Produced by David Edwards, Christine P. Travers and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This book was produced from scanned images of public
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
has been maintained.
The Table of Content in this file has been created for this project,
the original book did not contain any.]
THE
YOUTH OF JEFFERSON
OR
A CHRONICLE OF COLLEGE SCRAPES
At Williamsburg, In Virginia, A.D. 1764
"Dulce est desipere in loco."
[Illustration: Publisher's arms.]
REDFIELD
110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW-YORK
1854
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
J. S. REDFIELD,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New-York.
TUBBS, NESMITH & TEALL,
Stereotypers, 29 Beekman st.
TABLE OF CONTENT.
To the reader.
Chapter I.
How three persons in this history came by their names.
Chapter II.
Jacques shows the advantage of being led captive by a crook.
Chapter III.
An heiress who wishes to become a man.
Chapter IV.
A poor young man, and a rich young girl.
Chapter V.
In which Sir Asinus makes as ignominious retreat.
Chapter VI.
How Sir Asinus staked his garters against a pistole, and lost.
Chapter VII.
Jacques bestows his paternal advice upon a schoolgirl.
Chapter VIII.
How Sir Asinus invented a new order of philosophers, the apicians.
Chapter IX.
The luck of Jacques.
Chapter X.
Mowbray opens his heart to his new friend.
Chapter XI.
How Hoffland found that he had left his key behind.
Chapter XII.
How Hoffland caught a tartar in the person of miss lucy's lover.
Chapter XIII.
Hoffland makes his will.
Chapter XIV.
Hostile correspondence.
Chapter XV.
Sentiments of a disappointed lover on the subject of women.
Chapter XVI.
Advance of the enemy upon Sir Asinus.
Chapter XVII.
Corydon goes a-courting.
Chapter XVIII.
Going to Roseland.
Chapter XIX.
Hoffland exerts himself to amuse the company.
Chapter XX.
At Roseland, in the evening.
Chapter XXI.
Disgraceful conduct of Sir Asinus.
Chapter XXII.
How Hoffland preferred a glove to a dozen pistoles.
Chapter XXIII.
How Sir Asinus fished for swallows, and what he caught.
Chapter XXIV.
Hoffland is whisked away in a chariot.
Chapter XXV.
Sir Asinus goes to the ball.
Chapter XXVI.
Ernest and Philippa.
Chapter XXVII.
The last chance of Jacques.
Chapter XXVIII.
Sir Asinus intends for Europe.
Chapter XXIX.
The May festival.
Chapter XXX.
Illustrations.
TO THE READER.
This little tale is scarcely worth a preface, and it is only necessary
to say, that it was written as a relaxation after exhausting toil. If
its grotesque incidents beguile an otherwise weary hour with innocent
laughter, the writer's ambition will have been fully gratified.
THE YOUTH OF JEFFERSON.
CHAPTER I.
HOW THREE PERSONS IN THIS HISTORY CAME BY THEIR NAMES.
On a fine May morning in the year 1764,--that is to say, between the
peace at Fontainebleau and the stamp act agitation, which great events
have fortunately no connection with the present narrative,--a young
man mounted on an elegant horse, and covered from head to foot with
lace, velvet, and embroidery, stopped before a small house in the town
or city of Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia.
Negligently delivering his bridle into the hands of a diminutive
negro, the young man entered the open door, ascended a flight of
stairs which led to two or three small rooms above, and turning the
knob, attempted to enter the room opening upon the street.
The door opened a few inches, and then was suddenly closed by a heavy
body thrown against it.
"Back!" cried a careless and jovial voice, "back! base proctor--this
is my castle."
"Open! open!" cried the visitor.
"Never!" replied the voice.
The visitor kicked the door, to the great damage of his Spanish shoes.
"Beware!" cried the hidden voice; "I am armed to the teeth, and rather
than be captured I will die in defence of my rights--namely, liberty,
property, and the pursuit of happiness under difficulties."
"Tom! you are mad."
"What! that voice? not the proctor's!"
"No, no," cried the visitor, kicking again; "Jacquelin's."
"Ah, ah!"
And with these ejaculations the inmate of the chamber was heard
drawing back a table, then the butt of a gun sounded upon the floor,
and the door opened.
The young man who had asserted his inalienable natural rights with so
much fervor was scarcely twenty--at least he had not reached his
majority. He was richly clad, with the exception of an old faded
dressing gown, which fell gracefully like a Roman toga around his
legs; and his face was full of intelligence and careless, somewhat
cynical humor. The features were hard and pointed, the mouth large,
the hair sandy with a tinge of red.
"Ah, my dear forlorn lover!" he cried, grasping his visitor's hand, "I
thought you were that rascally proctor, and was really preparing for a
hand-to-hand conflict, to the death."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir! could I expect anything else, from the way you turned my
knob? You puzzled me."
"So I see," said his visitor; "you had your gun, and were evidently
afraid."
"Afraid? Never!"
"Afraid of your shadow!"
"At least I never would have betrayed fear had I seen you!" retorted
the occupant of the chamber. "You are so much in love that a fly need
not be afraid of you. Poor Jacquelin! poor melancholy Jacques! a
feather would knock you down."
The melancholy Jacques sat down sighing.
"The fact is, my dear fellow," he said, "I am the victim of
misfortune: but who complains? I don't, especially to you, you great
lubber, shut up here in your den, and with no hope or fear on earth,
beyond pardon of your sins of commission at the college, and dread of
the proctor's grasp! You are living a dead life, while I--ah! don't
speak of it. What were you reading?"
"That deplorable Latin song. Salve your ill-humor with it!"
