Though I am often disgusted, my good Asem, with the vices and

absurdities of the men of this country, yet the women afford me a world

of amusement. Their lively prattle is as diverting as the chattering of

the red-tailed parrot; nor can the green-headed monkey of Timandi equal

them in whim and playfulness. But, notwithstanding these valuable

qualifications, I am sorry to observe they are not treated with half the

attention bestowed on the before mentioned animals. These infidels put

their parrots in cages and chain their monkeys; but their women, instead

of being carefully shut up in harems and seraglios, are abandoned to the

direction of their own reason, and suffered to run about in perfect

freedom, like other domestic animals. This comes, Asem, of treating

their women as rational beings, and allowing them souls. The consequence

of this piteous neglect may easily be imagined; they have degenerated

into all their native wildness, are seldom to be caught at home, and, at

an early age, take to the streets and highways, where they rove about in

droves, giving almost as much annoyance to the peaceable people as the

troops of wild dogs that infest our great cities, or the flights of

locusts that sometimes spread famine and desolation over whole regions

of fertility.

This propensity to relapse into pristine wildness, convinces me of the

untamable disposition of the sex, who may indeed be partially

domesticated by a long course of confinement and restraint, but the

moment they are restored to personal freedom, become wild as the young

partridge of this country, which, though scarcely half-hatched, will

take to the fields and run about with the shell upon its back.

Notwithstanding their wildness, however, they are remarkably easy of

access, and suffer themselves to be approached at certain hours of the

day, without any symptoms of apprehension; and I have even happily

succeeded in detecting them at their domestic occupations. One of the

most important of these, consists in thumping vehemently on a kind of

musical instrument, and producing a confused, hideous, and indefinable

uproar, which they call the description of a battle—a jest, no doubt,

for they are wonderfully facetious at times, and make great practice of

passing jokes upon strangers. Sometimes they employ themselves in

painting little caricatures of landscapes, wherein they display their

singular drollery in bantering nature fairly out of countenance;

representing her tricked out in all the tawdry finery of copper skies,

purple rivers, calico rocks, red grass, clouds that look like old

clothes set adrift by the tempest, and foxy trees, whose melancholy

foliage, drooping and curling most fantastically, reminds me of an

undressed periwig that I have, now and then, seen hung on a stick in a

barber’s window. At other times, they employ themselves in acquiring a

smattering of languages spoken by nations on the other side of the

globe, as they find their own language not sufficiently copious to

supply their constant demands, and express their multifarious ideas. But

their most important domestic avocation is, to embroider, on satin or

muslin, flowers of a nondescript kind, in which the great art is to make

them as unlike nature as possible—or to fasten little bits of silver,

gold, tinsel and glass, on long strips of muslin, which they drag after

them with much dignity whenever they go abroad—a fine lady, like a bird

of paradise, being estimated by the length of her tail.

But do not, my friend, fall into the enormous error of supposing that

the exercise of these arts is attended with any useful or profitable

results; believe me, thou couldst not indulge an idea more unjust and

injurious; for it appears to be an established maxim among the women of

this country, that a lady loses her dignity when she condescends to be

useful; and forfeits all rank in society the moment she can be convicted

of earning a farthing. Their labors, therefore, are directed, not toward

supplying their household, but in decking their persons, and—generous

souls—they deck their persons, not so much to please themselves, as to

gratify others, particularly strangers. I am confident thou wilt stare

at this, my good Asem, accustomed as thou art to our eastern females,

who shrink in blushing timidity even from the glance of a lover, and are

so chary of their favors, that they even seem fearful of lavishing their

smiles too profusely on their husbands. Here, on the contrary, the

stranger has the first place in female regard, and, so far do they carry

their hospitality that I have seen a fine lady slight a dozen tried

friends and real admirers, who lived in her smiles and made her

happiness their study, merely to allure the vague and wandering glances

of a stranger, who viewed her person with indifference, and treated her

advances with contempt. By the whiskers of our sublime bashaw, but this

is highly flattering to a foreigner! and thou mayest judge how

particularly pleasing to one who is, like myself, so ardent an admirer

of the sex. Far be it from me to condemn this extraordinary

manifestation of good-will—let their own countrymen look to that.

Be not alarmed, I conjure thee, my dear Asem, lest I should be tempted,

by these beautiful barbarians, to break the faith I owe to the

three-and-twenty wives, from whom my unhappy destiny has perhaps severed

me forever. No, Asem, neither time, nor the bitter succession of

misfortunes that pursue me, can shake from my heart the memory of former

attachments. I listen with tranquil heart to the strumming and prattling

of these fair sirens; their whimsical paintings touch not the tender

chord of my affections; and I would still defy their fascinations,

though they trailed after them tails as long as the gorgeous trappings

which are dragged at the heels of the holy camel of Mecca; or as the

tail of the great beast in our prophet’s vision, which measured three

hundred and forty-nine leagues, two miles, three furlongs, and a hand’s

breadth in longitude.

The dress of these women is, if possible, more eccentric and whimsical

than their deportment; and they take an inordinate pride in certain

ornaments which are probably derived from their savage progenitors. A

woman of this country, dressed out for an exhibition, is loaded with as

many ornaments as a Circassian slave when brought out for sale. Their

heads are tricked out with little bits of horn or shell, cut into

fantastic shapes, and they seem to emulate each other in the number of

these singular baubles—like the women we have seen in our journeys to

Aleppo, who cover their heads with the entire shell of a tortoise, and,

thus equipped, are the envy of all their less fortunate acquaintance.

They also decorate their necks and ears with coral, gold chains, and

glass beads, and load their fingers with a variety of rings; though I

must confess, I have never perceived that they wear any in their

noses—as has been affirmed by many travellers. We have heard much of

their painting themselves most hideously, and making use of bear’s

grease in great profusion; but this, I solemnly assure thee, is a

misrepresentation; civilization, no doubt, having gradually extirpated

these nauseous practices. It is true, I have seen two or three of these

females, who had disguised their features with paint; but then it was

merely to give a tinge of red to their cheeks, and did not look very

frightful; and as to ointment, they rarely use any now, except

occasionally a little Grecian oil for their hair, which gives it a

glossy, greasy, and, they think, very comely appearance. The last

mentioned class of females, I take it for granted, have been but lately

caught, and still retain strong traits of their original savage

propensities.

The most flagrant and inexcusable fault, however, which I find in these

lovely savages, is the shameless and abandoned exposure of their

persons. Wilt thou not suspect me of exaggeration when I affirm—wilt

thou not blush for them, most discreet Mussulman, when I declare to

thee, that they are so lost to all sense of modesty, as to expose the

whole of their faces, from their forehead to the chin, and they even go

abroad with their hands uncovered! Monstrous indelicacy!

But what I am going to disclose will, doubtless, appear to thee still

more incredible. Though I cannot forbear paying a tribute of admiration

to the beautiful faces of these fair infidels, yet I must give it as my

firm opinion that their persons are preposterously unseemly. In vain did

I look around me, on my first landing, for those divine forms of

redundant proportions, which answer to the true standard of Eastern

beauty. Not a single fat fair one could I behold among the multitudes

that thronged the streets; the females that passed in review before me,

tripping sportively along, resembled a procession of shadows, returning

to their graves at the crowing of the cock.

This meagreness I first ascribed to their excessive volubility; for I

have somewhere seen it advanced by a learned doctor, that the sex were

endowed with a peculiar activity of tongue, in order that they might

practice talking as a healthful exercise, necessary to their confined

and sedentary mode of life. This exercise, it was natural to suppose,

would be carried to great excess in a logocracy. “Too true,” thought I,

“they have converted what was undoubtedly meant as a beneficent gift,

into a noxious habit, that steals the flesh from their bones and the

rose from their cheeks—they absolutely talk themselves thin!” Judge,

then, of my surprise when I was assured, not long since, that this

meagreness was considered the perfection of personal beauty, and that

many a lady starved herself, with all the obstinate perseverance of a

pious dervise—into a fine figure! “Nay, more,” said my informer, “they

will often sacrifice their healths in this eager pursuit of skeleton

beauty, and drink vinegar, eat pickles, and smoke tobacco, to keep

themselves within the scanty outlines of the fashions.” Faugh! Allah

preserve me from such beauties, who contaminate their pure blood with

noxious recipes—who impiously sacrifice the best gifts of Heaven, to a

preposterous and mistaken vanity! Ere long I shall not be surprised to

see them scarring their faces like the negroes of Congo, flattening

their noses in imitation of the Hottentots, or, like the barbarians of

Ab-al Timar, distorting their lips and ears out of all natural

dimensions. Since I received this information, I cannot contemplate a

fine figure without thinking of a vinegar cruet: nor look at a dashing

belle without fancying her a pot of pickled cucumbers! What a

difference, my friend, between these shades and the plump beauties of

Tripoli—what a contrast between an infidel fair one and my favorite

wife, Fatima, whom I bought by the hundred weight, and had trundled home

in a wheelbarrow!

