daisical missives to their chosen fair; praising in anonymous
verses their to-other-eyes-undiscoverable-but-to-their-vision-
brilliantly-resplendent charms--poetizing red hair into "auburn
ringlets,"--making skim-milk-colored eyes, "orbs, the hue of heaven's
own blue,"--causing scraggy, freckled necks to become "fair and graceful
as Juno's swans," and deifying squat, dumpy young ladies into
"first-rate angels."
A time when innumerable people take unauthorised liberties with the
name of a venerable Roman, long since defunct, laying themselves
under all sorts of obligations, payable in friendship,--pledging
any amount of love, and running up tremendous bills of affections,
making no solid man responsible therefor, but only signing the
all-over-christendom-once-a-year-universally-forged cognomen
"Valentine."
Most of these communications are amatory, some sickish, some nauseating,
some satirical, some caustic, some abusive; for it seems to be a time
which many a man takes advantage of to revenge some fancied slight from
scornful lady, by sending her one of those scandalous nuisances,
misnamed "comic Valentines;" because he thinks there will be so many of
the foul birds upon the wing that his own carrion fledgling cannot be
traced to its filthy nest.
Bull Dogge, who is looking over my shoulder, remarks, that the man who
would insult a lady, by sending an anonymous letter, would steal the
pennies from a blind man, and then coax his dog away to sell to the
butcher boys.
And Bull Dogge is right.