But to return to the Hall. It is pleasantly situated on the banks of a

sweet pastoral stream; not so near town as to invite an inundation of

idle acquaintance, who come to lounge away an afternoon, nor so distant

as to render it an absolute deed of charity or friendship to perform the

journey. It is one of the oldest habitations in the country, and was

built by my cousin Christopher’s grandfather, who was also mine by the

mother’s side, in his latter days, to form, as the old gentleman

expressed himself, “a snug retreat, where he meant to sit himself down

in his old days, and be comfortable for the rest of his life.” He was at

this time a few years over four-score; but this was a common saying of

his, with which he usually closed his airy speculations. One would have

thought, from the long vista of years through which he contemplated many

of his projects, that the good man had forgot the age of the patriarchs

had long since gone by, and calculated living a century longer at least.

He was for a considerable time in doubt, on the question of roofing his

house with shingles or slates: shingles would not last above thirty

years! but then they were much cheaper than slates. He settled the

matter by a kind of compromise, and determined to build with shingles

first; “and when they are worn out,” said the old gentleman,

triumphantly, “‘twill be time enough to replace them with more durable

materials!” But his contemplated improvements surpassed everything; and

scarcely had he a roof over his head when he discovered a thousand

things to be arranged before he could “sit down comfortably.” In the

first place, every tree and bush on the place was cut down or grubbed up

by the roots, because they were not placed to his mind; and a vast

quantity of oaks, chestnuts, and elms, set out in clumps, and rows, and

labyrinths, which, he observed, in about five-and-twenty or thirty years

at most, would yield a very tolerable shade, and, moreover, would shut

out all the surrounding country; for he was determined, he said, to have

all his views on his own land, and be beholden to no man for a prospect.

This, my learned readers will perceive, was something very like the idea

of Lorenzo de Medici, who gave as a reason for preferring one of his

seats above all the others, “that all the ground within view of it was

his own;” now, whether my grandfather ever heard of the Medici is more

than I can say; I rather think, however, from the characteristic

originality of the Cocklofts, that it was a whimwham of his own

begetting. Another odd notion of the old gentleman was to blow up a

large bed of rocks for the purpose of having a fish-pond, although the

river ran at about one hundred yards’ distance from the house, and was

well stored with fish; but there was nothing, he said, like having

things to one’s self. So at it he went, with all the ardor of a

projector who has just hit upon some splendid and useless whimwham. As

he proceeded, his views enlarged; he would have a summer-house built on

the margin of the fish-pond; he would have it surrounded with elms and

willows; and he would have a cellar dug under it, for some

incomprehensible purpose, which remains a secret to this day.[66] “In a

few years,” he observed, “it would be a delightful piece of wood and

water, where he might ramble on a summer’s noon, smoke his pipe, and

enjoy himself in his old days;” thrice honest old soul!—he died of an

apoplexy in his ninetieth year, just as he had begun to blow up the

fish-pond.

Let no one ridicule the whimwhams of my grandfather. If—and of this

there is no doubt, for wise men have said it—if life be but a dream,

happy is he who can make the most of the illusion.

Since my grandfather’s death the Hall has passed through the hands of a

succession of true old cavaliers, like himself, who gloried in observing

the golden rules of hospitality; which, according to the Cockloft

principle, consists in giving a guest the freedom of the house, cramming

him with beef and pudding, and, if possible, laying him under the table

with prime port, claret, or London Particular. The mansion appears to

have been consecrated to the jolly god, and teems with monuments sacred

to conviviality. Every chest of drawers, clothes-press, and cabinet is

decorated with enormous China punch-bowls, which Mrs. Cockloft has

paraded with much ostentation, particularly in her favorite red damask

bed-chamber, in which a projector might, with great satisfaction,

practice his experiments on fleets, diving-bells, and submarine boats.

I have before mentioned Cousin Christopher’s profound veneration for

antique furniture; in consequence of which the old hall is furnished in

much the same style with the house in town. Old-fashioned bedsteads,

with high testers; massy clothes-presses, standing most majestically on

eagles’ claws, and ornamented with a profusion of shining brass handles,

clasps, and hinges; and around the grand parlor are solemnly arranged a

set of high-backed, leather-bottomed, massy mahogany chairs, that always

remind me of the formal, long-waisted belles who flourished in stays and

buckram about the time they were in fashion.

If I may judge from their height, it was not the fashion for gentlemen

in those days to loll over the back of a lady’s chair, and whisper in

her ear what—might be as well spoken aloud; at least, they must have

been Patagonians to have effected it. Will Wizard declares that he saw a

little fat German gallant attempt once to whisper Miss Barbara Cockloft

in this manner; but being unluckily caught by the chin, he dangled and

kicked about for half a minute before he could find terra firma—but Will

is much addicted to hyperbole, by reason of his having been a great

traveller.

But what the Cocklofts most especially pride themselves upon, is the

possession of several family portraits, which exhibit as honest a set of

square, portly, well-fed looking gentlemen and gentlewomen as ever grew

and flourished under the pencil of a Dutch painter. Old Christopher, who

is a complete genealogist, has a story to tell of each, and dilates with

copious eloquence on the great services of the general in large sleeves,

during the old French war; and on the piety of the lady in blue velvet,

who so attentively peruses her book, and was once so celebrated for a

beautiful arm; but, much as I reverence my illustrious ancestors, I find

little to admire in their biography, except my cousin’s excellent

memory; which is most provokingly retentive of every uninteresting

particular.

My allotted chamber in the Hall is the same that was occupied in days of

yore by my honored uncle John. The room exhibits many memorials which

recall to my remembrance the solid excellence and amiable eccentricities

of that gallant old lad. Over the mantel-piece hangs the portrait of a

young lady dressed in a flaring, long-waisted, blue silk gown;

be-flowered, and be-furbelowed, and be-cuffed, in a most abundant

manner; she holds in one hand a book, which she very complaisantly

neglects, to turn and smile on the spectator; in the other a flower,

which I hope, for the honor of Dame Nature, was the sole production of

the painter’s imagination; and a little behind her is something tied to

a blue ribbon, but whether a little dog, a monkey, or a pigeon, must be

left to the judgment of future commentators. This little damsel,

tradition says, was my uncle John’s third flame; and he would infallibly

have run away with her, could he have persuaded her into the measure;

but at that time ladies were not quite so easily run away with as

Columbine; and my uncle, failing in the point, took a lucky thought, and

with great gallantry ran off with her picture, which he conveyed in

triumph to Cockloft Hall, and hung up in his bed-chamber as a monument

of his enterprising spirit. The old gentleman prided himself mightily on

this chivalric maneuver; always chuckled, and pulled up his stock when

he contemplated the picture, and never related the exploit without

winding up with—“I might, indeed, have carried off the original, had I

chose to dangle a little longer after her chariot-wheels; for, to do the

girl justice, I believe she had a liking for me; but I always scorned to

coax, my boy—always—’twas my way.” My uncle John was of a happy

temperament; I would give half I am worth for his talent at

self-consolation.

The Miss Cocklofts have made several spirited attempts to introduce

modern furniture into the Hall, but with very indifferent success.

Modern style has always been an object of great annoyance to honest

Christopher, and is ever treated by him with sovereign contempt, as an

upstart intruder. It is a common observation of his, that your

old-fashioned, substantial furniture bespeaks the respectability of

one’s ancestors, and indicates that the family has been used to hold up

its head for more than the present generation; whereas the fragile

appendages of modern style seemed to be emblems of mushroom gentility,

and, to his mind, predicted that the family dignity will moulder away

and vanish with its transient finery. The same whimwham makes him averse

to having his house surrounded with poplars; which he stigmatizes as

mere upstarts, just fit to ornament the shingle palaces of modern

gentry, and characteristic of the establishments they decorate. Indeed,

so far does he carry his veneration for antique trumpery, that he can

scarcely see the dust brushed from its resting-place on the

old-fashioned testers, or a gray-bearded spider dislodged from its

ancient inheritance, without groaning: and I once saw him in a transport

of passion on Jeremy’s knocking down a mouldering martin-coop with his

tennis-ball, which had been set up in the latter days of my grandfather.

Another object of his peculiar affection is an old English cherry-tree,

which leans against the corner of the Hall; and whether the house

supports it, or it supports the house, would be, I believe, a question

of some difficulty to decide. It is held sacred by friend Christopher

because he planted and reared it himself, and had once well-nigh broken

his neck by a fall from one of its branches. This is one of his favorite

stories, and there is reason to believe, that if the tree was out of the

way, the old gentleman would forget the whole affair—which would be a

great pity. The old tree has long since ceased bearing, and is

exceedingly infirm; every tempest robs it of a limb; and one would

suppose from the lamentations of my old friend, on such occasions, that

he had lost one of his own. He often contemplates it in a

half-melancholy, half-moralizing humor—“together,” he says, “have we

flourished, and together shall we wither away; a few years, and both our

heads will be laid low, and, perhaps, my mouldering bones may, one day

or other, mingle with the dust of the tree I have planted.” He often

fancies, he says, that it rejoices to see him when he revisits the Hall,

and that its leaves assume a brighter verdure, as if to welcome his

arrival. How whimsically are our tenderest feelings assailed! At one

time the old tree had obtruded a withered branch before Miss Barbara’s

window, and she desired her father to order the gardener to saw it off.

I shall never forget the old man’s answer, and the look that accompanied

it. “What,” cried he, “lop off the limbs of my cherry-tree in its old

age? Why do you not cut off the gray locks of your poor old father?”

Do my readers yawn at this long family detail? They are welcome to throw

down our work, and never resume it again. I have no care for such

ungratified spirits, and will not throw away a thought on one of them.

Full often have I contributed to their amusement, and have not I a

right, for once, to consult my own? Who is there that does not fondly

turn, at times, to linger round those scenes which were once the haunt

of his boyhood, ere his heart grew heavy and his head waxed gray; and to

dwell with fond affection on the friends who have twined themselves

round his heart—mingled in all his enjoyments—contributed to all his

felicities? If there be any who cannot relish these enjoyments, let them

despair; for they have been so soiled in their intercourse with the

world, as to be incapable of tasting some of the purest pleasures that

survive the happy period of youth.

To such as have not yet lost the rural feeling, I address this simple

family picture; and in the honest sincerity of a warm heart, I invite

them to turn aside from bustle, care, and toil, to tarry with me for a

season, in the hospitable mansion of the Cocklofts.

* * * * *

[I was really apprehensive, on reading the following effusion of Will

Wizard, that he still retained that pestilent hankering after puns of

which we lately convicted him. He, however, declares that he is fully

authorized by the example of the most popular critics and wits of the

present age, whose manner and matter he has closely, and he flatters

himself successfully, copied in the subsequent essay.]

THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE.

BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.

The uncommon healthiness of the season, occasioned, as several learned

physicians assure me, by the universal prevalence of the influenza, has

encouraged the chieftain of our dramatic corps to marshal his forces,

and to commence the campaign at a much earlier day than usual. He has

been induced to take the field thus suddenly, I am told, by the invasion

of certain foreign marauders, who pitched their tents at Vauxhall Garden

during the warm months; and taking advantage of his army being disbanded

and dispersed in summer quarters, committed sad depredations upon the

borders of his territories, carrying off a considerable portion of his

winter harvest, and murdering some of his most distinguished characters.

It is true, these hardy invaders have been reduced to great extremity by

the late heavy rains, which injured and destroyed much of their camp

equipage, besides spoiling the best part of their wardrobe. Two cities,

a triumphal car, and a new moon for Cinderella, together with the

barber’s boy who was employed every night to powder and make it shine

white, have been entirely washed away, and the sea has become very wet

and mouldy; insomuch that great apprehensions are entertained that it

will never be dry enough for use. Add to this, the noble County Paris

had the misfortune to tear his corduroy breeches, in the scuffle with

Romeo, by reason of the tomb being very wet, which occasioned him to

slip; and he and his noble rival possessing but one pair of satin ones

between them, were reduced to considerable shifts to keep up the dignity

of their respective houses. In spite of these disadvantages, and the

untoward circumstances, they continued to enact most intrepidly;

performing with much ease and confidence, inasmuch as they were seldom

pestered with an audience to criticise and put them out of countenance.

It is rumored that the last heavy shower absolutely dissolved the

company, and that our manager has nothing further to apprehend from that

quarter.

The theatre opened on Wednesday last, with great eclat, as we critics

say, and almost vied in brilliancy with that of my superb friend

Consequa in Canton, where the castles were all ivory, the sea mother of

pearl, the skies gold and silver leaf, and the outside of the boxes

inlaid with scollop shell-work. Those who want a better description of

the theatre, may as well go and see it, and then they can judge for

themselves. For the gratification of a highly respectable class of

readers, who love to see everything on paper, I had indeed prepared a

circumstantial and truly incomprehensible account of it, such as your

traveller always fills his book with, and which I defy the most

intelligent architect, even the great Sir Christopher Wren to

understand. I had jumbled cornices, and pilasters, and pillars, and

capitals, and triglyphs, and modules, and plinths, and volutes, and

perspectives, and fore-shortenings, helter-skelter; and had set all the

orders of architecture, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc., together by the

ears, in order to work out a satisfactory description; but the manager

having sent me a polite note requesting that I would not take off the

sharp edge, as he whimsically expressed it, of public curiosity, thereby

diminishing the receipts of his house, I have willingly consented to

oblige him, and have left my description at the store of our publisher,

where any person may see it—provided he applies at a proper hour.