But enough for the present; I am promised a faithful account of the

arcana of a lady’s toilette—a complete initiation into the arts,

mysteries, spells, and potions; in short, the whole chemical process by

which she reduces herself down to the most fashionable standard of

insignificance; together with specimens of the strait-waistcoats, the

lacings, the bandages, and the various ingenious instruments with which

she puts nature to the rack, and tortures herself into a proper figure

to be admired.

Farewell, thou sweetest of slave-drivers! The echoes that repeat to a

lover’s ear the song of his mistress, are not more soothing than tidings

from those we love. Let thy answer to my letters be speedy; and never, I

pray thee, for a moment, cease to watch over the prosperity of my house,

and the welfare of my beloved wives. Let them want for nothing, my

friend; but feed them plentifully on honey, boiled rice, and

water-gruel; so that when I return to the blessed land of my fathers, if

that can ever be! I may find them improved in size and loveliness, and

sleek as the graceful elephants that range the green valley of Abimar.

Ever thine,

MUSTAPHA.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

NO. XIX.—THURSDAY, DEC. 31, 1807.

FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.

Having returned to town, and once more formally taken possession of my

elbow-chair, it behooves me to discard the rural feelings, and the rural

sentiments, in which I have for some time past indulged, and devote

myself more exclusively to the edification of the town. As I feel at

this moment a chivalric spark of gallantry playing around my heart, and

one of those dulcet emotions of cordiality, which an old bachelor will

sometimes entertain toward the divine sex, I am determined to gratify

the sentiment for once, and devote this number exclusively to the

ladies. I would not, however, have our fair readers imagine that we wish

to flatter ourselves into their good graces, devoutly as we adore

them!—and what true cavalier does not?—and heartily as we desire to

flourish in the mild sunshine of their smiles, yet we scorn to insinuate

ourselves into their favor; unless it be as honest friends, sincere

well-wishers, and disinterested advisers. If in the course of this

number they find us rather prodigal of our encomiums, they will have the

modesty to ascribe it to the excess of their own merits; if they find us

extremely indulgent to their faults, they will impute it rather to the

superabundance of our good nature, than to any servile and illiberal

fear of giving offense.

The following letter of Mustapha falls in exactly with the current of my

purpose. As I have before mentioned that his letters are without dates,

we were obliged to give them very irregularly, without any regard to

chronological order.

The present one appears to have been written not long after his arrival,

and antecedent to several already published. It is more in the familiar

and colloquial style than the others. Will Wizard declares he has

translated it with fidelity, excepting that he has omitted several

remarks on the waltz, which the honest Mussulman eulogizes with great

enthusiasm, comparing it to certain voluptuous dances of the seraglio.

Will regretted exceedingly, that the indelicacy of several of these

observations compelled their total exclusion, as he wishes to give all

possible encouragement to this popular and amiable exhibition.

LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN,

TO MULEY HELIM AL RAGGI, SURNAMED THE AGREEABLE RAGAMUFFIN, CHIEF

MOUNTEBANK AND BUFFA-DANCER TO HIS HIGHNESS.

The numerous letters which I have written to our friend the

slave-driver, as well as those to thy kinsman the Snorer, and which,

doubtless, were read to thee, honest Muley, have, in all probability,

awakened thy curiosity to know further particulars concerning the

manners of the barbarians, who hold me in such ignominious captivity. I

was lately at one of their public ceremonies, which, at first, perplexed

me exceedingly as to its object; but as the explanations of a friend

have let me somewhat into the secret, and as it seems to bear no small

analogy to thy profession, a description of it may contribute to thy

amusement, if not to thy instruction.

A few days since, just as I had finished my coffee, and was perfuming my

whiskers, preparatory to a morning walk, I was waited upon by an

inhabitant of this place, a gay young infidel, who has of late

cultivated my acquaintance. He presented me with a square bit of painted

pasteboard, which, he informed me, would entitle me to admittance to the

_City Assembly_. Curious to know the meaning of a phrase which was

entirely new to me, I requested an explanation; when my friend informed

me, that the assembly was a numerous concourse of young people of both

sexes, who, on certain occasions, gathered together to dance about a

large room with violent gesticulation, and try to outdress each other.

“In short,” said he, “if you wish to see the natives in all their glory,

there’s no place like the _City Assembly_; so you must go there, and

sport your whiskers.” Though the matter of sporting my whiskers was

considerably above my apprehension, yet I now began, as I thought, to

understand him. I had heard of the war dances of the natives, which are

a kind of religious institution, and had little doubt but that this must

be a solemnity of the kind—upon a prodigious great scale. Anxious as I

am to contemplate these strange people in every situation, I willingly

acceded to his proposal, and to be the more at ease, I determined to lay

aside my Turkish dress, and appear in plain garments of the fashion of

this country, as is my custom whenever I wish to mingle in a crowd

without exciting the attention of the gaping multitude.

It was long after the shades of night had fallen before my friend

appeared to conduct me to the assembly. “These infidels,” thought I,

“shroud themselves in mystery, and seek the aid of gloom and darkness,

to heighten the solemnity of their pious orgies.” Resolving to conduct

myself with that decent respect, which every stranger owes to the

customs of the land in which he sojourns, I chastised my features into

an expression of sober reverence, and stretched my face into a degree of

longitude suitable to the ceremony I was about to witness. Spite of

myself, I felt an emotion of awe stealing over my senses as I approached

the majestic pile. My imagination pictured something similar to a

descent into the cave of Dom-Daniel, where the necromancers of the East

are taught their infernal arts. I entered with the same gravity of

demeanor that I would have approached the holy temple at Mecca, and

bowed my head three times as I passed the threshold. “Head of the mighty

Amrou!” thought I, on being ushered into a splendid saloon, “what a

display is here! surely I am transported to the mansions of the Houris,

the elysium of the faithful!”—How tame appeared all the descriptions of

enchanted palaces in our Arabian poetry!—wherever I turned my eyes, the

quick glances of beauty dazzled my vision and ravished my heart; lovely

virgins fluttered by me, darting imperial looks of conquest, or beaming

such smiles of invitation, as did Gabriel when he beckoned our holy

prophet to Heaven. Shall I own the weakness of thy friend, good

Muley?—while thus gazing on the enchanted scene before me, I, for a

moment, forgot my country; and even the memory of my three-and-twenty

wives faded from my heart; my thoughts were bewildered and led astray by

the charms of these bewitching savages, and I sunk, for a while, into

that delicious state of mind, where the senses, all enchanted, and all

striving for mastery, produce an endless variety of tumultuous, yet

pleasing emotions. O Muley, never shall I again wonder that an infidel

should prove a recreant to the single solitary wife allotted him, when,

even thy friend, armed with all the precepts of Mahomet, can so easily

prove faithless to three-and-twenty.

“Whither have you led me?” said I, at length, to my companion, “and to

whom do these beautiful creatures belong? Certainly this must be the

seraglio of the grand bashaw of the city, and a most happy bashaw must

he be, to possess treasures which even his highness of Tripoli cannot

parallel.”

“Have a care,” cried my companion, “how you talk about seraglios, or

you’ll have all these gentle nymphs about your ears; for seraglio is a

word which, beyond all others, they abhor. Most of them,” continued he,

“have no lord and master, but come here to catch one—they’re in the

market, as we term it.”

“Ah, hah!” said I, exultingly, “then you really have a fair, or

slave-market, such as we have in the East, where the faithful are

provided with the choicest virgins of Georgia and Circassia?—by our

glorious sun of Afric, but I should like to select some ten or a dozen

wives from so lovely an assemblage! Pray, what would you suppose they

might be bought for?”—

Before I could receive an answer, my attention was attracted by two or

three good-looking, middle-sized men, who, being dressed in black, a

color universally worn in this country by the muftis and dervises, I

immediately concluded to be high-priests, and was confirmed in my

original opinion that this was a religious ceremony. These reverend

personages are entitled managers, and enjoyed unlimited authority in the

assemblies, being armed with swords, with which, I am told, they would

infallibly put any lady to death, who infringed the laws of the temple.

They walked round the room with great solemnity, and, with an air of

profound importance and mystery, put a little piece of folded paper in

each fair hand; which I concluded were religious talismans. One of them

dropped on the floor, whereupon I slily put my foot on it, and, watching

an opportunity, picked it up unobserved, and found it to contain some

unintelligible words, and the mystic number 9. What were its virtues I

know not; except that I put it in my pocket, and have hitherto been

preserved from my fit of the lumbago, which I generally have about this

season of the year, ever since I tumbled into the well of Zim-zim on my

pilgrimage to Mecca. I inclose it to thee in this letter, presuming it

to be particularly serviceable against the dangers of thy profession.