And he handed his visitor, by this time stretched carelessly upon a
lounge, the open volume. He read:
"Orientis partibus
Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
"Hez, sire asne, car chantez
Belle bouche rechignez,
Vous aurez du foin assez,
Et de l'avoine a plantez."
"Good," said the visitor satirically; "that suits you--except it
should be '_occidentis_ partibus:' our Sir Asinus comes from the west.
And by my faith, I think I will in future dub you _Sir Asinus_, in
revenge for calling me--me, the most cheerful of light-hearted
mortals--the 'melancholy Jacques.'"
"Come, come!" said the gentleman threatened with this sobriquet,
"that's too bad, Jacques."
"_Jacques!_ You persist in calling me _Jacques_, just as you persist
in calling Belinda, _Campana in die_--_Bell in day_. What a deplorable
witticism! I could find a better in a moment. Stay," he added, "I have
discovered it already."
"What is it, pray, most sapient Jacques?"
"Listen, most long-eared Sir Asinus."
And the young man read once again;
"Hez, sire asne, car chantez,
BELLE BOUCHE rechignez;
Vous aurez du foin assez,
Et de l'avoine a plantez."
"Well," said his friend, "now that you have mangled that French with
your wretched pronunciation, please explain how my lovely
Belinda--come, don't sigh and scowl because I say 'my,' for you know
it's all settled--tell me where in these lines you find her name."
"In the second," sighed Jacques.
"Oh yes!--bah!"
"There you are sneering. You make a miserable Latin pun, by which you
translate Belinda into _Campana in die_--Bell in day--and when I
improve your idea, making it really good, you sneer."
"Really, now!--well, I don't say!"
"Belle-bouche! Could any thing be finer? 'Pretty-mouth!' And then the
play upon _Bel_, in Belinda, by the word _Belle_. Positively, I will
in future call her nothing else. Belle-bouche--pretty-mouth! Ah!"
And the unfortunate lover stretched languidly upon the lounge, studied
the ceiling, and sighed piteously.
His friend burst into a roar of laughter. Jacques--for let us adopt
the sobriquets all round--turned negligently and said:
"Pray what are you braying at, Sir Asinus?"
"At your sighs."
"Did I sigh?"
"Yes, portentously!"
"I think you are mistaken."
"No!"
"I never sigh."
And the melancholy Jacques uttered a sigh which was enough to shatter
all his bulk.
The consequence was that Sir Asinus burst into a second roar of
laughter louder than before, and said:
"Come, my dear Jacques, unbosom! You have been to see----"
"Belle-bouche--Belle-bouche: but I am not in love with her."
"Oh no--of course not," said his friend, laughing ironically.
Jacques sighed.
"She don't like me," he said forlornly.
"She's very fond of me though," said his friend. "Only yesterday--but
I am mad to be talking about it."
With which words Sir Asinus turned away his head to hide his
mischievous and triumphant smile.
Poor Jacques looked more forlorn than ever; which circumstance seemed
to afford his friend extreme delight.
"Why not pay your addresses to Philippa, Jacques my boy?" he said
satirically; "there's no chance for you with Belle-bouche, as you call
her."
"Philippa? No, no!" sighed Jacques; "she's too brilliant."
"For you?"
"Even for me--me, the prince of wits, and coryphaeus of coxcombs: yes,
yes!"
And the melancholy Jacques sighed again, and looked around him with
the air of a man whose last hope on earth has left him.
His friend chokes down a laugh; and stretching himself in the bright
spring sunshine pouring through the window, says with a smile:
"Come, make a clean breast of it, old fellow. You were there to-day?"
"Yes, yes."
"Have a pleasant time?"
"Can't say I did."
"Were there any visitors?"
"A dozen--you understand the description of visitors."
"No; what sort?"
"Fops in embryo, and aspirants after wit-laurels."
"It is well you went--they must have been thrown in the shade. For
you, my dear Jacques, are undeniably the most perfect fop, and the
greatest wit--in your own opinion--of this pleasant village of
Devilsburg."
"No, no," replied his companion with well-affected modesty; "I a fop!
I a pretender to wit? No, no, my dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice:
I am the simplest of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was
speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I
seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here
disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with
you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit!
Philippa too was a pastoral queen--in silk and jewels--and around them
they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining
grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an
aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious
opinions caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant school-boy.
The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous, and I had no opportunity
to whisper so much as a single word into my dear Belle-bouche's ear.
Ah! how lovely she looked! By heaven, I'll go to-morrow and request
her to designate some form of death for me to die--all for her sake!"
With which words the forlorn Jacques gazed languidly through the
window.
At the same moment a bell was heard ringing in the direction of the
College; and yawning first luxuriously, the young man rose.
"Lecture, by Jove!" he said.
"And you, unfortunate victim, must attend," said his companion.
"Yes. You remain here?"
"To the end."
"Still resisting?"
"To the death!"
"Very well," said Jacques, putting on his cocked hat, which was
ornamented with a magnificent feather. "I half envy you; but duty
calls--I must go."
"If you see Ned Carter, or Tom Randolph of Tuckahoe, tell them to come
round."
"To comfort you? Poor unfortunate prisoner!"
"No, most sapient Jacques: fortunately I do not need comfort as you
do."
"I want comfort?"
"Yes; there you are sighing: that 'heigho!' was dreadful."
"Scoffer!"
"No; I am your rival."
"Very well; I warn you that I intend to push the siege; take care of
your interests."
"I'm not afraid."
"I am going to see Belle-bouche again to-morrow.
"Faith, I'll be there, then."
"Good; war is opened then--the glove thrown?"
"War to the death! Good-by, publican!"
"Farewell, sinner!"
And with these words the melancholy Jacques departed.