I cannot refrain here from giving vent to the satisfaction I received

from the excellent performances of the different actors, one and all;

and particularly the gentlemen who shifted the scenes, who acquitted

themselves throughout with great celerity, dignity, pathos, and effect.

Nor must I pass over the peculiar merits of my friend John, who

gallanted off the chairs and tables in the most dignified and

circumspect manner. Indeed, I have had frequent occasion to applaud the

correctness with which this gentleman fulfills the parts allotted him,

and consider him as one of the best general performers in the company.

My friend, the cockney, found considerable fault with the manner in

which John shoved a huge rock from behind the scenes; maintaining that

he should have put his left foot forward, and pushed it with his right

hand, that being the method practiced by his contemporaries of the royal

theatres, and universally approved by their best critics. He also took

exception to John’s coat, which he pronounced too short by a foot at

least, particularly when he turned his back to the company. But I look

upon these objections in the same light as new readings, and insist that

John shall be allowed to maneuver his chairs and tables, shove his

rocks, and wear his skirts in that style which his genius best affects.

My hopes in the rising merits of this favorite actor daily increase; and

I would hint to the manager the propriety of giving him a benefit,

advertising in the usual style of playbills, as a “springe to catch

woodcocks,” that between the play and farce, John will make a bow—for

that night only!

I am told that no pains have been spared to make the exhibitions of this

season as splendid as possible. Several expert rat-catchers have been

sent into different parts of the country to catch white mice for the

grand pantomime of “Cinderella.” A nest full of little squab Cupids have

been taken in the neighborhood of Communipaw; they are as yet but half

fledged, of the true Holland breed, and it is hoped will be able to fly

about by the middle of October; otherwise they will be suspended about

the stage by the waistband, like little alligators in an apothecary’s

shop, as the pantomime must positively be performed by that time. Great

pains and expense have been incurred in the importation of one of the

most portly pumpkins in New England; and the public may be assured there

is now one on board a vessel from New Haven, which will contain

Cinderella’s coach and six with perfect ease, were the white mice even

ten times as large.

Also several barrels of hail, rain, brimstone, and gunpowder, are in

store for melodramas, of which a number are to be played off this

winter. It is furthermore whispered me that the great thunder drum has

been new braced, and an expert performer on that instrument engaged, who

will thunder in plain English, so as to be understood by the most

illiterate hearer. This will be infinitely preferable to the miserable

Italian thunderer, employed last winter by Mr. Ciceri, who performed in

such an unnatural and outlandish tongue, that none but the scholars of

Signor Da Ponte could understand him. It will be a further gratification

to the patriotic audience to know that the present thunderer is a

fellow-countryman, born at Dunderberg, among the echoes of the

Highlands, and that he thunders with peculiar emphasis and pompous

enunciation, in the true style of a Fourth of July orator.

In addition to all these additions, the manager has provided an entire

new snow-storm, the very sight of which will be quite sufficient to draw

a shawl over every naked bosom in the theatre; the snow is perfectly

fresh, having been manufactured last August.

N.B. The outside of the theatre has been ornamented with a new chimney!!

[Illustration]

NO. XV.—THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1807.

SKETCHES FROM NATURE.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

The brisk northwesters, which prevailed not long since, had a powerful

effect in arresting the progress of belles, beaux, and wild pigeons in

their fashionable northern tour, and turning them back to the more balmy

region of the south. Among the rest, I was encountered, full butt, by a

blast which set my teeth chattering, just as I doubled one of the

frowning bluffs of the Mohawk Mountains, in my route to Niagara, and

facing about incontinently, I forthwith scud before the wind, and a few

days since arrived at my old quarters in New York. My first care, on

returning from so long an absence, was to visit the worthy family of the

Cocklofts, whom I found safe burrowed in their country mansion. On

inquiring for my highly respected coadjutor, Langstaff, I learned, with

great concern, that he had relapsed into one of his eccentric fits of

the spleen, ever since the era of a turtle dinner given by old Cockloft

to some of the neighboring squires, wherein the old gentleman had

achieved a glorious victory in laying honest Launcelot fairly under the

table. Langstaff, although fond of the social board and cheerful glass,

yet abominates any excess, and has an invincible aversion to getting

mellow, considering it a willful outrage on the sanctity of the imperial

mind, a senseless abuse of the body, and an unpardonable, because a

voluntary, prostration of both mental and personal dignity. I have heard

him moralize on the subject, in a style that would do honor to Michael

Cassio himself; but I believe, if the truth were known, this antipathy

rather rises from his having, as the phrase is, but a weak head, and

nerves so extremely sensitive, that he is sure to suffer severely from a

frolic, and will groan and make resolutions against it for a week

afterward. He therefore took this waggish exploit of old Christopher’s,

and the consequent quizzing which he underwent, in high dudgeon; had

kept aloof from company for a fortnight, and appeared to be meditating

some deep plan of retaliation upon his mischievous old crony. He had,

however, for the last day or two, shown some symptoms of convalescence:

had listened, without more than half a dozen twitches of impatience, to

one of Christopher’s unconscionable long stories, and even was seen to

smile, for the one hundred and thirtieth time, at a venerable joke

originally borrowed from Joe Miller, but which, by dint of long

occupancy, and frequent repetition, the old gentleman now firmly

believes happened to himself somewhere in New England.

As I am well acquainted with Launcelot’s haunts, I soon found him out.

He was lolling on his favorite bench, rudely constructed at the foot of

an old tree, which is full of fantastical twists, and with its spreading

branches forms a canopy of luxuriant foliage. This tree is a kind of

chronicle of the short reigns of his uncle John’s mistresses; and its

trunk is sorely wounded with carvings of true lovers’ knots, hearts,

darts, names, and inscriptions!—frail memorials of the variety of the

fair dames who captivated the wandering fancy of that old cavalier in

the days of his youthful romance. Launcelot holds this tree in

particular regard, as he does everything else connected with the memory

of his good uncle John. He was reclining, in one of his usual brown

studies, against its trunk, and gazing pensively upon the river that

glided just by, washing the drooping branches of the dwarf willows that

fringed its bank. My appearance roused him; he grasped my hand with his

usual warmth, and with a tremulous but close pressure, which spoke that

his heart entered into the salutation. After a number of affectionate

inquiries and felicitations, such as friendship, not form, dictated, he

seemed to relapse into his former flow of thought, and to resume the

chain of ideas my appearance had broken for a moment.

“I was reflecting,” said he, “my dear Anthony, upon some observations I

made in our last number; and considering whether the sight of objects

once dear to the affections, or of scenes where we have passed different

happy periods of early life, really occasions most enjoyment or most

regret. Renewing our acquaintance with well-known and long separated

objects, revives, it is true, the recollection of former pleasures, and

touches the tenderest feelings of the heart; as the flavor of a

delicious beverage will remain upon the palate long after the cup has

parted from the lips. But on the other hand, my friend, these same

objects are too apt to awaken us to a keener recollection of what we

were, when they once delighted us; and to provoke a mortifying and

melancholy contrast with what we are at present. They act, in a manner,

as milestones of existence, showing us how far we have travelled in the

journey of life—how much of our weary but fascinating pilgrimage is

accomplished. I look round me, and my eye fondly recognizes the fields I

once sported over, the river in which I once swam, and the orchard I

intrepidly robbed in the halcyon days of boyhood. The fields are still

green, the river still rolls unaltered and undiminished, and the orchard

is still flourishing and fruitful;—it is I only am changed. The

thoughtless flow of madcap spirits that nothing could depress, the

elasticity of nerve that enabled me to bound over the field, to stem the

stream and climb the tree—the ‘sunshine of the breast’ that beamed an

illusive charm over every object, and created a paradise around me—where

are they?—the thievish lapse of years has stolen them away, and left in

return nothing but gray hairs, and a repining spirit.” My friend

Launcelot concluded his harangue with a sigh, and as I saw he was still

under the influence of a whole legion of the blues, and just on the

point of sinking into one of his whimsical and unreasonable fits of

melancholy abstraction, I proposed a walk. He consented, and slipping

his left arm in mine, and waving in the other a gold-headed thorn cane,

bequeathed him by his uncle John, we slowly rambled along the margin of

the river.

Langstaff, though possessing great vivacity of temper, is most wofully

subject to these “thick coming fancies;” and I do not know a man whose

animal spirits do insult him with more jiltings, and coquetries, and

slippery tricks. In these moods he is often visited by a whimwham which

he indulges in common with the Cocklofts. It is that of looking back

with regret, conjuring up the phantoms of good old times, and decking

them out in imaginary finery, with the spoils of his fancy; like a good

lady widow, regretting the loss of the “poor dear man;” for whom, while

living, she cared not a rush. I have seen him and Pindar, and old

Cockloft, amuse themselves over a bottle with their youthful days, until

by the time they had become what is termed merry, they were the most

miserable beings in existence. In a similar humor was Launcelot at

present, and I knew the only way was to let him moralize himself out of

it.

Our ramble was soon interrupted by the appearance of a personage of no

little importance at Cockloft Hall—for, to let my readers into a family

secret, friend Christopher is notoriously henpecked by an old negro, who

has whitened on the place; and is his master, almanac, and counselor. My

readers, if haply they have sojourned in the country and become

conversant in rural manners, must have observed that there is scarce a

little hamlet but has one of these old, weather-beaten wiseacres of

negroes, who ranks among the great characters of the place. He is always

resorted to as an oracle to resolve any question about the weather,

fishing, shooting, farming, and horse-doctoring; and on such occasions

will slouch his remnant of a hat on one side, fold his arms, roll his

white eyes, and examine the sky, with a look as knowing as Peter

Pindar’s magpie when peeping into a marrow-bone. Such a sage curmudgeon

is old Cæsar, who acts as friend Cockloft’s prime master or grand

vizier; assumes, when abroad, his master’s style and title; to wit,

Squire Cockloft; and is, in effect, absolute lord and ruler of the soil.

As he passed us, he pulled off his hat with an air of something more

than respect; it partook, I thought, of affection. “There, now, is

another memento of the kind I have been noticing,” said Launcelot;

“Cæsar was a bosom friend and chosen playmate of Cousin Pindar and

myself, when we were boys. Never were we so happy as when, stealing away

on a holiday to the Hall, we ranged about the fields with honest Cæsar.

He was particularly adroit in making our quail-traps and fishing-rods;

was always the ringleader in all the schemes of frolicsome mischief

perpetrated by the urchins of the neighborhood; considered himself on an

equality with the best of us; and many a hard battle have I had with

him, about the division of the spoils of an orchard, or the title to a

bird’s nest. Many a summer evening do I remember when, huddled together

on the steps of the Hall door, Cæsar, with his stories of ghosts,

goblins, and witches, would put us all in a panic, and people every

lane, and churchyard, and solitary wood, with imaginary beings. In

process of time, he became the constant attendant and Man Friday of

Cousin Pindar, whenever he went a sparking among the rosy country girls

of the neighboring farms; and brought up his rear at every rustic dance,

when he would mingle in the sable group that always thronged the door of

merriment; and it was enough to put to the rout a host of splenetic imps

to see his mouth gradually dilate from ear to ear, with pride and

exultation, at seeing how neatly Master Pindar footed it over the floor.

Cæsar was likewise the chosen confidant and special agent of Pindar in

all his love affairs, until, as his evil stars would have it, on being

intrusted with the delivery of a poetic billet-doux to one of his

patron’s sweethearts, he took an unlucky notion to send it to his own

sable dulcinea, who, not being able to read it, took it to her mistress;

and so the whole affair was blown. Pindar was universally roasted, and

Cæsar discharged forever from his confidence.

“Poor Cæsar!—he has now grown old, like his young masters, but he still

remembers old times; and will, now and then, remind me of them as he

lights me to my room, and lingers a little while to bid me a good-night.

Believe me, my dear Evergreen, the honest, simple old creature has a

warm corner in my heart; I don’t see, for my part, why a body may not

like a negro as well as a white man!”