Shortly after the distribution of these talismans, one of the

high-priests stalked into the middle of the room with great majesty, and

clapped his hands three times; a loud explosion of music succeeded from

a number of black, yellow, and white musicians, perched in a kind of

cage over the grand entrance. The company were thereupon thrown into

great confusion and apparent consternation. They hurried to and fro

about the room, and at length formed themselves into little groups of

eight persons, half male and half females; the music struck into

something like harmony, and, in a moment, to my utter astonishment and

dismay, they were all seized with what I concluded to be a paroxysm of

religious phrenzy, tossing about their heads in a ludicrous style from

side to side, and indulging in extravagant contortions of figure; now

throwing their heels into the air, and anon whirling round with the

velocity of the eastern idolaters, who think they pay a grateful homage

to the sun by imitating his motions. I expected every moment to see them

fall down in convulsions, foam at the mouth, and shriek with fancied

inspiration. As usual, the women seemed most fervent in their religious

exercises, and performed them with a melancholy expression of feature

that was peculiarly touching; but I was highly gratified by the

exemplary conduct of several male devotees, who, though their

gesticulations would intimate a wild merriment of the feelings,

maintained throughout as inflexible a gravity of countenance as so many

monkeys of the island of Borneo at their antics.

“And pray,” said I, “who is the divinity that presides in this splendid

mosque?”

“The divinity!—O, I understand—you mean the _belle_ of the evening; we

have a new one every season; the one at present in fashion, is that lady

you see yonder, dressed in white, with pink ribbons, and a crowd of

adorers around her.”

“Truly,” cried I, “this is the pleasantest deity I have encountered in

the whole course of my travels—so familiar, so condescending, and so

merry withal; why, her very worshippers take her by the hand, and

whisper in her ear.”

“My good Mussulman,” replied my friend, with great gravity, “I perceive

you are completely in an error concerning the intent of this ceremony.

You are now in a place of public amusement, not of public worship; and

the pretty looking young men you see making such violent and grotesque

distortions, are merely indulging in our favorite amusement of dancing.”

“I cry your mercy,” exclaimed I, “these then are the dancing-men and

women of the town, such as we have in our principal cities, who hire

themselves out for the entertainment of the wealthy; but, pray, who pays

them for this fatiguing exhibition?”

My friend regarded me for a moment with an air of whimsical perplexity,

as if doubting whether I was in jest or earnest. “’Sblood, man,” cried

he, “these are some of our greatest people, our fashionables, who are

merely dancing here for amusement.”

_Dancing for amusement!_ think of that, Muley!—thou, whose greatest

pleasure is to chew opium, smoke tobacco, loll on a couch, and doze

thyself into the regions of the Houris!—Dancing for amusement!—shall I

never cease having occasion to laugh at the absurdities of these

barbarians, who are laborious in their recreations, and indolent only in

their hours of business? Dancing for amusement!—the very idea makes my

bones ache, and I never think of it without being obliged to apply my

handkerchief to my forehead, and fan myself into some degree of

coolness.

“And pray,” said I, when my astonishment had a little subsided, “do

these musicians also toil for amusement, or are they confined to their

cage, like birds, to sing for the gratification of others? I should

think the former was the case, from the animation with which they

flourish their elbows.”

“Not so,” replied my friend, “they are well paid, which is no more than

just, for I assure you they are the most important personages in the

room. The fiddler puts the whole assembly in motion, and directs their

movements, like the master of a puppet-show, who sets all his pasteboard

gentry kicking by a jerk of his fingers. There now, look at that dapper

little gentleman yonder, who appears to be suffering the pangs of

dislocation in every limb: he is the most expert puppet in the room, and

performs, not so much for his own amusement, as for that of the

bystanders.” Just then, the little gentleman, having finished one of his

paroxysms of activity, seemed to be looking round for applause from the

spectators. Feeling myself really much obliged to him for his exertions,

I made him a low bow of thanks, but nobody followed my example, which I

thought a singular instance of ingratitude.

Thou wilt perceive, friend Muley, that the dancing of these barbarians

is totally different from the science professed by thee in Tripoli; the

country, in fact, is afflicted by numerous epidemical diseases, which

travel from house to house, from city to city, with the regularity of a

caravan. Among these, the most formidable is this dancing mania, which

prevails chiefly throughout the winter. It at first seized on a few

people of fashion, and being indulged in moderation, was a cheerful

exercise; but in a little time, by quick advances, it infected all

classes of the community, and became a raging epidemic. The doctors

immediately, as is their usual way, instead of devising a remedy, fell

together by the ears, to decide whether it was native or imported, and

the sticklers for the latter opinion traced it to a cargo of trumpery

from France, as they had before hunted down the yellow fever to a bag of

coffee from the West Indies. What makes this disease the more formidable

is, that the patients seem infatuated with their malady, abandon

themselves to its unbounded ravages, and expose their persons to wintry

storms and midnight airs—more fatal, in this capricious climate, than

the withering Simoom blast of the desert.

I know not whether it is a sight most whimsical or melancholy to witness

a fit of this dancing malady. The lady hops up to the gentleman, who

stands at the distance of about three paces, and then capers back again

to her place; the gentleman, of course, does the same; then they skip

one way, then they jump another; then they turn their backs to each

other; then they seize each other and shake hands; then they whirl

round, and throw themselves into a thousand grotesque and ridiculous

attitudes—sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other, and sometimes on

no leg at all—and this they call exhibiting the graces! By the nineteen

thousand capers of the great mountebank of Damascus, but these graces

must be something like the crooked-back dwarf, Shabrac, who is sometimes

permitted to amuse His Highness by imitating the tricks of a monkey.

These fits continue at short intervals for four or five hours, till at

last the lady is led off, faint, languid, exhausted, and panting, to her

carriage; rattles home; passes a night of feverish restlessness, cold

perspirations, and troubled sleep; rises late next morning, if she rises

at all, is nervous, petulant, or a prey to languid indifference all

day—a mere household spectre, neither giving nor receiving enjoyment—in

the evening hurries to another dance; receives an unnatural exhilaration

from the lights, the music, the crowd, and the unmeaning bustle;

flutters, sparkles, and blooms for a while until, the transient delirium

being past, the infatuated maid droops and languishes into apathy again;

is again led off to her carriage, and the next morning rises to go

through exactly the same joyless routine.

And yet, wilt thou believe it, my dear Raggi, these are rational

beings—nay, more, their countrymen would fain persuade me they have

souls! Is it not a thousand times to be lamented that beings, endowed

with charms that might warm even the frigid heart of a dervise—with

social and endearing powers that would render them the joy and pride of

the harem—should surrender themselves to a habit of heartless

dissipation, which preys imperceptibly on the roses of the cheek—which

robs the eye of its lustre, the mouth of its dimpled smile, the spirits

of their cheerful hilarity, and the limbs of their elastic vigor—which

hurries them off in the spring-time of existence; or, if they survive,

yields to the arms of a youthful bridegroom a frame wrecked in the

storms of dissipation, and struggling with premature infirmity. Alas,

Muley! may I not ascribe to this cause, the number of little old women I

meet with in this country from the age of eighteen to eight-and-twenty.

In sauntering down the room, my attention was attracted by a smoky

painting, which, on nearer examination, I found consisted of two female

figures crowning a bust with a wreath of laurel. “This, I suppose,”

cried I, “was some famous dancer in his time?”

“O, no,” replied my friend, “he was only a general.”

“Good; but then he must have been great at a cotillon, or expert at a

fiddle-stick, or why is his memorial here?”

“Quite the contrary,” answered my companion, “history makes no mention

of his ever having flourished a fiddle-stick, or figured in a single

dance. You have, no doubt, heard of him; he was the illustrious

Washington, the father and deliverer of his country; and as our nation

is remarkable for gratitude to great men, it always does honor to their

memory, by placing their monuments over the doors of taverns, or in the

corners of dancing rooms.”

From thence my friend and I strolled into a small apartment adjoining

the grand saloon, where I beheld a number of grave-looking persons, with

venerable gray heads, but without beards, which I thought very

unbecoming, seated around a table, studying hieroglyphics. I approached

them with reverence, as so many magi, or learned men, endeavoring to

expound the mysteries of Egyptian science. Several of them threw down

money, which I supposed was a reward proposed for some great discovery,

when presently one of them spread his hieroglyphics on the table and

exclaimed triumphantly, “Two bullets and a bragger!” and swept all the

money into his pocket. He has discovered a key to the hieroglyphics,

thought I; happy mortal! no doubt his name will be immortalized.

Willing, however, to be satisfied, I looked round on my companion with

an inquiring eye. He understood me, and informed me that these were a

company of friends, who had met together to win each other’s money, and

be agreeable. “Is that all?” exclaimed I, “why, then, I pray you, make

way, and let me escape from this temple of abominations, or who knows

but these people, who meet together to toil, worry, and fatigue

themselves to death, and give it the name of pleasure—and who win each

other’s money by way of being agreeable—may some one of them take a

liking to me, and pick my pocket, or break my head in a paroxysm of

hearty good-will!”

Thy friend,

MUSTAPHA.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

“Nunc est bibendum nunc pede libero

Pulsanda tellus.”

_Hor._

“Now is the time for wine and myrthful sportes,

For daunce, and song, and disportes of sych sortes.”