By the time these biographical anecdotes were ended we had reached the

stable, into which we had involuntarily strolled, and found Cæsar busily

employed in rubbing down the horses; an office he would not intrust to

anybody else, having contracted an affection for every beast in the

stable, from their being descendants of the old race of animals, his

youthful contemporaries. Cæsar was very particular in giving us their

pedigrees, together with a panegyric on the swiftness, bottom, blood,

and spirit of their sires. From these he digressed into a variety of

anecdotes in which Launcelot bore a conspicuous part, and on which the

old negro dwelt with all the garrulity of age. Honest Langstaff stood

leaning with his arm over the back of his favorite steed, old Killdeer;

and I could perceive he listened to Cæsar’s simple details with that

fond attention with which a feeling mind will hang over narratives of

boyish days. His eye sparkled with animation, a glow of youthful fire

stole across his pale visage; he nodded with smiling approbation at

every sentence; chuckled at every exploit; laughed heartily at the story

of his once having smoked out a country singing-school with brimstone

and assafœtida; and slipping a piece of money into old Cæsar’s hand to

buy himself a new tobacco-box, he seized me by the arm and hurried out

of the stable, brimful of good nature. “’Tis a pestilent old rogue for

talking, my dear fellow,” cried he, “but you must not find fault with

him—the creature means well.” I knew, at the very moment that he made

this apology, honest Cæsar could not have given him half the

satisfaction, had he talked like a Cicero or a Solomon.

Launcelot returned to the house with me in the best possible humor—the

whole family, who in truth love and honor him from their very souls,

were delighted to see the sunbeams once more play in his countenance.

Every one seemed to vie who should talk the most, tell the longest

stories, and be most agreeable; and Will Wizard, who had accompanied me

in my visit, declared, as he lighted his cigar—which had gone out forty

times in the course of one of his oriental tales—that he had not passed

so pleasant an evening since the birthnight ball of the beauteous

empress of Hayti.

* * * * *

[The following essay was written by my friend Langstaff, in one of the

paroxysms of his splenetic complaint; and, for aught I know, may have

been effectual in restoring him to good humor. A mental discharge of the

kind has a remarkable tendency toward sweetening the temper—and

Launcelot is, at this moment, one of the best-natured men in existence.

A. EVERGREEN.]

ON GREATNESS.

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.

We have more than once, in the course of our work, been most jocosely

familiar with great personages; and, in truth, treated them with as

little ceremony, respect, and consideration, as if they had been our

most particular friends. Now, we would not suffer the mortification of

having our readers even suspect us of any intimacy of the kind; assuring

them we are extremely choice in our intimates and uncommonly circumspect

in avoiding connections with all doubtful characters; particularly

pimps, bailiffs, lottery-brokers, chevaliers of industry, and great men.

The world, in general, is pretty well aware of what is to be understood

by the former classes of delinquents; but as the latter has never, I

believe, been specifically defined, and as we are determined to instruct

our readers to the extent of our abilities, and their limited

comprehension, it may not be amiss here to let them know what we

understand by a great man.

First, therefore, let us—editors and kings are always plural—premise,

that there are two kinds of greatness: one conferred by heaven—the

exalted nobility of the soul—the other, a spurious distinction,

engendered by the mob and lavished upon its favorites. The former of

these distinctions we have already contemplated with reverence; the

latter, we will take this opportunity to strip naked before our

unenlightened readers; so that, if by chance any of them are held in

ignominious thralldom by this base circulation of false coin, they may

forthwith emancipate themselves from such inglorious delusion.

It is a fictitious value given to individuals by public caprice, as

bankers give an impression to a worthless slip of paper; thereby gaining

it a currency for infinitely more than its intrinsic value. Every nation

has its peculiar coin, and peculiar great men; neither of which will,

for the most part, pass current out of the country where they are

stamped. Your true mob-created great man, is like a note of one of the

little New England banks, and his value depreciates in proportion to the

distance from home. In England, a great man is he who has most ribbons

and gewgaws on his coat, most horses to his carriage, most slaves in his

retinue, or most toad-eaters at his table; in France, he who can most

dextrously flourish his heels above his head—Duport is most

incontestably the greatest man in France!—when the Emperor is absent.

The greatest man in China, is he who can trace his ancestry up to the

moon; and in this country, our great men may generally hunt down their

pedigree until it burrow in the dirt like a rabbit. To be concise: our

great men are those who are most expert at crawling on all fours, and

have the happiest facility of dragging and winding themselves along in

the dirt. This may seem a paradox to many of my readers, who, with great

good nature be it hinted, are too stupid to look beyond the mere surface

of our invaluable writings; and often pass over the knowing allusions,

and poignant meaning, that is slily couching beneath. It is for the

benefit of such helpless ignorants, who have no other creed but the

opinion of the mob, that I shall trace, as far as it is possible to

follow him in his progress from insignificance—the rise, progress, and

completion of a _little great man_.

In a logocracy, to use the sage Mustapha’s phrase, it is not absolutely

necessary to the formation of a great man that he should be either wise

or valiant, upright or honorable. On the contrary, daily experience

shows, that these qualities rather impede his preferment; inasmuch as

they are prone to render him too inflexibly erect, and directly at

variance with that willow suppleness which enables a man to wind and

twist through all the nooks and turns and dark winding passages that

lead to greatness. The grand requisite for climbing the rugged hill of

popularity—the summit of which is the seat of power—is to be useful. And

here, once more, for the sake of our readers, who are, of course, not so

wise as ourselves, I must explain what we understand by usefulness. The

horse, in his native state, is wild, swift, impetuous, full of majesty,

and of a most generous spirit. It is then the animal is noble, exalted,

and useless. But entrap him, manacle him, cudgel him, break down his

lofty spirit, put the curb into his mouth, the load upon his back, and

reduce him into servile obedience to the bridle and the lash, and it is

then he becomes useful. Your jackass is one of the most useful animals

in existence. If my readers do not now understand what I mean by

usefulness, I give them all up for most absolute nincoms.

To rise in this country a man must first descend. The aspiring

politician may be compared to that indefatigable insect, called the

tumbler, pronounced by a distinguished personage to be the only

industrious animal in Virginia, which buries itself in filth, and works

ignobly in the dirt, until it forms a little ball, which it rolls

laboriously along, like Diogenes in his tub; sometimes head, sometimes

tail foremost, pilfering from every rut and mud hole, and increasing its

ball of greatness by the contributions of the kennel. Just so the

candidate for greatness;—he buries himself in the mob; labors in dirt

and oblivion, and makes unto himself the rudiments of a popular name

from the admiration and praises of rogues, ignoramuses, and blackguards.

His name once started, onward he goes, struggling and puffing, and

pushing it before him; collecting new tribute from the dregs and offals

of society as he proceeds, until having gathered together a mighty mass

of popularity, he mounts it in triumph; is hoisted into office, and

becomes a great man, and a ruler in the land. All this will be clearly

illustrated by a sketch of a worthy of the kind, who sprung up under my

eye, and was hatched from the dirt by the broad rays of popularity,

which, like the sun, can “breed maggots in a dead dog.”

Timothy Dabble was a young man of very promising talents; for he wrote a

fair hand, and had thrice won the silver medal at a country academy; he

was also an orator, for he talked with emphatic volubility, and could

argue a full hour, without taking either side, or advancing a single

opinion; he had still further requisites for eloquence, for he made very

handsome gestures, had dimples in his cheeks when he smiled, and

enunciated most harmoniously through his nose. In short, nature had

certainly marked him out for a great man; for though he was not tall,

yet he added at least half an inch to his stature by elevating his head,

and assumed an amazing expression of dignity by turning up his nose and

curling his nostrils, in a style of conscious superiority. Convinced by

these unequivocal appearances, Dabble’s friends, in full caucus, one and

all, declared that he was undoubtedly born to be a great man, and it

would be his own fault if he were not one. Dabble was tickled with an

opinion which coincided so happily with his own—for vanity, in a

confidential whisper, had given him the like intimation—and he

reverenced the judgment of his friends because they thought so highly of

himself. Accordingly he set out with a determination to become a great

man, and to start in the scrub-race for honor and renown. How to attain

the desired prize was however, the question. He knew, by a kind of

instinctive feeling, which seems peculiar to groveling minds, that

honor, and its better part—profit, would never seek him out; that they

would never knock at his door and crave admittance, but must be courted,

and toiled after, and earned. He therefore strutted forth into the

highways, and market-places, and the assemblies of the people; ranted,

like a true cockerel orator, about virtue, and patriotism, and liberty,

and equality, and himself. Full many a political windmill did he battle

with; and full many a time did he talk himself out of breath and his

hearers out of patience. But Dabble found, to his vast astonishment,

that there was not a notorious political pimp at a ward meeting but

could out-talk him; and what was still more mortifying, there was not a

notorious political pimp but was more noticed and caressed than himself.

The reason was simple enough; while he harangued about principles, the

others ranted about men; where he reprobated a political error, they

blasted a political character. They were, consequently, the most useful;

for the great object of our political disputes is not who shall have the

honor of emancipating the community from the leading-strings of

delusion, but who shall have the profit of holding the strings and

leading the community by the nose.

Dabble was likewise very loud in his professions of integrity,

incorruptibility, and disinterestedness; words which, from being

filtered and refined through newspapers and election handbills, have

lost their original signification, and in the political dictionary are

synonymous with empty pockets, itching palms, and interested ambition.

He, in addition to all this, declared that he would support none but

honest men; but unluckily, as but few of these offered themselves to be

supported, Dabble’s services were seldom required. He pledged himself

never to engage in party schemes, or party politics, but to stand up

solely for the broad interests of his country—so he stood alone; and

what is the same thing, he stood still; for, in this country, he who

does not side with either party is like a body in a _vacuum_ between two

planets, and must forever remain motionless.

Dabble was immeasurably surprised that a man so honest, so

disinterested, and so sagacious withal, and one, too, who had the good

of his country so much at heart, should thus remain unnoticed and

unapplauded. A little worldly advice, whispered in his ear by a shrewd

old politician, at once explained the whole mystery. “He who would

become great,” said he, “must serve an apprenticeship to greatness, and

rise by regular gradation, like the master of a vessel, who commences by

being scrub and cabin-boy. He must fag in the train of great men, echo

all their sentiments, become their toad-eater and parasite—laugh at all

their jokes, and, above all, endeavor to make them laugh; if you only

make a great man laugh now and then, your fortune is made. Look about

you, youngster, and you will not see a single little great man of the

day, but his herd of retainers, who yelp at his heels, come at his

whistle, worry whoever he points at, and think themselves fully rewarded

by sometimes snapping up a crumb that falls from his table. Talk of

patriotism, and virtue, and incorruptibility!—tut, man! they are the

very qualities that scare munificence, and keep patronage at a distance.

You might as well attempt to entice crowds with red rags and gunpowder.

Lay all these scarecrow virtues aside, and let this be your maxim, that

a candidate for political eminence is like a dried herring; he never

becomes luminous until he is corrupt.”

Dabble caught with hungry avidity these congenial doctrines, and turned

into his predestined channel of action with the force and rapidity of a

stream which has for a while been restrained from its natural course. He

became what nature had fitted him to be: his tone softened down from

arrogant self-sufficiency to the whine of fawning solicitation. He

mingled in the caucuses of the sovereign people; assumed a patriotic

slovenliness of dress; argued most logically with those who were of his

own opinion; and slandered, with all the malice of impotence, exalted

characters whose orbit he despaired ever to approach—just as that

scoundrel midnight thief, the owl, hoots at the blessed light of the

sun, whose glorious lustre he dares never contemplate. He likewise

applied himself to discharging, faithfully, the honorable duties of a

partisan; he poached about for private slanders and ribald anecdotes; he

folded handbills; he even wrote one or two himself, which he carried

about in his pocket and read to everybody; he became secretary at ward

meetings, set his hand to divers resolutions of patriotic import, and

even once went so far as to make a speech, in which he proved that

patriotism was a virtue—that the reigning bashaw was a great man—that

this was a free country, and he himself an arrant and incontestible

buzzard!

Dabble was now very frequent and devout in his visits to those temples

of politics, popularity, and smoke—the ward porter-houses; those true

dens of equality, where all ranks, ages, and talents are brought down to

the level of rude familiarity. ’Twas here his talents expanded, and his

genius swelled up to its proper size—like the toad, which, shrinking

from balmy airs and jocund sunshine, finds his congenial home in caves

and dungeons, and there nourishes his venom and bloats his deformity.

’Twas here he reveled with the swinish multitude in their debauches on

patriotism and porter; and it became an even chance whether Dabble would

turn out a great man or a great drunkard. But Dabble in all this kept

steadily in his eye the only deity he ever worshipped—his interest.

Having, by this familiarity, ingratiated himself with the mob, he became

wonderfully potent and industrious at elections—knew all the dens and

cellars of profligacy and intemperance—brought more negroes to the

polls, and knew to a greater certainty where votes could be bought for

beer, than any of his contemporaries. His exertions in the cause, his

persevering industry, his degrading compliance, his unresisting

humility, his steadfast dependence, at length caught the attention of

one of the leaders of the party, who was pleased to observe that Dabble

was a very useful fellow, who would go all lengths. From that moment his

fortune was made—he was hand and glove with orators and slang-whangers;

basked in the sunshine of great men’s smiles, and had the honor, sundry

times, of shaking hands with dignitaries during elections, and drinking

out of the same pot with them at a porter-house!!