_Link. Fid._

The winter campaign has opened. Fashion has summoned her numerous

legions at the sound of trumpet, tambourine, and drum, and all the

harmonious minstrelsy of the orchestra, to hasten from the dull, silent,

and insipid glades and groves, where they have vegetated during the

summer, recovering from the ravages of the last winter’s campaign. Our

fair ones have hurried to town, eager to pay their devotions to the

tutelary deity, and to make an offering at her shrine of the few pale

and transient roses they gathered in their healthful retreat. The

fiddler rosins his bow, the card-table devotee is shuffling her pack;

the young ladies are industriously spangling muslins, and the tea-party

heroes are airing their _chapeaux bras_ and pea-blossom breeches, to

prepare for figuring in the gay circle of smiles, and graces, and

beauty. Now the fine lady forgets her country friends, in the hurry of

fashionable engagements, or receives the simple intruder, who has

foolishly accepted her thousand pressing invitations, with such

politeness that the poor soul determines never to come again. Now the

gay buck, who erst figured at Ballston, and quaffed the pure spring,

exchanges the sparkling water for still more sparkling champagne, and

deserts the nymph of the fountain, to enlist under the standard of jolly

Bacchus. In short, now is the important time of the year in which to

harangue the bon-ton reader, and, like some ancient hero in front of the

battle, to spirit him up to deeds of noble daring, or still more noble

suffering, in the ranks of fashionable warfare.

Such, indeed, has been my intention, but the number of cases which have

lately come before me, and the variety of complaints I have received

from a crowd of honest and well-meaning correspondents, call for more

immediate attention. A host of appeals, petitions, and letters of advice

are now before me, and I believe the shortest way to satisfy my

petitioners, memorialists, and advisers, will be to publish their

letters, as I suspect the object of most of them is merely to get into

print.

TO ANTHONY EVERGREEN GENT.

SIR:—

As you appear to have taken to yourself the trouble of meddling in the

concerns of the beau monde, I take the liberty of appealing to you on a

subject which, though considered merely as a very good joke, has

occasioned me great vexation and expense. You must know I pride myself

on being very useful to the ladies—that is, I take boxes for them at the

theatre, go shopping with them, supply them with bouquets, and furnish

them with novels from the circulating library. In consequence of these

attentions I am become a great favorite, and there is seldom a party

going on in the city without my having an invitation. The grievance I

have to mention, is the exchange of hats which takes place on these

occasions—for, to speak my mind freely, there are certain young

gentlemen who seem to consider fashionable parties as mere places to

barter old clothes: and, I am informed, that a number of them manage, by

this great system of exchange, to keep their crowns decently covered

without their hatter suffering in the least by it.

It was but lately that I went to a private ball with a new hat, and on

returning in the latter part of the evening, and asking for it, the

scoundrel of a servant, with a broad grin, informed me, that the new

hats had been dealt out half an hour since, and they were then on the

third quality, and I was in the end obliged to borrow a young lady’s

beaver rather than go home with any of the ragged remnants that were

left.

Now, I would wish to know if there is no possibility of having these

offenders punished by law; and whether it would not be advisable for

ladies to mention in their cards of invitation, as a postscript,

“stealing of hats and shawls positively prohibited.” At any rate, I

would thank you, Mr. Evergreen, to discountenance the thing totally, by

publishing in your paper that stealing a hat is no joke.

Your humble servant,

WALTER WITHERS.

My correspondent is informed, that the police have determined to take

this matter into consideration, and have set apart Saturday mornings for

the cognizance of fashionable larcenies.

MR. EVERGREEN:—

SIR—Do you think a married woman may lawfully put her husband right in a

story, before strangers, when she knows him to be in the wrong; and can

anything authorize a wife in the exclamation of—“Lord, my dear, how can

you say so!”

MARGARET TIMSON.

DEAR ANTHONY:—

Going down Broadway this morning in a great hurry, I ran full against an

object which at first put me to a prodigious nonplus. Observing it to be

dressed in a man’s hat, a cloth overcoat, and spatterdashes, I framed my

apology accordingly, exclaiming, “My dear sir, I ask ten thousand

pardons—I assure you, sir, it was entirely accidental—pray excuse me,

sir,” etc. At every one of these excuses, the thing answered me with a

downright laugh; at which I was not a little surprised, until, on

resorting to my pocket-glass, I discovered that it was no other than my

old acquaintance, Clarinda Trollop. I never was more chagrined in my

life; for, being an old bachelor, I like to appear as young as possible,

and am always boasting of the goodness of my eyes. I beg of you, Mr.

Evergreen, if you have any feeling for your contemporaries, to

discourage this hermaphrodite mode of dress; for really, if the fashion

take, we poor bachelors will be utterly at a loss to distinguish a woman

from a man. Pray let me know your opinion, sir, whether a lady who wears

a man’s hat and spatterdashes before marriage, may not be apt to usurp

some other article of his dress afterward.

Your humble servant,

RODERICK WORRY.

DEAR MR. EVERGREEN:—

The other night, at Richard the Third, I sat behind three gentlemen who

talked very loud on the subject of Richard’s wooing Lady Ann directly in

the face of his crimes against that lady. One of them declared such an

unnatural scene would be hooted at in China. Pray, sir, was that Mr.

Wizard?

SELINA BADGER.

P. S. The gentleman I allude to had a pocket-glass, and wore his hair

fastened behind by a tortoise-shell comb, with two teeth wanting.

MR. EVERGREEN:—

SIR—Being a little curious in the affairs of the toilette, I was much

interested by the sage Mustapha’s remarks, in your last number,

concerning the art of manufacturing a modern fine lady. I would have you

caution your fair readers, however, to be very careful in the management

of their machinery, as a deplorable accident happened, last assembly, in

consequence of the architecture of a lady’s figure not being

sufficiently strong. In the middle of one of the cotillons, the company

was suddenly alarmed by a tremendous crash at the lower end of the room;

and on crowding to the place, discovered that it was a fine figure which

had unfortunately broken down from two great exertion in a pigeon-wing,

By great good luck I secured the corset, which I carried home in

triumph; and the next morning had it publicly dissected, and a lecture

read on it at Surgeon’s Hall. I have since commenced a dissertation on

the subject, in which I shall treat of the superiority of those figures

manufactured by steel, stap-tape, and whalebone, to those formed by Dame

Nature. I shall show clearly that the Venus de Medicis has no pretension

to beauty of form, as she never wore stays, and her waist is in exact

proportion to the rest of her body. I shall inquire into the mysteries

of compression, and how tight a figure can be laced without danger of

fainting, and whether it would not be advisable for a lady, when

dressing for a ball, to be attended by the family physician, as culprits

are when tortured on the rack, to know how much more nature will endure.

I shall prove that ladies have discovered the secret of that notorious

juggler, who offered to squeeze himself into a quart bottle; and I shall

demonstrate, to the satisfaction of every fashionable reader, that there

is a certain degree of heroism in purchasing a preposterously slender

waist at the expense of an old age of decrepitude and rheumatics. This

dissertation shall be published, as soon as finished, and distributed

gratis among boarding-school madams, and all worthy matrons who are

ambitious that their daughters should sit straight, move like clock-work

and “do credit to their bringing up.” In the mean time, I have hung up

the skeleton of the corset in the museum beside a dissected weasel and a

stuffed alligator, where it may be inspected by all those naturalists

who are fond of studying the “human form divine.”

Yours, etc.

JULIAN COGNOUS.

P. S. By accurate calculation I find it is dangerous for a fine figure,

when full dressed, to pronounce a word of more than three syllables.

Fine Figure, if in love, may indulge in a gentle sigh; but a sob is

hazardous. Fine Figure may smile with safety, may even venture as far as

a giggle; but must never risk a loud laugh. Figure must never play the

part of a confidante; as at a tea-party, some fine evenings since, a

young lady whose unparalleled impalpability of waist was the envy of the

drawing-room, burst with an important secret, and had three ribs—of her

corset!—fractured on the spot.

MR. EVERGREEN:—

SIR—I am one of those industrious gemmen who labor hard to obtain

currency in the fashionable world. I have went to great expense in

little boots, short vests, and long breeches; my coat is regularly

imported, per stage, from Philadelphia, duly insured against all risks,

and my boots are smuggled from Bond Street. I have lounged in Broadway

with one of the most crooked walking-sticks I could procure, and have

sported a pair of salmon-colored small clothes, and flame-colored

stockings, at every concert and ball to which I could purchase

admission. Being affeared that I might possibly appear to less advantage

as a pedestrian, in consequence of my being rather short and a little

bandy, I have lately hired a tall horse with cropped ears and a cocked

tail, on which I have joined the cavalcade of pretty gemmen, who exhibit

bright stirrups every fine morning in Broadway, and take a canter of two

miles per day, at the rate of three hundred dollars per annum. But, sir,

all this expense has been laid out in vain, for I can scarcely get a

partner at an assembly, or an invitation to a tea-party. Pray, sir,

inform me what more I can do to acquire admission into the true stylish

circles, and whether it would not be advisable to charter a curricle for

a month, and have my cipher put on it, as is done by certain dashers of

my acquaintance.

Yours to serve,

MALVOLIO DUBSTER.

TEA.

A POEM

FROM THE MILL OF PINDAR COCKLOFT, ESQ.

_And earnestly recommended to the attention of Maidens of a certain

age._

Old time, my dear girls, is a knave who in truth

From the fairest of beauties will pilfer their youth;

Who, by constant attention and wily deceit,

Forever is coaxing some grace to retreat;

And, like crafty seducer, with subtle approach,

The further indulged, will still further encroach.

Since this “thief of the world” has made off with your bloom,

And left you some score of stale years in its room—

Has depriv’d you of all those gay dreams, that would dance

In your brains at fifteen, and your bosoms entrance;

And has forced you almost to renounce, in despair,

The hope of a husband’s affection and care—

Since such is the case, and a case rather hard!

Permit one who holds you in special regard,

To furnish such hints in your loveless estate

As may shelter your names from distraction and hate.

Too often our maidens grow aged, I ween,

Indulge to excess in the workings of spleen;

And at times, when annoy’d by the slights of mankind,

Work off their resentment—by speaking their mind:

Assemble together in snuff-taking clan,

And hold round the tea-urn a solemn divan.

A convention of tattle—a tea-party hight,

Which, like meeting of witches, is brew’d up at night,

Where each matron arrives, fraught with tales of surprise,

With knowing suspicion and doubtful surmise;

Like the broomstick-whirl’d hags that appear in Macbeth,

Each bearing some relic of venom or death,

“To stir up the toil and to double the trouble,

That fire may burn, and that cauldron may bubble.”

When the party commences, all starch’d and all glum,

They talk of the weather, their corns, or sit mum:

They will tell you of cambric, of ribbons, of lace,

How cheap they were sold—and will name you the place.

They discourse of their colds, and they hem and they cough,

And complain of their servants to pass the time off;

Or list to the tale of some doting mamma,

How her ten weeks old baby will laugh and say taa!

But tea, that enlivener of wit and of soul—

More loquacious by far than the draughts of the bowl,

Soon unloosens the tongue and enlivens the mind,

And enlightens their eyes to the faults of mankind.

’Twas thus with the Pythia, who served at the fount

That flow’d near the far-famed Parnassian mount,

While the steam was inhal’d of the sulphuric spring,

Her vision expanded, her fancy took wing:—

By its aid she pronounced the oracular will

That Apollo commanded his sons to fulfill.

But alas! the sad vestal, performing the rite,

Appeared like a demon—terrific to sight.

E’en the priests of Apollo averted their eyes,

And the temple of Delphi resounded her cries.

But quitting the nymph of the tripod of yore,

We return to the dames of the tea-pot once more.

In harmless chit-chat an acquaintance they roast,

And serve up a friend, as they serve up a toast;

Some gentle faux pas, or some female mistake,

Is like sweetmeats delicious, or relished as cake;

A bit of broad scandal is like a dry crust,

It would stick in the throat, so they butter it first

With a little affected good-nature, and cry

“Nobody regrets the thing deeper than I.”

Our young ladies nibble a good name in play

As for pastime they nibble a biscuit away:

While with shrugs and surmises, the toothless old dame,

As she mumbles a crust she will mumble a name

And as the fell sisters astonished the Scot,

In predicting of Banquo’s descendants the lot,

Making shadows of kings, amid flashes of light

To appear in array and to frown in his sight,

So they conjure up spectres all hideous in hue,

Which, as shades of their neighbors, are passed in review.

The wives of our cits of inferior degree,

Will soak up repute in a little bohea;

The potion is vulgar, and vulgar the slang

With which on their neighbors’ defects they harangue;

But the scandal improves, a refinement in wrong;

As our matrons are richer and rise to souchong.

With hyson—a beverage that’s still more refin’d.

Our ladies of fashion enliven their mind,

And by nods, innuendoes, and hints, and what not,

Reputations and tea send together to pot,

While madam in cambrics and laces array’d

With her plate and her liveries in splendid parade,

Will drink in imperial a friend at a sup,

Or in gunpowder blow them by dozens all up.

Ah me! how I groan when with full swelling sail

Wafted stately along by the favoring gale,

A China ship proudly arrives in our bay,

Displaying her streamers and blazing away,

O! more fell to our port, is the cargo she bears,

Than grenadoes, torpedoes, or warlike affairs:

Each chest is a bombshell thrown into our town

To shatter repute and bring character down.

Ye Samquas, ye Chinquas, ye Chouquas, so free,

Who discharge on our coast your cursed quantums of tea,

O think, as ye waft the sad weed from your strand,

Of the plagues and vexations ye deal to our land.

As the Upas’ dread breath, o’er the plain where it flies,

Empoisons and blasts each green blade that may rise,

So wherever the leaves of your shrubs find their way,

The social affections soon suffer decay:

Like to Java’s drear waste they embarren the heart,

Till the blossoms of love and of friendship depart.

Ah, ladies, and was it by heaven design’d,

That ye should be merciful, loving and kind?

Did it form you like angels, and send you below

To prophesy peace—to bid charity flow?

And have ye just left your primeval estate,

And wandered so widely—so strangely of late?

Alas! the sad cause I too plainly can see—

These evils have all come upon you through tea?

Cursed weed, that can make our faint spirits resign

The character mild of their mission divine;

That can blot from their bosoms that tenderness true,

Which from female to female forever is due!

O how nice is the texture—how fragile the frame

Of that delicate blossom, a female’s fair fame!

’Tis the sensitive plant, it recoils from the breath

And shrinks from the touch as if pregnant with death.

How often, how often, has innocence sigh’d;

Has beauty been reft of its honor—its pride;

Has virtue, though pure as an angel of light,

Been painted as dark as a demon of night:

All offer’d up victims, an _auto de fe_,

At the gloomy cabals—the dark orgies of tea!

If I, in the remnant that’s left me of life,

Am to suffer the torments of slanderous strife,

Let me fall, I implore, in the slang-whanger’s claw,

Where the evil is open, and subject to law.

Not nibbled, and mumbled, and put to the rack,

By the sly underminings of tea-party clack:

Condemn me, ye gods, to a newspaper roasting,

But spare me! O, spare me, a tea-table toasting!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

NO. XX.—MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1808.

FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.

“Extremum hunc mihi concede laborem.”—_Virg._

“Soft you, a word or two before we part.”

In this season of festivity, when the gate of time swings open on its

hinges, and an honest rosy-faced New Year comes waddling in, like a

jolly fat-sided alderman, loaded with good wishes, good humor, and

minced pies,—at this joyous era it has been the custom, from time

immemorial, in this ancient and respectable city, for periodical

writers, from reverend, grave, and potent essayists like ourselves, down

to the humble but industrious editors of magazines, reviews, and

newspapers, to tender their subscribers the compliments of the season;

and when they have slily thawed their hearts with a little of the

sunshine of flattery, to conclude by delicately dunning them for their

arrears of subscription money. In like manner the carriers of

newspapers, who undoubtedly belong to the ancient and honorable order of

literati, do regularly at the commencement of the year, salute their

patrons with abundance of excellent advice, conveyed in exceedingly good

poetry, for which the aforesaid good-natured patrons are well pleased to

pay them exactly twenty-five cents. In walking the streets I am every

day saluted with good wishes from old gray-headed negroes, whom I never

recollect to have seen before; and it was but a few days ago, that I was

called to receive the compliments of an ugly old woman, who last spring

was employed by Mrs. Cockloft to whitewash my room and put things in

order; a phrase which, if rightly understood, means little else than

huddling everything into holes and corners, so that if I want to find

any particular article, it is, in the language of a humble but

expressive saying—“looking for a needle in a haystack.” Not recognizing

my visitor, I demanded by what authority she wished me a “Happy New

Year!” Her claim was one of the weakest she could have urged, for I have

an innate and mortal antipathy to this custom of putting things to

rights; so giving the old witch a pistareen, I desired her forthwith to

mount her broomstick, and ride off as fast as possible.

Of all the various ranks of society, the bakers alone, to their immortal

honor be it recorded, depart from this practice of making a market of

congratulations; and in addition to always allowing thirteen to the

dozen, do with great liberality, instead of drawing on the purses of

their customers at the New Year, present them with divers large, fair,

spiced cakes; which, like the shield of Achilles, or an Egyptian

obelisk, are adorned with figures of a variety of strange animals, that,

in their conformation, out-marvel all the wild wonders of nature.