I will not fatigue myself with tracing this caterpillar in his slimy

progress from worm to butterfly: suffice it that Dabble bowed and bowed,

and fawned, and sneaked, and smirked, and libeled, until one would have

thought perseverance itself would have settled down into despair. There

was no knowing how long he might have lingered at a distance from his

hopes, had he not luckily got tarred and feathered for some

electioneering maneuver. This was the making of him! Let not my readers

stare; tarring and feathering here is equal to pillory and cropped ears

in England; and either of these kinds of martyrdom will insure a patriot

the sympathy and support of his faction. His partisans—for even he had

his partisans—took his case into consideration. He had been kicked, and

cuffed, and disgraced, and dishonored in the cause; he had licked the

dust at the feet of the mob; he was a faithful drudge, slow to anger, of

invincible patience, of incessant assiduity; a thorough-going tool, who

could be curbed, and spurred, and directed at pleasure—in short, he had

all the important qualifications for a little great man, and he was

accordingly ushered into office amid the acclamations of the party. The

leading men complimented his usefulness, the multitude his republican

simplicity, and the slang-whangers vouched for his patriotism. Since his

elevation, he has discovered indubitable signs of having been destined

for a great man. His nose has acquired an additional elevation of

several degrees, so that now he appears to have bidden adieu to this

world, and to have set his thoughts altogether on things above; and he

has swelled and inflated himself to such a degree that his friends are

under apprehensions that he will, one day or other, explode and blow up

like a torpedo.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

NO. XVI.—THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1807.

STYLE, AT BALLSTON.

BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.

Notwithstanding Evergreen has never been abroad, nor had his

understanding enlightened, or his views enlarged by that marvelous

sharpener of the wits, a salt water voyage, yet he is tolerably shrewd

and correct, in the limited sphere of his observations; and now and then

astounds me with a right pithy remark, which would do no discredit even

to a man who had made the grand tour.

In several late conversations at Cockloft Hall, he has amused us

exceedingly by detailing sundry particulars concerning that notorious

slaughterhouse of time, Ballston Springs, where he spent a considerable

part of the last summer. The following is a summary of his observations.

Pleasure has passed through a variety of significations at Ballston. It

originally meant nothing more than a relief from pain and sickness; and

the patient who had journeyed many a weary mile to the Springs, with a

heavy heart and emaciated form, called it pleasure when he threw by his

crutches, and danced away from them with renovated spirits, and limbs

jocund with vigor. In process of time, pleasure underwent a refinement,

and appeared in the likeness of a sober unceremonious country dance, to

the flute of an amateur or the three-stringed fiddle of an itinerant

country musician. Still everything bespoke that happy holiday which the

spirits ever enjoy, when emancipated from the shackles of formality,

ceremony, and modern politeness; things went on cheerily, and Ballston

was pronounced a charming, humdrum, careless place of resort, where

every one was at his ease, and might follow unmolested the bent of his

humor—provided his wife was not there; when, lo! all on a sudden, Style

made its baneful appearance in the semblance of a gig and tandem, a pair

of leather breeches, a liveried footman, and a cockney! Since that fatal

era pleasure has taken an entire new signification, and at present means

nothing but STYLE.

The worthy, fashionable, dashing, good-for-nothing people of every

state, who had rather suffer the martyrdom of a crowd than endure the

monotony of their own homes, and the stupid company of their own

thoughts, flock to the Springs; not to enjoy the pleasures of society,

or benefit by the qualities of the waters, but to exhibit their

equipages and wardrobes, and to excite the admiration, or, what is much

more satisfactory, the envy of their fashionable competitors. This, of

course, awakens a spirit of noble emulation between the eastern, middle,

and southern States; and every lady hereupon finding herself charged in

a manner with the whole weight of her country’s dignity and style,

dresses and dashes, and sparkles, without mercy, at her competitors from

other parts of the Union. This kind of rivalship naturally requires a

vast deal of preparation and prodigious quantities of supplies. A sober

citizen’s wife will break half a dozen milliners’ shops, and sometimes

starve her family a whole season, to enable herself to make the Springs

campaign in style. She repairs to the seat of war with a mighty force of

trunks and bandboxes, like so many ammunition chests, filled with caps,

hats, gowns, ribbons, shawls, and all the various artillery of

fashionable warfare. The lady of a Southern planter will lay out the

whole annual produce of a rice plantation in silver and gold muslins,

lace veils, and new liveries; carry a hogshead of tobacco on her head,

and trail a bale of sea-island cotton at her heels; while a lady of

Boston or Salem will wrap herself up in the net proceeds of a cargo of

whale oil, and tie on her hat with a quintal of codfish.

The planters’ ladies, however, have generally the advantage in this

contest; for, as it is an incontestable fact, that whoever comes from

the West or East Indies, or Georgia, or the Carolinas, or in fact any

warm climate, is immensely rich, it cannot be expected that a simple cit

of the North can cope with them in style. The planter, therefore, who

drives four horses abroad, and a thousand negroes at home, and who

flourishes up to the Springs, followed by half a score of black-a-moors,

in gorgeous liveries, is unquestionably superior to the northern

merchant, who plods on in a carriage and pair; which, being nothing more

than is quite necessary, has no claim whatever to style. He, however,

has his consolation in feeling superior to the honest cit, who dashes

about in a simple gig; he, in return, sneers at the country squire, who

jogs along with his scrubby, long-eared pony and saddlebags; and the

squire, by way of taking satisfaction, would make no scruple to run over

the unobtrusive pedestrian, were it not that the last, being the most

independent of the whole, might chance to break his head by way of

retort.

The great misfortune is, that this style is supported at such an expense

as sometimes to encroach on the rights and privileges of the pocket; and

occasions very awkward embarrassments to the tyro of fashion. Among a

number of instances, Evergreen mentions the fate of a dashing blade from

the South, who made his _entrée_ with a tandem and two outriders, by the

aid of which he attracted the attention of all the ladies, and caused a

coolness between several young couples who, it was thought before his

arrival, had a considerable kindness for each other. In the course of a

fortnight his tandem disappeared!—the class of good folk who seem to

have nothing to do in this world but pry into other people’s affairs,

began to stare. In a little time longer an outrider was missing!—this

increased the alarm, and it was consequently whispered that he had eaten

the horses and drank the negro. N. B. Southern gentlemen are very apt to

do this on an emergency. Serious apprehensions were entertained about

the fate of the remaining servant, which were soon verified by his

actually vanishing; and in “one little month” the dashing Carolinian

modestly took his departure in the stagecoach!—universally regretted by

the friends who had generously released him from his cumbrous load of

style.

Evergreen, in the course of his detail, gave very melancholy accounts of

an alarming famine which raged with great violence at the Springs.

Whether this was owing to the incredible appetites of the company, or

the scarcity which prevailed at the inns, he did not seem inclined to

say; but he declares, that he was for several days in imminent danger of

starvation, owing to his being a little too dilatory in his attendance

at the dinner-table. He relates a number of “moving accidents,” which

befell many of the polite company in their zeal to get a good seat at

dinner; on which occasion a kind of scrub-race always took place,

wherein a vast deal of jockeying and unfair play was shown, and a

variety of squabbles and unseemly altercations occurred. But when

arrived at the scene of action, it was truly an awful sight to behold

the confusion, and to hear the tumultuous uproar of voices crying some

for one thing, and some for another, to the tuneful accompaniment of

knives and forks, rattling with all the energy of hungry impatience. The

feast of the Centaurs and the Lapithæ was nothing when compared with a

dinner at the great house. At one time, an old gentleman, whose natural

irascibility was a little sharpened by the gout, had scalded his throat,

by gobbling down a bowl of hot soup in a vast hurry, in order to secure

the first fruits of a roasted partridge before it was snapped up by some

hungry rival; when just, as he was whetting his knife and fork,

preparatory for a descent on the promised land, he had the mortification

to see it transferred, bodily, to the plate of a squeamish little damsel

who was taking the waters for debility and loss of appetite. This was

too much for the patience of old Crusty; he lodged his fork into the

partridge, whipt it into his dish, and cutting off a wing of it,—“There,

Miss, there’s more than you can eat. Oons! what should such a little

chalky-faced puppet as you do with a whole partridge!” At another time a

mighty sweet disposed old dowager, who loomed most magnificently at the

table, had a sauce-boat launched upon the capacious lap of a

silver-sprigged muslin gown, by the maneuvering of a little politic

Frenchman, who was dextrously attempting to make a lodgment under the

covered way of a chicken-pie; human nature could not bear it!—the lady

bounced round, and, with one box on the ear, drove the luckless wight to

utter annihilation.

But these little cross accidents are amply compensated by the great

variety of amusements which abounds at this charming resort of beauty

and fashion. In the morning the company, each like a jolly Bacchanalian,

with glass in hand, sally forth to the Springs: where the gentlemen, who

wish to make themselves agreeable, have an opportunity of dipping

themselves into the good opinion of the ladies: and it is truly

delectable to see with what grace and adroitness they perform this

ingratiating feat. Anthony says that it is peculiarly amazing to behold

the quantity of water the ladies drink on this occasion, for the purpose

of getting an appetite for breakfast. He assures me he has been present

when a young lady, of unparalleled delicacy, tossed off, in the space of

a minute or two, one-and-twenty tumblers and a wine-glass full. On my

asking Anthony whether the solicitude of the bystanders was not greatly

awakened as to what might be the effects of this debauch, he replied,

that the ladies at Ballston had become such great sticklers for the

doctrine of evaporation, that no gentleman ever ventured to remonstrate

against this excessive drinking for fear of bringing his philosophy into

contempt. The most notorious water-drinkers, in particular, were

continually holding forth on the surprising aptitude with which the

Ballston waters evaporated; and several gentlemen, who had the hardihood

to question this female philosophy, were held in high displeasure.

After breakfast, every one chooses his amusement; some take a ride into

the pine woods, and enjoy the varied and romantic scenery of burnt

trees, post and rail fences, pine flats, potato patches, and log huts;

others scramble up the surrounding sandhills, that look like the abodes

of a gigantic race of ants;—take a peep at other sandhills beyond

them;—and then—come down again. Others who are romantic,—and sundry

young ladies insist upon being so whenever they visit the Springs, or go

anywhere into the country—stroll along the borders of a little swampy

brook that drags itself along like an Alexandrine, and that so lazily as

not to make a single murmur, watching the little tadpoles as they

frolic, right flippantly, in the muddy stream, and listening to the

inspiring melody of the harmonious frogs that croak upon its borders.

Some play at billiards, some play at the fiddle, and some—play the

fool;—the latter being the most prevalent amusement at Ballston.

These, together with abundance of dancing, and a prodigious deal of

sleeping of afternoons, make up the variety of pleasures at the

Springs—a delicious life of alternate lassitude and fatigue; of

laborious dissipation, and listless idleness; of sleepless nights, and

days spent in that dozing insensibility which ever succeeds them. Now

and then, indeed, the influenza, the fever-and-ague, or some such

pale-faced intruder, may happen to throw a momentary damp on the general

felicity; but on the whole, Evergreen declares that Ballston wants only

six things, to wit: good air, good wine, good living, good beds, good

company, and good humor, to be the most enchanting place in the

world—excepting Botany Bay, Musquito Cove, Dismal Swamp, and the

black-hole at Calcutta.

* * * * *

[The following letter from the sage Mustapha has cost us more trouble to

decipher, and render into tolerable English, than any hitherto

published. It was full of blots and erasures, particularly the latter

part, which we have no doubt was penned in a moment of great wrath and

indignation. Mustapha has often a rambling mode of writing, and his

thoughts take such unaccountable turns, that it is difficult to tell one

moment where he will lead you the next. This is particularly obvious in

the commencement of his letters, which seldom bear much analogy to the

subsequent parts; he sets off with a flourish, like a dramatic

hero—assumes an air of great pomposity, and struts up to his subject

mounted most loftily on stilts.

L. LANGSTAFF.]

LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN,

TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF

TRIPOLI.

Among the variety of principles by which mankind are actuated, there is

one, my dear Asem, which I scarcely know whether to consider as

springing from grandeur and nobility of mind, or from a refined species

of vanity and egotism. It is that singular, although almost universal

desire of living in the memory of posterity; of occupying a share of the

world’s attention, when we shall long since have ceased to be

susceptible either of its praise or censure. Most of the passions of the

mind are bounded by the grave; sometimes, indeed, an anxious hope or

trembling fear will venture beyond the clouds and darkness that rest

upon our mortal horizon, and expatiate in boundless futurity; but it is

only this active love of fame which steadily contemplates its fruition,

in the applause or gratitude of future ages. Indignant at the narrow

limits which circumscribe existence, ambition is forever struggling to

soar beyond them; to triumph over space and time, and to bear a name, at

least, above the irritable oblivion in which everything else that

concerns us must be involved. It is this, my friend, which prompts the

patriot to his most heroic achievements; which inspires the sublimest

strains of the poet, and breathes ethereal fire into the productions of

the painter and the statuary.