This honest gray-beard custom of setting apart a certain portion of this

good-for-nothing existence for the purposes of cordiality, social

merriment, and good cheer, is one of the inestimable relics handed down

to us from our worthy Dutch ancestors. In perusing one of the

manuscripts from my worthy grandfather’s mahogany chest of drawers, I

find the New Year was celebrated with great festivity during that golden

age of our city, when the reins of government were held by the renowned

Rip Van Dam, who always did honor to the season by seeing out the old

year; a ceremony which consisted in plying his guests with bumpers,

until not one of them was capable of seeing. “Truly,” observes my

grandfather, who was generally of these parties,—“Truly, he was a most

stately and magnificent burgomaster! inasmuch, as he did right lustily

carouse it with his friends about New Year; roasting huge quantities of

turkeys; baking innumerable minced pies; and smacking the lips of all

fair ladies the which he did meet, with such sturdy emphasis that the

same might have been heard the distance of a stone’s throw.” In his

days, according to my grandfather, first were invented these notable

cakes, hight new-year-cookies, which originally were impressed on one

side with the honest burly countenance of the illustrious Rip; and on

the other with that of the noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santa

Claus, of all the saints of the calendar the most venerated by true

Hollanders and their unsophisticated descendants. These cakes are to

this time given on the first of January to all visitors, together with a

glass of cherry-bounce, or raspberry-brandy. It is with great regret,

however, I observe that the simplicity of this venerable usage has been

much violated by modern pretenders to style, and our respectable

new-year-cookies and cherry-bounce elbowed aside by plum-cake and

outlandish liqueurs, in the same way that our worthy old Dutch families

are out-dazzled by modern upstarts and mushroom cockneys.

In addition to this divine origin of New Year festivity, there is

something exquisitely grateful, to a good-natured mind, in seeing every

face dressed in smiles; in hearing the oft-repeated salutations that

flow spontaneously from the heart to the lips; in beholding the poor,

for once, enjoying the smiles of plenty, and forgetting the cares which

press hard upon them, in the jovial revelry of the feelings; the young

children, decked out in their Sunday clothes, and freed from their only

cares, the cares of the school, tripping through the streets on errands

of pleasure; and even the very negroes, those holiday-loving rogues,

gorgeously arrayed in cast-off finery, collected in juntos, at corners,

displaying their white teeth, and making the welkin ring with bursts of

laughter loud enough to crack even the icy cheek of old winter. There is

something so pleasant in all this, that I confess it would give me real

pain, to behold the frigid influence of modern style cheating us of this

jubilee of the heart; and converting it, as it does every other article

of social intercourse, into an idle and unmeaning ceremony. ’Tis the

annual festival of good humor; it comes in the dead of winter, when

nature is without a charm, when our pleasures are contracted to the

fireside, and when everything that unlocks the icy fetters of the heart,

and sets the genial current flowing, should be cherished, as a stray

lamb found in the wilderness; or a flower blooming among thorns and

briers.

Animated by these sentiments, it is with peculiar satisfaction I

perceived that the last New Year was kept with more than ordinary

enthusiasm. It seemed as if the good old times had rolled back again,

and brought with them all the honest, unceremonious intercourse of those

golden days, when people were more open and sincere, more moral and more

hospitable than now; when every object carried about it a charm which

the hand of time has stolen away, or turned to a deformity; when the

women were more simple, more domestic, more lovely, and more true; and

when even the sun, like a hearty old blade as he is, shone with a genial

lustre unknown in these degenerate days,—in short, those fairy times

when I was a madcap boy, crowding every enjoyment into the present

moment; making of the past an oblivion; of the future a heaven; and

careless of all that was “Over the hills and far away.” Only one thing

was wanting to make every part of the celebration accord with its

ancient simplicity. The ladies, who—I write it with the most piercing

regret—are generally at the head of all domestic innovations, most

fastidiously refused that mark of good-will, that chaste and holy salute

which was so fashionable in the happy days of Governor Rip and the

patriarchs. Even the Miss Cocklofts, who belong to a family that is the

last intrenchment behind which the manners of the good old school have

retired, made violent opposition; and whenever a gentleman entered the

room, immediately put themselves in a posture of defense. This, Will

Wizard, with his usual shrewdness, insists was only to give the visitor

a hint that they expected an attack; and declares he has uniformly

observed, that the resistance of those ladies, who make the greatest

noise and bustle, is most easily overcome. This sad innovation

originated with my good aunt Charity, who was as arrant a tabby as ever

wore whiskers; and I am not a little afflicted to find that she has

found so many followers, even among the young and beautiful.

In compliance with an ancient and venerable custom, sanctioned by time

and our ancestors, and more especially by my own inclinations, I will

take this opportunity to salute my readers with as many good wishes as I

can possibly spare; for, in truth, I have been so prodigal of late, that

I have but few remaining. I should have offered my congratulations

sooner; but, to be candid, having made the last New Year’s campaign,

according to custom, under Cousin Christopher, in which I have seen some

pretty hard service, my head has been somewhat out of order of late, and

my intellects rather cloudy for clear writing. Besides, I may allege as

another reason, that I have deferred my greetings until this day, which

is exactly one year since we introduced ourselves to the public; and

surely periodical writers have the same right of dating from the

commencement of their works, that monarchs have from the time of their

coronation, or our most puissant republic from the declaration of its

independence.

These good wishes are warmed into more than usual benevolence by the

thought that I am now, perhaps, addressing my old friends for the last

time. That we should thus cut off our work in the very vigor of its

existence, may excite some little matter of wonder in this enlightened

community. Now, though we could give a variety of good reasons for so

doing, yet it would be an ill-natured act to deprive the public of such

an admirable opportunity to indulge in their favorite amusement of

conjecture; so we generously leave them to flounder in the smooth ocean

of glorious uncertainty. Besides, we have ever considered it as beneath

persons of our dignity to account for our movements or caprices; thank

heaven, we are not like the unhappy rulers of this enlightened land,

accountable to the mob for our actions, or dependent on their smiles for

support!—this much, however, we will say, it is not for want of subjects

that we stop our career. We are not in the situation of poor Alexander

the Great, who wept, as well indeed he might, because there were no more

worlds to conquer; for, to do justice to this queer, odd, rantipole

city, and to this whimsical country, there is matter enough in them to

keep our risible muscles and our pens going till doomsday.

Most people, in taking a farewell which may, perhaps, be forever, are

anxious to part on good terms; and it is usual, on such melancholy

occasions, for even enemies to shake hands, forget their previous

quarrels, and bury all former animosities in parting regrets. Now,

because most people do this, I am determined to act in quite a different

way; for, as I have lived, so I should wish to die, in my own way,

without imitating any person, whatever may be his rank, talents, or

reputation. Besides, if I know our trio, we have no enmities to

obliterate, no hatchet to bury; and as to all injuries—those we have

long since forgiven. At this moment there is not an individual in the

world, not even the Pope himself, to whom we have any personal

hostility. But if, shutting their eyes to the many striking proofs of

good-nature displayed through the whole course of this work, there

should be any persons so singularly ridiculous as to take offense at our

strictures, we heartily forgive their stupidity; earnestly entreating

them to desist from all manifestations of ill-humor, lest they should,

peradventure, be classed under some one of the denominations of

recreants, we have felt it our duty to hold up to public ridicule. Even

at this moment, we feel a glow of parting philanthropy stealing upon us;

a sentiment of cordial good-will toward the numerous host of readers

that have jogged on at our heels during the last year; and in justice to

ourselves must seriously protest, that if at any time we have treated

them a little ungently, it was purely in that spirit of hearty

affection, with which a schoolmaster drubs an unlucky urchin, or a

humane muleteer his recreant animal, at the very moment when his heart

is brimful of loving kindness. If this is not considered an ample

justification, so much the worse; for in that case I fear we shall

remain forever unjustified—a most desperate extremity, and worthy of

every man’s commiseration!

One circumstance, in particular, has tickled us mightily as we jogged

along; and that is, the astonishing secrecy with which we have been able

to carry on our lucubrations! fully aware of the profound sagacity of

the public of Gotham, and their wonderful faculty of distinguishing a

writer by his style, it is with great self-congratulation we find that

suspicion has never pointed to us as the authors of SALMAGUNDI. Our

gray-beard speculations have been most bountifully attributed to sundry

smart young gentlemen, who, for aught we know, have no beards at all;

and we have often been highly amused when they were charged with the sin

of writing what their harmless minds never conceived, to see them affect

all the blushing modesty and beautiful embarrassment of detected virgin

authors. The profound and penetrating public, having so long been led

away from truth and nature by a constant perusal of those delectable

histories, and romances, from beyond seas, in which human nature is, for

the most part, wickedly mangled and debauched, have never once imagined

this work was a genuine and most authentic history; that the Cocklofts

were a real family, dwelling in the city, paying scot and lot, entitled

to the right of suffrage, and holding several respectable offices in the

corporation. As little do they suspect that there is a knot of merry old

bachelors seated snugly in the old-fashioned parlor of an old-fashioned

Dutch house, with a weathercock on the top that came from Holland; who

amuse themselves of an evening by laughing at their neighbors, in an

honest way, and who manage to jog on through the streets of our ancient

and venerable city, without elbowing or being elbowed by a living soul.

When we first adopted the idea of discontinuing this work, we

determined, in order to give the critics a fair opportunity for

dissection, to declare ourselves, one and all, absolutely defunct: for

it is one of the rare and invaluable privileges of a periodical writer,

that by an act of innocent suicide he may lawfully consign himself to

the grave, and cheat the world of posthumous renown. But we abandoned

this scheme for many substantial reasons, In the first place, we care

but little for the opinion of critics, whom we consider a kind of

freebooters in the republic of letters; who, like deer, goats, and

divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon the

buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them

of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity. It also

occurred to us, that though an author might lawfully, in all countries,

kill himself outright, yet this privilege did not extend to the raising

himself from the dead, if he was ever so anxious; and all that is left

him in such a case, is to take the benefit of the metempsychosis act,

and revive under a new name and form.