For this the monarch rears the lofty column; the laureled conqueror

claims the triumphal arch; while the obscure individual, who moved in a

humbler sphere, asks but a plain and simple stone to mark his grave, and

bear to the next generation this important truth, that he was born,

died—and was buried. It was this passion which once erected the vast

Numidian piles, whose ruins we have so often regarded with wonder, as

the shades of evening—fit emblems of oblivion—gradually stole over and

enveloped them in darkness. It was this which gave being to those

sublime monuments of Saracen magnificence, which nod in mouldering

desolation, as the blast sweeps over our deserted plains.—How futile are

all our efforts to evade the obliterating hand of time! As I traversed

the dreary wastes of Egypt, on my journey to Grand Cairo, I stopped my

camel for a while and contemplated, in awful admiration, the stupendous

pyramids. An appalling silence prevailed around; such as reigns in the

wilderness when the tempest is hushed, and the beasts of prey have

retired to their dens. The myriads that had once been employed in

rearing these lofty mementoes of human vanity, whose busy hum once

enlivened the solitude of the desert—had all been swept from the earth

by the irresistible arm of death—all were mingled with their native

dust; all were forgotten! Even the mighty names which these sepulchres

were designed to perpetuate had long since faded from remembrance;

history and tradition afforded but vague conjectures, and the pyramids

imparted a humiliating lesson to the candidate for immortality.—Alas!

alas! said I to myself, how mutable are the foundations on which our

proudest hopes of future fame are reposed! He who imagines he has

secured to himself the meed of deathless renown, indulges in deluding

visions, which only bespeak the vanity of the dreamer. The storied

obelisk—the triumphal arch—the swelling dome, shall crumble into dust,

and the names they would preserve from oblivion shall often pass away,

before their own duration is accomplished.

Yet this passion for fame, however ridiculous in the eye of the

philosopher, deserves respect and consideration, from having been the

source of so many illustrious actions; and, hence it has been the

practice in all enlightened governments to perpetuate by monuments, the

memory of great men, as a testimony of respect for the illustrious dead,

and to awaken in the bosoms of posterity an emulation to merit the same

honorable distinction. The people of the American logocracy, who pride

themselves upon improving on every precept or example of ancient or

modern governments, have discovered a new mode of exciting this love of

glory; a mode by which they do honor to their great men, even in their

life-time!

Thou must have observed by this time, that they manage everything in a

manner peculiar to themselves; and doubtless in the best possible

manner, seeing they have denominated themselves “the most enlightened

people under the sun.” Thou wilt, therefore, perhaps, be curious to know

how they contrive to honor the name of a living patriot, and what

unheard-of monument they erect in memory of his achievements. By the

fiery beard of the mighty Barbarossa, but I can scarcely preserve the

sobriety of a true disciple of Mahomet while I tell thee!—wilt thou not

smile, O, Mussulman of invincible gravity, to learn that they honor

their great men by eating, and that the only trophy erected to their

exploits, is a public dinner! But, trust me, Asem, even in this measure,

whimsical as it may seem, the philosophic and considerate spirit of this

people is admirably displayed. Wisely concluding that when the hero is

dead, he becomes insensible to the voice of fame, the song of adulation,

or the splendid trophy, they have determined that he shall enjoy his

quantum of celebrity while living and revel in the full enjoyment of a

nine days’ immortality. The barbarous nations of antiquity immolated

human victims to the memory of their lamented dead, but the enlightened

Americans offer up whole hecatombs of geese and calves, and oceans of

wine, in honor of the illustrious living; and the patriot has the

felicity of hearing from every quarter, the vast exploits in gluttony

and reveling that have been celebrated to the glory of his name.

No sooner does a citizen signalize himself in a conspicuous manner in

the service of his country, than all the gormandizers assemble and

discharge the national debt of gratitude, by giving him a dinner; not

that he really receives all the luxuries provided on this occasion; no,

my friend, it is ten chances to one that the great man does not taste a

morsel from the table, and is, perhaps, five hundred miles distant; and,

to let thee into a melancholy fact, a patriot under this economic

government, may be often in want of a dinner, while dozens are devoured

in his praise. Neither are these repasts spread out for the hungry and

necessitous, who might otherwise be filled with food and gladness, and

inspired to shout forth the illustrious name, which had been the means

of their enjoyment; far from this, Asem; it is the rich only who indulge

in the banquet; those who pay for the dainties are alone privileged to

enjoy them; so that, while opening their purses in honor of the patriot,

they at the same time fulfill a great maxim, which in this country

comprehends all the rules of prudence, and all the duties a man owes to

himself—namely, getting the worth of their money.

In process of time this mode of testifying public applause has been

found so marvelously agreeable, that they extend it to events as well as

characters, and eat in triumph at the news of a treaty—at the

anniversary of any grand national era, or at the gaining of that

splendid victory of the tongue—an election. Nay, so far do they carry

it, that certain days are set apart when the guzzlers, the gormandizers,

and the wine-bibbers meet together to celebrate a grand indigestion, in

memory of some great event; and every man, in the zeal of patriotism,

gets devoutly drunk—“as the act directs.” Then, my friend, mayest thou

behold the sublime spectacle of love of country, elevating itself from a

sentiment into an appetite, whetted to the quick with the cheering

prospect of tables loaded with the fat things of the land. On this

occasion every man is anxious to fall to work, cram himself in honor of

the day, and risk a surfeit in the glorious cause. Some, I have been

told, actually fast for four-and-twenty hours preceding, that they may

be enabled to do greater honor to the feast; and, certainly, if eating

and drinking are patriotic rites, he who eats and drinks most, and

proves himself the greatest glutton, is, undoubtedly, the most

distinguished patriot. Such, at any rate, seems to be the opinion here;

and they act up to it so rigidly, that by the time it is dark, every

kennel in the neighborhood teems with illustrious members of the

sovereign people, wallowing in their congenial element of mud and mire.

These patriotic feasts, or rather national monuments, are patronized and

promoted by certain inferior cadis, called “Aldermen;” who are commonly

complimented with their direction. These dignitaries, as far as I can

learn, are generally appointed on account of their great talents for

eating, a qualification peculiarly necessary in the discharge of their

official duties. They hold frequent meetings at taverns and hotels,

where they enter into solemn consultations for the benefit of lobsters

and turtles; establish wholesome regulations for the safety and

preservation of fish and wild-fowl; appoint the seasons most proper for

eating oysters; inquire into the economy of taverns, the characters of

publicans, and the abilities of their cooks; and discuss, most

learnedly, the merits of a bowl of soup, a chicken-pie, or a haunch of

venison; in a word, the alderman has absolute control in all matters of

eating, and superintends the whole police—of the belly. Having, in the

prosecution of their important office, signalized themselves at so many

public festivals; having gorged so often on patriotism and pudding, and

entombed so many great names in their extensive maws, thou wilt easily

conceive that they wax portly apace, that they fatten on the fame of

mighty men, and that their rotundity, like the rivers, the lakes, and

the mountains of their country, must be on a great scale! Even so, my

friend; and when I sometimes see a portly alderman puffing along, and

swelling as if he had the world under his waistcoat, I cannot help

looking upon him as a walking monument, and am often ready to exclaim:

“Tell me, thou majestic mortal, thou breathing catacomb! to what

illustrious character, what mighty event, does that capacious carcass of

thine bear testimony?”

But though the enlightened citizens of this logocracy eat in honor of

their friends, yet they drink destruction to their enemies. Yea, Asem,

woe unto those who are doomed to undergo the public vengeance at a

public dinner. No sooner are the viands removed, than they prepare for

merciless and exterminating hostilities. They drink the intoxicating

juice of the grape, out of little glass cups, and over each draught

pronounce a short sentence or prayer; not such a prayer as thy virtuous

heart would dictate, thy pious lips give utterance to, my good Asem; not

a tribute of thanks to all-bountiful Allah, nor a humble supplication

for his blessing on the draught; no, my friend, it is merely a toast,

that is to say, a fulsome tribute of flattery to their demagogues; a

labored sally of affected sentiment or national egotism; or, what is

more despicable, a malediction on their enemies, an empty threat of

vengeance, or a petition for their destruction; for toasts, thou must

know, are another kind of missive weapon in a logocracy, and are leveled

from afar, like the annoying arrows of the Tartars.

O, Asem! couldst thou but witness one of these patriotic, these

monumental dinners; how furiously the flame of patriotism blazes forth;

how suddenly they vanquish armies, subjugate whole countries, and

exterminate nations in a bumper, thou wouldst more than ever admire the

force of that omnipotent weapon, the tongue. At these moments every

coward becomes a hero, every ragamuffin an invincible warrior; and the

most zealous votaries of peace and quiet, forget, for a while, their

cherished maxims, and join in the furious attack. Toasts succeeds toast;

kings, emperors, bashaws, are like chaff before the tempest; the

inspired patriot vanquishes fleets with a single gunboat, and swallows

down navies at a draught, until, overpowered with victory and wine, he

sinks upon the field of battle—dead drunk in his country’s cause. Sword

of the puissant Khalid! what a display of valor is here!—the sons of

Afric are hardy, brave, and enterprising, but they can achieve nothing

like this.

Happy would it be if this mania for toasting extended no further than to

the expression of national resentment. Though we might smile at the

impotent vaporing and windy hyperbole, by which it is distinguished, yet

we would excuse it, as the unguarded overflowings of a heart, glowing

with national injuries, and indignant at the insults offered to its

country. But, alas, my friend, private resentment, individual hatred,

and the illiberal spirit of party, are let loose on these festive

occasions. Even the names of individuals, of unoffending

fellow-citizens, are sometimes dragged forth to undergo the slanders and

execrations of a distempered herd of revelers.[67] Head of Mahomet! how

vindictive, how insatiably vindictive, must be that spirit which can

drug the mantling bowl with gall and bitterness, and indulge an angry

passion in the moment of rejoicing! “Wine,” says their poet, “is like

sunshine to the heart, which, under its generous influence, expands with

good will, and becomes the very temple of philanthropy.” Strange, that

in a temple consecrated to such a divinity, there should remain a secret

corner, polluted by the lurkings of malice and revenge,—strange, that in

the full flow of social enjoyment, these votaries of pleasure can turn

aside to call down curses on the head of a fellow-creature. Despicable

souls! ye are unworthy of being citizens of this “most enlightened

country under the sun:” rather herd with the murderous savages who prowl

the mountains of Tibesti; who stain their midnight orgies with the blood

of the innocent wanderer, and drink their infernal potations from the

skulls of the victims they have massacred.

NOTE BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.

Footnote 67:

It would seem that, in this sentence, the sage Mustapha had reference

to a patriotic dinner, celebrated last 4th of July, by some gentlemen

of Baltimore, when they righteously drank perdition to an unoffending

individual, and really thought “they had done the state some service.”

This amiable custom of “eating and drinking damnation” to others, is

not confined to any party: for a month or two after the 4th of July,

the different newspapers file off their columns of patriotic toasts

against each other, and take a pride in showing how brilliantly their

partisans can blackguard public character in their cups—“They do but

jest—poison in jest,” as Hamlet says.

And yet, trust me, Asem, this spirit of vindictive cowardice is not

owing to any inherent depravity of soul, for on other occasions, I have

had ample proof that this nation is mild and merciful, brave and

magnanimous; neither is it owing to any defect in their political or

religious precepts. The principles inculcated by their rulers, on all

occasions, breathe a spirit of universal philanthropy; and as to their

religion, much as I am devoted to the Koran of our divine prophet, still

I cannot but acknowledge with admiration the mild forbearance, the

amiable benevolence, the sublime morality bequeathed them by the founder

of their faith. Thou rememberest the doctrines of the mild Nazarene, who

preached peace and good-will to all mankind; who, when he was reviled,

reviled not again; who blessed those who cursed him, and prayed for

those who despitefully used and persecuted him! What, then, can give

rise to this uncharitable, this inhuman custom among the disciples of a

master so gentle and forgiving? It is that fiend _politics_, Asem—that

baneful fiend which bewildereth every brain, and poisons every social

feeling; which intrudes itself at the festive banquet, and like the

detestable harpy, pollutes the very viands of the table; which

contaminates the refreshing draught while it is inhaled; which prompts

the cowardly assassin to launch his poisoned arrows from behind the

social board: and which renders the bottle, that boasted promoter of

good fellowship and hilarity, an infernal engine charged with direful

combustion.

O, Asem! Asem! how does my heart sicken when I contemplate these

cowardly barbarities! let me, therefore, if possible, withdraw my

attention from them forever. My feelings have borne me from my subject;

and from the monuments of ancient greatness, I have wandered to those of

modern degradation. My warmest wishes remain with thee, thou most

illustrious of slave-drivers; mayest thou ever be sensible of the

mercies of our great prophet, who, in compassion to human imbecility,

has prohibited his disciples from the use of the deluding beverage of

the grape; that enemy to reason—that promoter of defamation—that

auxiliary of POLITICS.

Ever thine,

MUSTAPHA.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

NO. XVII.—WEDNESDAY, NOV. 11, 1807.

AUTUMNAL REFLECTIONS.

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.

When a man is quietly journeying downward into the valley of the shadow

of departed youth, and begins to contemplate, in a shortened

perspective, the end of his pilgrimage, he becomes more solicitous than

ever that the remainder of his wayfaring should be smooth and pleasant;

and the evening of his life, like the evening of a summer’s day, fade

away in mild uninterrupted serenity. If haply his heart has escaped

uninjured through the dangers of a seductive world, it may then

administer to the purest of his felicities, and its chords vibrate more

musically for the trials they have sustained—like the viol which yields

a melody sweet in proportion to its age.

To a mind thus temperately harmonized—thus matured and mellowed by a

long lapse of years—there is something truly congenial in the quiet

enjoyment of our early autumn, amid the tranquillities of the country.

There is a sober and chastened air of gayety diffused over the face of

nature, peculiarly interesting to an old man; and when he views the

surrounding landscape withering under his eye, it seems as if he and

nature were taking a last farewell of each other and parting with a

melancholy smile; like a couple of old friends, who, having sported away

the spring and summer of life together, part at the approach of winter

with a kind of prophetic fear that they are never to meet again.

It is either my good fortune, or mishap, to be keenly susceptible to the

influence of the atmosphere; and I can feel in the morning, before I

open my window, whether the wind is easterly. It will not, therefore, I

presume, be considered an extravagant instance of vainglory when I

assert, that there are few men who can discriminate more accurately in

the different varieties of damps, fogs, Scotch mists, and northeast

storms, than myself. To the great discredit of my philosophy, I confess,

I seldom fail to anathematize and excommunicate the weather, when it

sports too rudely with my sensitive system; but then I always endeavor

to atone therefor, by eulogizing it when deserving of approbation. And

as most of my readers—simple folks!—make but one distinction, to wit,

rain and sunshine; living in most honest ignorance of the various nice

shades which distinguish one fine day from another, I take the trouble,

from time to time, of letting them into some of the secrets of nature.

So will they be the better enabled to enjoy her beauties, with the zest

of connoisseurs, and derive at least as much information from my pages

as from the weather-wise lore of the almanac.

Much of my recreation, since I retreated to the Hall, has consisted in

making little excursions through the neighborhood; which abounds in the

variety of wild, romantic, and luxuriant landscape that generally

characterizes the scenery in the vicinity of our rivers. There is not an

eminence within a circuit of many miles but commands an extensive range

of diversified and enchanting prospect.

Often have I rambled to the summit of some favorite hill; and thence,

with feelings sweetly tranquil, as the lucid expanse of the heavens that

canopied me, have noted the slow and almost imperceptible changes that

mark the waning year. There are many features peculiar to our autumn,

and which give it an individual character. The “green and yellow

melancholy” that first steals over the landscape—the mild and steady

serenity of the weather, and the transparent purity of the atmosphere,

speak, not merely to the senses, but the heart. It is the season of

liberal emotions. To this succeeds fantastic gayety, a motley dress,

which the woods assume, where green and yellow, orange, purple, crimson,

and scarlet, are whimsically blended together. A sickly splendor

this!—like the wild and broken-hearted gayety, that sometimes precedes

dissolution,—or that childish sportiveness of superannuated age,

proceeding, not from a vigorous flow of animal spirits, but from the

decay and imbecility of the mind. We might, perhaps, be deceived by this

gaudy garb of nature, were it not for the rustling of the falling leaf,

which, breaking on the stillness of the scene, seems to announce, in

prophetic whispers, the dreary winter that is approaching. When I have

sometimes seen a thrifty young oak changing its hue of sturdy vigor for

a bright, but transient glow of red, it has recalled to my mind the

treacherous bloom that once mantled the cheek of a friend who is now no

more; and which, while it seemed to promise a long life of jocund

spirits, was the sure precursor of premature decay. In a little while,

and this ostentatious foliage disappears; the close of autumn leaves but

one wide expanse of dusky brown, save where some rivulet steals along,

bordered with little strips of green grass; the woodland echoes no more

to the carols of the feathered tribes that sported in the leafy covert,

and its solitude and silence is uninterrupted except by the plaintive

whistle of the quail, the barking of the squirrel, or the still more

melancholy wintry wind, which, rushing and swelling through the hollows

of the mountains, sighs through the leafless branches of the grove, and

seems to mourn the desolation of the year.

To one who, like myself, is fond of drawing comparisons between the

different divisions of life, and those of the seasons, there will appear

a striking analogy, which connects the feelings of the aged with the

decline of the year. Often, as I contemplate the mild, uniform, and

genial lustre with which the sun cheers and invigorates us in the month

of October, and the almost imperceptible haze which, without obscuring,

tempers all the asperities of the landscape, and gives to every object a

character of stillness and repose, I cannot help comparing it with that

portion of existence when, the spring of youthful hope and the summer of

the passions having gone by, reason assumes an undisputed sway, and

lights us on with bright, but undazzling lustre, adown the hill of life.

There is a full and mature luxuriance in the fields that fills the bosom

with generous and disinterested content. It is not the thoughtless

extravagance of spring, prodigal only in blossoms, nor the languid

voluptuousness of summer, feverish in its enjoyments, and teeming only

with immature abundance—it is that certain fruition of the labors of the

past—that prospect of comfortable realities, which those will be sure to

enjoy who have improved the beauteous smiles of heaven, nor wasted away

their spring and summer in empty trifling or criminal indulgence.

Cousin Pindar, who is my constant companion in these expeditions, and

who still possesses much of the fire and energy of youthful sentiment,

and a buxom hilarity of the spirits, often, indeed, draws me from these

half-melancholy reveries, and makes me feel young again by the

enthusiasm with which he contemplates, and the animation with which he

eulogizes the beauties of nature displayed before him. His enthusiastic

disposition never allows him to enjoy things by halves, and his feelings

are continually breaking out in notes of admiration and ejaculations

that sober reason might perhaps deem extravagant. But, for my part, when

I see a hale, hearty old man, who has jostled through the rough path of

the world, without having worn away the fine edges of his feelings, or

blunted his sensibility to natural and moral beauty, I compare him to

the evergreen of the forest, whose colors, instead of fading at the

approach of winter, seem to assume additional lustre, when contrasted

with the surrounding desolation. Such a man is my friend Pindar; yet

sometimes, and particularly at the approach of evening, even he will

fall in with my humor; but he soon recovers his natural tone of spirits;

and, mounting on the elasticity of his mind, like Ganymede on the

eagle’s wing, he soars to the ethereal regions of sunshine and fancy.

One afternoon we had strolled to the top of a high hill in the

neighborhood of the Hall, which commands an almost boundless prospect;

and as the shadows began to lengthen around us, and the distant

mountains to fade into mist, my cousin was seized with a moralizing fit.

“It seems to me,” said he, laying his hand lightly on my shoulder, “that

there is just at this season, and this hour, a sympathy between us and

the world we are now contemplating. The evening is stealing upon nature

as well as upon us; the shadows of the opening day have given place to

those of its close; and the only difference is, that in the morning they

were before us, now they are behind; and that the first vanished in the

splendors of noonday, the latter will be lost in the oblivion of night.

Our ‘May of life,’ my dear Launce, has forever fled; our summer is over

and gone—but,” continued he, suddenly recovering himself, and slapping

me gayly on the shoulder—“but why should we repine?—what? though the

capricious zephyrs of spring, the heats and hurricanes of summer, have

given place to the sober sunshine of autumn! and though the woods begin

to assume the dappled livery of decay! yet the prevailing color is still

green—gay, sprightly green.

“Let us then comfort ourselves with this reflection; that though the

shades of the morning have given place to those of the evening—though

the spring is past, the summer over, and the autumn come—still you and I

go on our way rejoicing, and while, like the lofty mountains of our

southern America, our heads are covered with snow, still, like them, we

feel the genial warmth of spring and summer playing upon our bosoms.”

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.,

In the description which I gave some time since, of Cockloft Hall, I

totally forgot to make honorable mention of the library, which I confess

was a most inexcusable oversight; for in truth it would bear a

comparison, in point of usefulness and eccentricity, with the motley

collection of the renowned hero of La Mancha.

It was chiefly gathered together by my grandfather; who spared neither

pains nor expense to procure specimens of the oldest, most quaint, and

insufferable books in the whole compass of English, Scotch, and Irish

literature. There is a tradition in the family that the old gentleman

once gave a grand entertainment in consequence of having got possession

of a copy of a phillipic, by Archbishop Anselm, against the unseemly

luxury of long-toed shoes, as worn by the courtiers in the time of

William Rufus, which he purchased of an honest brick-maker in the

neighborhood, for a little less than forty times its value. He had

undoubtedly a singular reverence for old authors, and his highest

eulogium on his library was, that it consisted of books not to be met

with in any other collection; and as the phrase is, entirely out of

print. The reason of which was, I suppose, that they were not worthy of

being reprinted.

Cousin Christopher preserves these relics with great care, and has added

considerably to the collection; for with the Hall he has inherited

almost all the whimwhams of its former possessor. He cherishes a

reverential regard for ponderous _tomes_ of Greek and Latin; though he

knows about as much of these languages, as a young Bachelor of Arts does

a year or two after leaving college. A worm-eaten work in eight or ten

volumes he compares to an old family, more respectable for its antiquity

than its splendor; a lumbering folio he considers as a duke; a sturdy

quarto, as an earl; and a row of gilded duodecimos, as so many gallant

knights of the garter. But as to modern works of literature, they are

thrust into trunks and drawers, as intruding upstarts, and regarded with

as much contempt as mushroom nobility in England; who, having risen to

grandeur, merely by their talents and services, are regarded as utterly

unworthy to mingle their blood with those noble currents that can be

traced without a single contamination through a long line of, perhaps,

useless and profligate ancestors, up to William the Bastard’s cook, or

butler, or groom, or some one of Rollo’s freebooters.

Will Wizard, whose studies are of a most uncommon complexion, takes

great delight in ransacking the library; and has been, during his late

sojournings at the Hall, very constant and devout in his visits to this

receptacle of obsolete learning. He seemed particularly tickled with the

contents of the great mahogany chest of drawers mentioned in the

beginning of this work. This venerable piece of architecture has frowned

in sullen majesty, from a corner of the library, time out of mind; and

is filled with musty manuscripts, some in my grandfather’s handwriting

and others evidently written long before his day.

It was a sight, worthy of a man’s seeing, to behold Will with his

outlandish phiz poring over old scrawls that would puzzle a whole

society of antiquarians to expound, and diving into receptacles of

trumpery, which for a century past, had been undisturbed by mortal hand.

He would sit for whole hours, with a phlegmatic patience unknown in

these degenerate days, except, peradventure, among the High Dutch

commentators, prying into the quaint obscurity of musty parchments,

until his whole face seemed to be converted into a folio leaf of black

letter; and occasionally, when the whimsical meaning of an obscure

passage flashed on his mind, his countenance would curl up into an

expression of gothic risibility, not unlike the physiognomy of a cabbage

leaf wilting before a hot fire.

At such times there was no getting Will to join in our walks; or take

any part in our usual recreations; he hardly gave us an oriental tale in

a week, and would smoke so inveterately that no one else dared to enter

the library under pain of suffocation. This was more especially the case

when he encountered any knotty piece of writing; and he honestly

confessed to me that one worm-eaten manuscript, written in a pestilent

crabbed hand, had cost him a box of the best Spanish cigars before he

could make it out; and after all, it was not worth a tobacco-stalk. Such

is the turn of my knowing associate; only let him get fairly in the

track of any odd out-of-the-way whimwham, and away he goes, whip and

cut, until he either runs down his game, or runs himself out of breath;

I never in my life met with a man who rode his hobby-horse more

intolerably hard than Wizard.

One of his favorite occupations, for some time past, has been the

hunting of black letter, which he holds in high regard; and he often

hints, that learning has been on the decline ever since the introduction

of the Roman alphabet. An old book printed three hundred years ago is a

treasure; and a ragged scroll, about one-half unintelligible, fills him

with rapture. O! with what enthusiasm will he dwell on the discovery of

the Pandects of Justinian, and Livy’s history; and when he relates the

pious exertions of the Medici, in recovering the lost treasures of Greek

and Roman literature, his eye brightens, and his face assumes all the

splendor of an illuminated manuscript.

Will had vegetated for a considerable time in perfect tranquillity among

dust and cobwebs, when one morning as we were gathered on the piazza,

listening with exemplary patience to one of Cousin Christopher’s long

stories about the Revolutionary War, we were suddenly electrified by an

explosion of laughter from the library. My readers, unless peradventure

they have heard honest Will laugh, can form no idea of the prodigious

uproar he makes. To hear him in a forest, you would imagine—that is to

say if you were classical enough—that the satyrs and the dryads had just

discovered a pair of rural lovers in the shade, and were deriding, with

bursts of obstreperous laughter, the blushes of the nymph and the

indignation of the swain,—or if it were suddenly, as in the present

instance, to break upon the serene and pensive silence of an autumnal

morning, it would cause a sensation something like that which arises

from hearing a sudden clap of thunder in a summer’s day, when not a

cloud is to be seen above the horizon. In short, I recommend Will’s

laugh as a sovereign remedy for the spleen: and if any of our readers

are troubled with that villainous complaint—which can hardly be, if they

make good use of our works—I advise them earnestly to get introduced to

him forthwith.