Far be it, therefore, from us to condemn ourselves to useless

embarrassments, should we ever be disposed to resume the guardianship of

this learned city of Gotham, and finish this invaluable work, which is

yet but half completed. We hereby openly and seriously declare, that we

are not dead, but intend, if it please Providence, to live for many

years to come, to enjoy life with the genuine relish of honest souls,

careless of riches, honors, and everything but a good name, among good

fellows, and with the full expectation of shuffling off the remnant of

existence after the excellent fashion of that merry Grecian, who died

laughing.

TO THE LADIES.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

Next to our being a knot of independent old bachelors, there is nothing

on which we pride ourselves more highly than upon possessing that true

chivalric spirit of gallantry which distinguished the days of King

Arthur and his valiant Knights of the Round Table. We cannot, therefore,

leave the lists where we have so long been tilting at folly, with giving

a farewell salutation to those noble dames and beauteous damsels who

have honored us with their presence at the tourney. Like true knights,

the only recompense we crave is the smile of beauty, and the approbation

of those gentle fair ones, whose smile and whose approbation far excels

all the trophies of honor, and all the rewards of successful ambition.

True it is that we have suffered infinite perils, in standing forth as

their champions, from the sly attacks of sundry arch caitiffs, who, in

the overflowings of their malignity, have even accused us of entering

the lists as defenders of the very foibles and faults of the sex. Would

that we could meet with these recreants hand to hand; they should

receive no more quarter than giants and enchanters in romance.

Had we a spark of vanity in our natures, here is a glorious occasion to

show our skill in refuting these illiberal insinuations; but there is

something manly and ingenuous in making an honest confession of one’s

offenses when about retiring from the world; and so, without any more

ado, we doff our helmets, and thus publicly plead guilty to the deadly

sin of GOOD-NATURE; hoping and expecting forgiveness from our

good-natured readers—yet careless whether they bestow it or not. And in

this we do but imitate sundry condemned criminals, who, finding

themselves convicted of a capital crime, with great openness and candor,

do generally, in their last dying speech, make a confession of all their

previous offenses, which confession is always read with great delight by

all true lovers of biography.

Still, however, notwithstanding our notorious devotion to the gentle

sex, and our indulgent partiality, we have endeavored, on divers

occasions, with all the polite and becoming delicacy of true respect, to

reclaim them from many of those delusive follies and unseemly

peccadilloes in which they are unhappily too prone to indulge. We have

warned them against the sad consequences of encountering our midnight

damps and withering wintry blasts; we have endeavored, with pious hands,

to snatch them from the wildering mazes of the waltz, and thus rescuing

them from the arms of strangers, to restore them to the bosoms of their

friends; to preserve them from the nakedness, the famine, the cobweb

muslins, the vinegar cruet, the corset, the stay-tape, the buckram, and

all the other miseries and racks of a fine figure. But, above all, we

have endeavored to lure them from the mazes of a dissipated world, where

they wander about, careless of their value, until they lose their

original worth; and to restore them, before it is too late, to the

sacred asylum of home, the soil most congenial to the opening blossom of

female loveliness, where it blooms and expands in safety, in the

fostering sunshine of maternal affection, and where its heavenly sweets

are best known and appreciated.

Modern philosophers may determine the proper destination of the sex;

they may assign to them an extensive and brilliant orbit, in which to

revolve, to the delight of the million and the confusion of man’s

superior intellect; but when on this subject we disclaim philosophy, and

appeal to the higher tribunal of the heart—and what heart that had not

lost its better feelings, would ever seek to repose its happiness on the

bosom of one whose pleasures all lay without the threshold of home—who

snatched enjoyment only in the whirlpool of dissipation, and amid the

thoughtless and evanescent gayety of a ball-room? The fair one who is

forever in the career of amusement may for a while dazzle, astonish, and

entertain; but we are content with coldly admiring, and fondly turn from

glitter and noise, to seek the happy fireside of social life, there to

confide our dearest and best affections.

Yet some there are—and we delight to mention them—who mingle freely with

the world, unsullied by its contaminations; whose brilliant minds, like

the stars of the firmament, are destined to shed their light abroad and

gladden every beholder with their radiance—to withhold them from the

world would be doing it injustice—they are inestimable gems, which were

never formed to be shut up in caskets, but to be the pride and ornament

of elegant society.

We have endeavored always to discriminate between a female of this

superior order and the thoughtless votary of pleasure, who, destitute of

intellectual resources, is servilely dependent on others for every

little pittance of enjoyment; who exhibits herself incessantly amid the

noise, the giddy frolic, and capricious vanity of fashionable

assemblages; dissipating her languid affection on a crowd; lavishing her

ready smiles with indiscriminate prodigality on the worthy or the

undeserving; and listening with equal vacancy of mind to the

conversation of the enlightened, the frivolity of the coxcomb, and the

flourish of the fiddle-stick.

There is a certain artificial polish—a commonplace vivacity acquired by

perpetually mingling in the _beau monde_, which, in the commerce of the

world, supplies the place of natural suavity or good humor; but is

purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of

character. By a kind of fashionable discipline the eye is taught to

brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to irradiate with

the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a

single spark of genuine kindness or good-will. The elegant simulation

may be admired by the connoisseur of human character as a perfection of

art, but the heart is not to be deceived by the superficial illusion; it

turns with delight to the timid, retiring fair one, whose smile is the

smile of nature; whose blush is the soft suffusion of delicate

sensibility; and whose affections, unblighted by the chilling effects of

dissipation, glow with all the tenderness and purity of artless youth.

Hers is a singleness of mind, a native innocence of manners, and a sweet

timidity that steal insensibly upon the heart, and lead it a willing

captive; though venturing occasionally among the fairy haunts of

pleasure, she shrinks from the broad glare of notoriety, and seems to

seek refuge among her friends, even from the admiration of the world.

These observations bring to mind a little allegory in one of the

manuscripts of the sage Mustapha, which, being in some measure

applicable to the subject of this essay, we transcribe for the benefit

of our fair readers.

Among the numerous race of the Bedouins, who people the vast tracts of

Arabia Deserta, is a small tribe, remarkable for their habits of

solitude and love of independence. They are of a rambling disposition,

roving from waste to waste, slaking their thirst at such scanty pools as

are found in those cheerless plains, and glory in the unenvied liberty

they enjoy. A youthful Arab of this tribe, a simple son of nature, at

length growing weary of his precarious and unsettled mode of life,

determined to set out in search of some permanent abode. “I will seek,”

said he, “some happy region, some generous clime, where the dews of

heaven diffuse fertility; I will find out some unfailing stream, and,

forsaking the joyless life of my forefathers, settle on its borders,

dispose my mind to gentle pleasures and tranquil enjoyments, and never

wander more.”

Enchanted with this picture of pastoral felicity, he departed from the

tents of his companions; and having journeyed during five days, on the

sixth, as the sun was just rising in all the splendors of the East, he

lifted up his eyes and beheld extended before him, in smiling

luxuriance, the fertile regions of Arabia the Happy. Gently swelling

hills, tufted with blooming grove, swept down into luxuriant vales,

enameled with flowers of never-withering beauty. The sun, no longer

darting his rays with torrid fervor, beamed with a genial warmth that

gladdened and enriched the landscape. A pure and temperate serenity, an

air of voluptuous repose, a smile of contented abundance, pervaded the

face of nature, and every zephyr breathed a thousand delicious odors.

The soul of the youthful wanderer expanded with delight—he raised his

eyes to heaven, and almost mingled with his tribute of gratitude, a sigh

of regret that he had lingered so long amid the sterile solitudes of the

desert.

With fond impatience he hastened to make choice of a stream where he

might fix his habitation, and taste the promised sweets of this land of

delight. But here commenced an unforeseen perplexity; for, though he

beheld inumerable streams on every side, yet not one could he find which

completely answered his high-raised expectations. One abounded with wild

and picturesque beauty, but it was capricious and unsteady in its

course; sometimes dashing its angry billows against the rocks, and often

raging and overflowing its banks. Another flowed smoothly along, without

even a ripple or a murmur; but its bottom was soft and muddy, and its

current dull and sluggish. A third was pure and transparent, but its

waters were of a chilling coldness, and it had rocks and flints in its

bosom. A fourth was dulcet in its tinklings, and graceful in its

meanderings; but it had a cloying sweetness that palled upon the taste;

while a fifth possessed a sparkling vivacity, and a pungency of flavor,

that deterred the wanderer from repeating his draught.