This outrageous merriment of Will’s, as may be easily supposed, threw

the whole family into a violent fit of wondering; we all, with the

exception of Christopher, who took the interruption in high dudgeon,

silently stole up to the library; and bolting in upon him, were fain at

the first glance to join in his aspiring roar. His face—but I despair to

give an idea of his appearance!—and until his portrait, which is now in

the hands of an eminent artist, is engraved, my readers must be content:

I promise them they shall one day or other have a striking likeness of

Will’s indescribable phiz, in all its native comeliness.

Upon my inquiring the occasion of his mirth, he thrust an old, rusty,

musty, and dusty manuscript into my hand, of which I could not decipher

one word out of ten, without more trouble than it was worth. This task,

however, he kindly took off my hands; and, in a little more than

eight-and-forty hours, produced a translation into fair Roman letters;

though he assured me it had lost a vast deal of its humor by being

modernized and degraded into plain English. In return for the great

pains he had taken, I could not do less than insert it in our work. Will

informs me that it is but one sheet of a stupendous bundle which still

remains uninvestigated. Who was the author we have not yet discovered;

but a note on the back, in my grandfather’s handwriting, informs us that

it was presented to him as a literary curiosity by his particular

friend, the illustrious Rip Van Dam, formerly lieutenant-governor of the

colony of New Amsterdam; and whose fame, if it has never reached these

latter days, it was only because he was too modest a man ever to do

anything worthy of being particularly recorded.

CHAP. CIX.—OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE RENOWNED AND ANTIENT CITY OF GOTHAM.

How Gotham city conquered was,

And how the folks turned apes—because.

_Link. Fid._

Albeit, much about this time it did fall out that the thrice renowned

and delectable city of Gotham did suffer great discomfiture, and was

reduced to perilous extremity, by the invasion and assaults of the

Hoppingtots. These are a people inhabiting a far distant country,

exceedingly pleasaunte and fertile; but they being withal egregiously

addicted to migrations, do thence issue forth in mighty swarms, like the

Scythians of old, overrunning divers countries and commonwealths, and

committing great devastations wheresoever they do go, by their horrible

and dreadful feats and prowesses. They are specially noted for being

right valorous in all exercises of the leg; and of them it hath been

rightly affirmed that no nation in all Christendom or elsewhere, can

cope with them in the adroit, dexterous, and jocund shaking of the heel.

This engaging excellence doth stand unto them a sovereign

recommendation, by which they do insinuate themselves into universal

favor and good countenance; and it is a notable fact, that, let a

Hoppingtot but once introduce a foot into company, and it goeth hardly

if he doth not contrive to flourish his whole body in thereafter. The

learned Linkum Fidelius, in his famous and unheard-of treatise on man,

whom he defineth, with exceeding sagacity, to be a corn-cutting,

tooth-drawing animal, is particularly minute and elaborate in treating

of the nation of the Hoppingtots, and betrays a little of the

Pythagorean in his theory, inasmuch as he accounteth for their being so

wonderously adroit in pedestrian exercises, by supposing that they did

originally acquire this unaccountable and unparalleled aptitude for huge

and unmatchable feats of the leg, by having heretofore been condemned

for their numerous offenses against that harmless race of bipeds,—or

quadrupeds, for herein the sage Linkum Fidelius appeareth to doubt and

waver exceedingly—the frogs, to animate their bodies for the space of

one or two generations.

He also giveth it as his opinion, that the name of Hoppingtots is

manifestly derivative from this transmigration. Be this, however, as it

may, the matter, albeit it has been the subject of controversy among the

learned, is but little pertinent to the subject of this history;

wherefore shall we treat and consider it as naughte.

Now these people being thereto impelled by a superfluity of appetite,

and a plentiful deficiency of the wherewithal to satisfy the same, did

take thought that the antient and venerable city of Gotham, was,

peradventure, possessed of mighty treasures, and did, moreover, abound

with all manner of fish and flesh, and eatables and drinkables, and such

like delightsome and wholesome excellencies withal. Whereupon calling a

council of the most active heeled warriors, they did resolve forthwith

to put forth a mighty array, make themselves masters of the same, and

revel in the good things of the land. To this were they hotly stirred

up, and wickedly incited, by two redoubtable and renowned warriors,

hight Pirouet and Rigadoon; ycleped in such sort, by reason that they

were two mighty, valiant, and invincible little men; utterly famous for

the victories of the leg which they had, on divers illustrious

occasions, right gallantly achieved.

These doughty champions did ambitiously and wickedly inflame the minds

of their countrymen, with gorgeous descriptions, in the which they did

cunninglie set forth the marvelous riches and luxuries of Gotham; where

Hoppingtots might have garments for their bodies, shirts to their

ruffles, and might riot most merrily every day in the week on beef,

pudding, and such like lusty dainties. They, Pirouet and Rigadoon, did

likewise hold out hopes of an easy conquest; forasmuch as the Gothamites

were as yet but little versed in the mystery and science of handling the

legs; and being, moreover, like unto that notable bully of antiquity,

Achilles, most vulnerable to all attacks on the heel, would doubtless

surrender at the very first assault. Whereupon, on the hearing of this

inspiriting counsel, the Hoppingtots did set up a prodigious great cry

of joy, shook their heels in triumph, and were all impatience to dance

on to Gotham and take it by storm.

The cunning Pirouet, and that arch caitiff Rigadoon, knew full well how

to profit of this enthusiasm. They forthwith did order every man to arm

himself with a certain pestilent little weapon called a fiddle; to pack

up in his knapsack a pair of silk breeches, the like of ruffles, a

cocked hat of the form of a half-moon, a bundle of catgut—and inasmuch

as in marching to Gotham, the army might peradventure be smitten with

scarcity of provisions, they did account it proper that each man should

take especial care to carry with him a bunch of right merchantable

onions. Having proclaimed these orders by sound of fiddle, they, Pirouet

and Rigadoon, did accordingly put their army behind them, and striking

up the right jolly and sprightful tune of _Ça Ira_, away they all

capered toward the devoted city of Gotham, with a most horrible and

appalling chattering of voices.

Of their first appearance before the beleaguered town, and of the

various difficulties which did encounter them in their march, this

history saith not; being that other matters of more weighty import

require to be written. When that the army of the Hoppingtots did

peregrinate within sight of Gotham, and the people of the city did

behold the villainous and hitherto unseen capers and grimaces which they

did make, a most horrific panic was stirred up among the citizens; and

the sages of the town fell into great despondency and tribulation, as

supposing that these invaders were of the race of the Jig-hees, who did

make men into baboons when they achieved a conquest over them. The

sages, therefore, called upon all the dancing-men and dancing-women, and

exhorted them, with great vehemence of speech, to make heel against the

invaders, and to put themselves upon such gallant defense, such glorious

array, and such sturdy evolution, elevation, and transposition of the

foot as might incontinently impester the legs of the Hoppingtots, and

produce their complete discomfiture. But so it did happen, by great

mischance, that divers light-heeled youths of Gotham, more especially

those who are descended from three wise men, so renowned of yore for

having most venturesomely voyaged over sea in a bowl, were, from time to

time, captured and inveigled into the camp of the enemy; where, being

foolishly cajoled and treated for a season with outlandish disports and

pleasantries, they were sent back to their friends, entirely changed,

degenerated, and turned topsy-turvy; insomuch that they thought

thenceforth of nothing but their heels, always essaying to thrust them

into the most manifest point of view; and, in a word, as might truly be

affirmed, did forever after walk upon their heads outright.

And the Hoppingtots did day by day, and at late hours of the night, wax

more and more urgent in this their investment of the city. At one time

they would, in goodly procession, make an open assault by sound of

fiddle in a tremendous contra-dance—and anon they would advance by

little detachments and maneuvers to take the town by figuring in

cotillons. But truly their most cunning and devilish craft and subtilty

was made manifest in their strenuous endeavors to corrupt the garrison,

by a most insidious and pestilent dance called the _Waltz_. This, in

good truth, was a potent auxiliary; for, by it, were the heads of the

simple Gothamites most villainously turned, their wits sent a

wool-gathering, and themselves on the point of surrendering at

discretion even unto the very arms of their invading foemen.

At length the fortifications of the town began to give manifest symptoms

of decay; inasmuch as the breastwork of decency was considerably broken

down, and the curtain works of propriety blown up. When that cunning

caitiff, Pirouet, beheld the ticklish and jeopardized state of the

city—“Now, by my leg,” quoth he,—he always swore by his leg, being that

it was an exceedingly goodlie leg,—“now, by my leg,” quoth he, “but this

is no great matter of recreation; I will show these people a pretty,

strange, and new way, forsooth, presently, and will shake the dust off

my pumps upon this most obstinate and uncivilized town. Whereupon he

ordered, and did command his warriors, one and all, that they should put

themselves in readiness, and prepare to carry the town by a GRAND BALL.

They, in nowise to be daunted, do forthwith, at the word, equip

themselves for the assault; and in good faith, truly, it was a gracious

and glorious sight—a most triumphant and incomparable spectacle—to

behold them gallantly arrayed in glossy and shining silk breeches tied

with abundance of ribbon; with silken hose of the gorgeous color of the

salmon; right goodlie morocco pumps, decorated with clasps or buckles of

a most cunninge and secret contrivance, inasmuch as they did of

themselves grapple to the shoe without any aid of fluke or tongue,

marvelously ensembling witchcraft and necromancy. They had, withal,

exuberant chitterlings, which puffed out at the neck and bosom, after a

most jolly fashion, like unto the beard of an antient he-turkey; and

cocked hats, the which they did carry not on their heads, after the

fashion of the Gothamites, but under their arms, as a roasted fowl his

gizzard.”

Thus being equipped and marshaled, they do attack, assault, batter, and

belabor the town with might and main; most gallantly displaying the

vigor of their legs, and shaking their heels at it most emphatically.

And the manner of their attack was in this sort: first, they did thunder

and gallop forward in a _contre-temps_—and anon, displayed column in a

Cossack dance, a fandango, or a gavot. Whereat the Gothamites, in nowise

understanding this unknown system of warfare, marveled exceedinglie, and

did open their mouths incontinently, the full distance of a bow-shot,

meaning a cross-bow, in sore dismay and apprehension. Whereupon, saith

Rigadoon, flourishing his left leg with great expression of valor, and

most magnific carriage: “My copesmates, for what wait we here? are not

the townsmen already won to our favor? do not their women and young

damsels wave to us from the walls in such sort that, albeit there is

some show of defense, yet is it manifestly converted into our

interests?” So saying, he made no more ado, but leaping into the air

about a flight-shot, and crossing his feet six times, after the manner

of the Hoppingtots, he gave a short partridge-run, and with mighty vigor

and swiftness did bolt outright over the walls with a somerset. The

whole army of Hoppingtots danced in after their valiant chieftain, with

an enormous squeaking of fiddles, and a horrific blasting and brattling

of horns; insomuch that the dogs did howl in the streets, so hideously

were their ears assailed. The Gothamites made some semblance of defense,

but their women having been all won over into the interest of the enemy,

they were shortly reduced to make most abject submission; and delivered

over to the coercion of certain professors of the Hoppingtots, who did

put them under most ignominious durance, for the space of a long time,

until they had learned to turn out their toes, and flourish their legs

after the manner of their conquerors. And thus, after the manner I have

related, was the mighty and puissant city of Gotham circumvented, and

taken by a _coup de pied_: or, as it might be rendered, by force of

legs.

The conquerors showed no mercy, but did put all ages, sexes, and

conditions, to the fiddle and the dance; and, in a word, compelled and

enforced them to become absolute Hoppingtots. “Habit,” as the ingenious

Linkum Fidelius profoundly affirmeth, “is second nature.” And this

original and invaluable observation hath been most aptly proved, and

illustrated, by the example of the Gothamites, ever since this

disastrous and unlucky mischance. In process of time, they have waxed to

be most flagrant, outrageous, and abandoned dancers; they do ponder on

naughte but how to gallantize it at balls, routs, and fandangoes;

insomuch that the like was in no time or place ever observed before.

They do moreover, pitifully devote their nights to the jollification of

the legs, and their days forsooth to the instruction and edification of

the heel. And to conclude; their young folk, who whilome did bestow a

modicum of leisure upon the head, have of late utterly abandoned this

hopeful task, and have quietly, as it were, settled themselves down into

mere machines, wound up by a tune, and set in motion by a fiddle-stick!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

NO. XVIII.—TUESDAY, NOV. 24, 1807.

THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK.

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.

The following story has been handed down by family tradition for more

than a century. It is one on which my cousin Christopher dwells with

more than usual prolixity; and, being in some measure connected with a

personage often quoted in our work, I have thought it worthy of being

laid before my readers.

Soon after my grandfather, Mr. Lemuel Cockloft, had quietly settled

himself at the Hall, and just about the time that the gossips of the

neighborhood, tired of prying into his affairs, were anxious for some

new tea-table topic, the busy community of our little village was thrown

into a grand turmoil of curiosity and conjecture—a situation very common

to little gossiping villages—by the sudden and unaccountable appearance

of a mysterious individual.

The object of this solicitude was a little black-looking man, of a

foreign aspect, who took possession of an old building, which having

long had the reputation of being haunted, was in a state of ruinous

desolation, and an object of fear to all true believers in ghosts. He

usually wore a high sugarloaf hat with a narrow brim; and a little black

cloak, which, short as he was, scarcely reached below his knees. He

sought no intimacy or acquaintance with any one; appeared to take no

interest in the pleasures or the little broils of the village; nor ever

talked; except sometimes to himself in an outlandish tongue. He commonly

carried a large book, covered with sheepskin, under his arm; appeared

always to be lost in meditation; and was often met by the peasantry,

sometimes watching the dawning of day, sometimes at noon seated under a

tree, poring over his volume; and sometimes at evening gazing with a

look of sober tranquillity at the sun as it gradually sunk below the

horizon.

The good people of the vicinity beheld something prodigiously singular

in all this; a profound mystery seemed to hang about the stranger which,

with all their sagacity, they could not penetrate; and in the excess of

worldly charity they pronounced it a sure sign “that he was no better

than he should be;” a phrase innocent enough in itself: but which, as

applied in common, signifies nearly everything that is bad. The young

people thought him a gloomy misanthrope, because he never joined in

their sports; the old men thought still more hardly of him because he

followed no trade, and never seemed ambitious of earning a farthing; and

as to the old gossips, baffled by the inflexible taciturnity of the

stranger, they unanimously decreed that a man who could not or would not

talk was no better than a dumb beast. The little man in black, careless

of their opinions, seemed resolved to maintain the liberty of keeping

his own secret; and the consequence was that, in a little while, the

whole village was in an uproar; for in little communities of this

description, the members have always the privilege of being thoroughly

versed, and even of meddling in all the affairs of each other.

A confidential conference was held one Sunday morning after sermon, at

the door of the village church, and the character of the unknown fully

investigated. The schoolmaster gave it as his opinion that he was the

wandering Jew; the sexton was certain that he must be a freemason, from

his silence; a third maintained, with great obstinacy, that he was a

high German doctor, and that the book which he carried about with him

contained the secrets of the black art; but the most prevailing opinion

seemed to be that he was a witch; a race of beings at that time

abounding in those parts; and a sagacious old matron, from Connecticut,

proposed to ascertain the fact by sousing him into a kettle of hot

water.

Suspicion, when once afloat, goes with wind and tide, and soon becomes

certainty. Many a stormy night was the little man in black seen by the

flashes of lightning, frisking and curveting in the air upon a

broomstick; and it was always observed that at those times the storm did

more mischief than at any other. The old lady, in particular, who

suggested the humane ordeal of the boiling kettle, lost on one of these

occasions a fine brindle cow; which accident was entirely ascribed to

the vengeance of the little man in black. If ever a mischievous hireling

rode his master’s favorite horse to a distant frolic, and the animal was

observed to be lame and jaded in the morning, the little man in black

was sure to be at the bottom of the affair; nor could a high wind howl

through the village at night but the old women shrugged up their

shoulders, and observed, “the little man in black was in his

_tantrums_.” In short, he became the bugbear of every house; and was as

effectual in frightening little children into obedience and hysterics,

as the redoubtable Raw-head-and-bloody-bones himself; nor could a

housewife of the village sleep in peace except under the guardianship of

a horseshoe nailed to the door.

The object of these direful suspicions remained for some time totally

ignorant of the wonderful quandary he had occasioned; but he was soon

doomed to feel its effects. An individual who is once so unfortunate as

to incur the odium of a village is in a great measure outlawed and

proscribed; and becomes a mark for injury and insult; particularly if he

has not the power or the disposition to recriminate. The little venomous

passions, which in the great world are dissipated and weakened by being

widely diffused, act in the narrow limits of a country town with

collected vigor, and become rancorous in proportion as they are confined

in their sphere of action. The little man in black experienced the truth

of this; every mischievous urchin returning from school had full liberty

to break his windows; and this was considered as a most daring exploit;

for in such awe did they stand of him, that the most adventurous

schoolboy was never seen to approach his threshold, and at night would

prefer going round by the cross-roads, where a traveller had been

murdered by the Indians, rather than pass by the door of his forlorn

habitation.

The only living creature that seemed to have any care or affection for

this deserted being was an old turnspit—the companion of his lonely

mansion and his solitary wandering—the sharer of his scanty meals,

and—sorry I am to say it—the sharer of his persecutions. The turnspit,

like his master, was peaceable and inoffensive; never known to bark at a

horse, to growl at a traveller, or to quarrel with the dogs of the

neighborhood. He followed close at his master’s heels when he went out,

and when he returned stretched himself in the sunbeams at the door;

demeaning himself in all things like a civil and well-disposed turnspit.

But notwithstanding his exemplary deportment, he fell likewise under the

ill report of the village, as being the familiar of the little man in

black, and the evil spirit that presided at his incantations. The old

hovel was considered as the scene of their unhallowed rites, and its

harmless tenants regarded with a detestation which their inoffensive

conduct never merited. Though pelted and jeered at by the brats of the

village, and frequently abused by their parents, the little man in black

never turned to rebuke them; and his faithful dog, when wantonly

assaulted, looked up wistfully in his master’s face, and there learned a

lesson of patience and forbearance.

The movements of this inscrutable being had long been the subject of

speculation at Cockloft Hall, for its inmates were full as much given to

wondering as their descendants. The patience with which he bore his

persecutions particularly surprised them; for patience is a virtue but

little known in the Cockloft family. My grandmother, who, it appears,

was rather superstitious, saw in this humility nothing but the gloomy

sullenness of a wizard who restrained himself for the present, in hopes

of midnight vengeance; the parson of the village, who was a man of some

reading, pronounced it the stubborn insensibility of a stoic

philosopher; my grandfather, who, worthy soul, seldom wandered abroad in

search of conclusions, took a data from his own excellent heart, and

regarded it as the humble forgiveness of a Christian. But however

different were their opinions as to the character of the stranger, they

agreed in one particular, namely, in never intruding upon his solitude;

and my grandmother, who was at that time nursing my mother, never left

the room without wisely putting the large family Bible in the cradle—a

sure talisman, in her opinion, against witchcraft and necromancy.

One stormy winter night, when a bleak northeast wind moaned about the

cottages, and howled around the village steeple, my grandfather was

returning from club, preceded by a servant with a lantern. Just as he

arrived opposite the desolate abode of the little man in black, he was

arrested by the piteous howling of a dog, which, heard in the pauses of

a storm, was exquisitely mournful; and he fancied, now and then, that he

caught the low and broken groans of some one in distress. He stopped for

some minutes, hesitating between the benevolence of his heart and a

sensation of genuine delicacy, which, in spite of his eccentricity, he

fully possessed—and which forbade him to pry into the concerns of his

neighbors. Perhaps, too, this hesitation might have been strengthened by

a little taint of superstition; for surely, if the unknown had been

addicted to witchcraft, this was a most propitious night for his

vagaries. At length the old gentleman’s philanthropy predominated; he

approached the hovel, and, pushing open the door—for poverty has no

occasion for locks and keys—beheld, by the light of the lantern, a scene

that smote his generous heart to the core.

On a miserable bed, with pallid and emaciated visage, and hollow eyes—in

a room destitute of every convenience—without fire to warm or friend to

console him, lay this helpless mortal, who had been so long the terror

and wonder of the village. His dog was crouching on the scanty coverlet,

and shivering with cold. My grandfather stepped softly and hesitatingly

to the bedside, and accosted the forlorn sufferer in his usual accents

of kindness. The little man in black seemed recalled by the tones of

compassion from the lethargy into which he had fallen; for, though his

heart was almost frozen, there was yet one chord that answered to the

call of the good old man who bent over him; the tones of sympathy, so

novel to his ear, called back his wandering senses, and acted like a

restorative to his solitary feelings.

He raised his eyes, but they were vacant and haggard; he put forth his

hand, but it was cold; he essayed to speak, but the sound died away in

his throat; he pointed to his mouth with an expression of dreadful

meaning, and, sad to relate, my grandfather understood that the harmless

stranger, deserted by society, was perishing with hunger! With the quick

impulse of humanity, he dispatched the servant to the Hall for

refreshment. A little warm nourishment renovated him for a short time,

but not long; it was evident his pilgrimage was drawing to a close, and

he was about entering that peaceful asylum, where “the wicked cease from

troubling.”

His tale of misery was short and quickly told; infirmities had stolen

upon him, heightened by the rigors of the season: he had taken to his

bed, without strength to rise and ask for assistance—“and if I had,”

said he, in a tone of bitter despondency, “to whom should I have

applied? I have no friend that I know of in the world! The villagers

avoid me as something loathsome and dangerous; and here, in the midst of

Christians, should I have perished, without a fellow-being to soothe the

last moments of existence, and close my dying eyes, had not the howlings

of my faithful dog excited your attention.”

He seemed deeply sensible of the kindness of my grandfather; and at one

time, as he looked up into his old benefactor’s face, a solitary tear

was observed to steal adown the parched furrows of his cheek. Poor

outcast! it was the last tear he shed; but I warrant it was not the

first by millions. My grandfather watched by him all night. Toward

morning he gradually declined; and, as the rising sun gleamed through

the window, he begged to be raised in his bed, that he might look at it

for the last time. He contemplated it for a moment, with a kind of

religious enthusiasm, and his lips moved as if engaged in prayer. The

strange conjectures concerning him rushed on my grandfather’s mind; “he

is an idolater,” thought he, “and is worshipping the sun!” He listened a

moment, and blushed at his own uncharitable suspicion; he was only

engaged in the pious devotions of a Christian. His simple orison being

finished, the little man in black withdrew his eyes from the east, and,

taking my grandfather’s hand in one of his, and making a motion with the

other toward the sun: “I love to contemplate it,” said he; “’tis an

emblem of the universal benevolence of a true Christian; and it is the

most glorious work of Him, who is philanthropy itself!” My grandfather

blushed still deeper at his ungenerous surmises; he had pitied the

stranger at first, but now he revered him. He turned once more to regard

him, but his countenance had undergone a change; the holy enthusiasm

that had lighted up each feature had given place to an expression of

mysterious import; a gleam of grandeur seemed to steal across his Gothic

visage, and he appeared full of some mighty secret which he hesitated to

impart. He raised the tattered night-cap that had sunk almost over his

eyes, and waving his withered hand with a slow and feeble expression of

dignity—“In me,” said he, with laconic solemnity—“in me you behold the

last descendant of the renowned Linkum Fidelius!” My grandfather gazed

at him with reverence; for though he had never heard of the illustrious

personage, thus pompously announced, yet there was a certain

black-letter dignity in the name that peculiarly struck his fancy and

commanded his respect.

“You have been kind to me,” continued the little man in black, after a

momentary pause, “and richly will I requite your kindness by making you

heir to my treasures! In yonder large deal box are the volumes of my

illustrious ancestor, of which I alone am the fortunate possessor.

Inherit them, ponder over them, and be wise!” He grew faint with the

exertion he had made, and sunk back almost breathless on his pillow. His

hand, which, inspired with the importance of his subject, he had raised

to my grandfather’s arm, slipped from its hold and fell over the side of

the bed, and his faithful dog licked it, as if anxious to soothe the

last moments of his dying master and testify his gratitude to the hand

that had so often cherished him. The untaught caresses of the faithful

animal were not lost upon his dying master; he raised his languid eyes,

turned them on the dog, then on my grandfather; and having given this

silent recommendation—closed them for ever.

The remains of the little man in black, notwithstanding the objections

of many pious people, were decently interred in the churchyard of the

village; and his spirit, harmless as the body it once animated, has

never been known to molest a living being. My grandfather complied, as

far as possible, with his last request; he conveyed the volumes of

Linkum Fidelius to his library; he pondered over them frequently; but

whether he grew wiser, the tradition doth not mention. This much is

certain, that his kindness to the poor descendant of Fidelius was amply

rewarded by the approbation of his own heart, and the devoted attachment

of the old turnspit; who, transferring his affection from his deceased

master to his benefactor, became his constant attendant, and was father

to a long line of runty curs that still flourish in the family. And thus

was the Cockloft library first enriched by the invaluable folios of the

sage LINKUM FIDELIUS.

LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN,

TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF

TRIPOLI.