The youthful Bedouin began to weary with fruitless trials and repeated

disappointments, when his attention was suddenly attracted by a lively

brook whose dancing waves glittered in the sunbeams, and whose pratting

current communicated an air of bewitching gayety to the surrounding

landscape. The heart of the wayworn traveller beat with expectation; but

on regarding it attentively on its course, he found that it constantly

avoided the embowering shade, loitering with equal fondness, whether

gliding through the rich valley, or over the barren sand; that the

fragrant flower, the fruitful shrub, and the worthless bramble were

alike fostered by its waves, and that its current was often interrupted

by unprofitable weeds. With idle ambition it expanded itself beyond its

proper bounds, and spread into a shallow waste of water, destitute of

beauty or utility, and babbling along with uninteresting vivacity and

vapid turbulence.

The wandering son of the desert turned away with a sigh of regret, and

pitied a stream which, if content within its natural limits, might have

been the pride of the valley, and the object of all his wishes. Pensive,

musing, and disappointed, he slowly pursued his now almost hopeless

pilgrimage, and had rambled for some time along the margin of a gentle

rivulet, before he became sensible of its beauties. It was a simple

pastoral stream, which, shunning the noonday glare, pursued its

unobtrusive course through retired and tranquil vales; now dimpling

among flowery banks and tufted shrubbery; now winding among spicy

groves, whose aromatic foliage fondly bent down to meet the limpid wave.

Sometimes, but not often, it would venture from its covert to stray

through a flowery meadow; but quickly, as if fearful of being seen,

stole back again into its more congenial shade, and there lingered with

sweet delay. Wherever it bent its course, the face of nature brightened

into smiles, and a perennial spring reigned upon its borders. The

warblers of the woodland delighted to quit their recesses and carol

among its bowers; while the turtle-dove, the timid fawn, the soft-eyed

gazelle, and all the rural populace, who joy in the sequestered haunts

of nature, resorted to its vicinity. Its pure transparent waters rolled

over snow-white sands, and heaven itself was reflected in its tranquil

bosom.

The simple Arab threw himself upon its verdant margin; he tasted the

silver tide, and it was like nectar to his lips; he bounded with

transport, for he had found the object of his wayfaring. “Here,” cried

he, “will I pitch my tent: here will I pass my days; for pure, O fair

stream, is thy gentle current; beauteous are thy borders; and the grove

must be a paradise that is refreshed by thy meanderings!”

* * * * *

“Pendant opera interrupta.”—_Virg._

“The work’s all aback.”—_Link. Fid._

“How hard it is,” exclaims the divine Confutsé, better known among the

illiterate by the name of Confucius, “for a man to bite off his own

nose!” At this moment I, William Wizard, Esq., feel the full force of

this remark, and cannot but give vent to my tribulation at being

obliged, through the whim of friend Langstaff, to stop short in my

literary career, when at the very point of astonishing my country, and

reaping the brightest laurels of literature. We daily hear of

shipwrecks, of failures and bankruptcies; they are trifling mishaps

which, from their frequency, excite but little astonishment or sympathy;

but it is not often that we hear of a man’s letting immortality slip

through his fingers; and when he does meet with such a misfortune, who

would deny him the comfort of bewailing his calamity?

Next to embargo, laid upon our commerce, the greatest public annoyance

is the embargo laid upon our work; in consequence of which, the produce

of my wits, like that of my country, must remain at home; and my ideas,

like so many merchantmen in port, or redoubtable frigates in the

Potomac, moulder away in the mud of my own brain. I know of few things

in this world more annoying than to be interrupted in the middle of a

favorite story, at the most interesting part, where one expects to shine

or to have a conversation broken off just when you are about coming out,

with a score of excellent jokes, not one of which but was good enough to

make every fine figure in corsets literally split her sides with

laughter. In some such predicament am I placed at present; and I do

protest to you, my good-looking and well beloved readers, by the

chop-sticks of the immortal Josh, I was on the very brink of treating

you with a full broadside of the most ingenious and instructive essays

that your precious noddles were ever bothered with.

In the first place, I had, with infinite labor and pains, and by

consulting the divine Plato, Sanconiathon, Apollonius Rhodius, Sir John

Harrington, Noah Webster, Linkum Fidelius, and others, fully refuted all

those wild theories respecting the first settlement of our venerable

country; and proved, beyond contradiction, that America, so far from

being, as the writers of upstart Europe denominate it, the new world, is

at least as old as any country in existence, not excepting Egypt, China,

or even the land of the Assiniboins; which, according to the traditions

of that ancient people, has already assisted at the funerals of thirteen

suns, and four hundred and seventy thousand moons!

I had likewise written a long dissertation on certain hieroglyphics

discovered on those fragments of the moon, which have lately fallen,

with singular propriety, in a neighboring State, and have thrown

considerable light on the state of literature and the arts in that

planet, showing that the universal language which prevails there is high

Dutch; thereby proving it to be the most ancient and original tongue,

and corroborating the opinion of a celebrated poet, that it is the

language in which the serpent tempted our grandmother Eve.

To support the theatric department, I had several very judicious

critiques, ready written, wherein no quarter was shown either to authors

or actors; and I was only waiting to determine at what plays or

performances they should be leveled. As to the grand spectacle of

Cinderella, which is to be represented this season, I had given it a

most unmerciful handling, showing that it was neither tragedy, comedy,

nor farce; that the incidents were highly improbable, that the prince

played like a perfect harlequin, that the white mice were merely

powdered for the occasion, and that the new moon had a most outrageous

copper nose.

But my most profound and erudite essay in embryo is an analytical,

hypercritical review of these Salmagundi lucubrations; which I had

written partly in revenge for the many waggish jokes played off against

me by my confederates, and partly for the purpose of saving much

invaluable labor to the Zoiluses and Dennises of the age, by detecting

and exposing all the similarities, resemblances, synonymies, analogies,

coincidences, etc., which occur in this work.

I hold it downright plagiarism for any author to write, or even to

think, in the same manner with any other writer that either did, doth,

or may exist. It is a sage maxim of law—“_Ignorantia neminem

excusat_”—and the same has been extended to literature: so that if an

author shall publish an idea that has been ever hinted by another, it

shall be no exculpation for him to plead ignorance of the fact. All,

therefore, that I had to do was to take a good pair of spectacles, or a

magnifiying glass, and with SALMAGUNDI in hand and a tableful of books

before me, to muse over them alternately, in a corner of Cockloft

library: carefully comparing and contrasting all odd ends and fragments

of sentences. Little did honest Launce suspect, when he sat lounging and

scribbling in his elbow-chair with no other stock to draw upon than his

own brain, and no other authority to consult than the sage Linkum

Fidelius—little did he think that his careless, unstudied effusions

would receive such scrupulous investigation.

By laborious researches, and patiently collating words, where sentences

and ideas did not correspond, I have detected sundry sly disguises and

metamorphoses of which, I’ll be bound, Langstaff himself is ignorant.

Thus, for instance—the little man in black is evidently no less a

personage than old Goody Blake or Goody something, filched from the

Spectator, who confessedly filched her from Otway’s “wrinkled hag with

age grown double.” My friend Launce has taken the honest old woman,

dressed her up in the cast-off suit worn by Twaits, in Lampedo, and

endeavored to palm the imposture upon the enlightened inhabitants of

Gotham. No further proof of the fact need be given, than that Goody

Blake was taken for a witch, and the little man in black for a conjurer;

and that they both lived in villages, the inhabitants of which were

distinguished by a most respectful abhorrence of hobgoblins and

broomsticks; to be sure the astonishing similarity ends here, but surely

that is enough to prove that the little man in black is no other than

Goody Blake in the disguise of a white witch.

Thus, also, the sage Mustapha, in mistaking a brag-party for a

convention of magi studying hieroglyphics, may pretend to originality of

idea and to a familiar acquaintance with the black-letter literati of

the East. But this Tripolitan trick will not pass here; I refer those

who wish to detect his larceny to one of those wholesale jumbles, or

hodge-podge collections of science, which, like a tailor’s pandemonium

or a giblet-pie, are receptacles for scientific fragments of all sorts

and sizes. The reader, learned in dictionary studies, will at once

perceive I mean an encyclopædia. There, under the title of Magi, Egypt,

Cards, or Hieroglyphics, I forget which, will be discovered an idea

similar to that of Mustapha, as snugly concealed as truth at the bottom

of a well, or the mistletoe amid the shady branches of an oak; and it

may at any time be drawn from its lurking-place, by those hewers of

wood, and drawers of water, who labor in humbler walks of criticism.

This is assuredly a most unpardonable error of the sage Mustapha, who

had been the captain of a ketch; and, of course, as your nautical men

are for the most part very learned, ought to have known better. But this

is not the only blunder of the grave Mussulman who swears by the head of

Amrou, the beard of Barbarossa, and the sword of Khalid, as glibly as

our good Christian soldiers anathematize body and soul, or a sailor his

eyes and odd limbs. Now I solemnly pledge myself to the world, that in

all my travels through the East, in Persia, Arabia, China, and Egypt, I

never heard man, woman, or child, utter any of those preposterous and

newfangled asseverations; and that, so far from swearing by any man’s

head, it is considered, throughout the East, the greatest insult that

can be offered to either the living or dead to meddle in any shape even

with his beard. These are but two or three specimens of the exposures I

would have made; but I should have descended still lower; nor would have

spared the most insignificant and, or but, or nevertheless, provided I

could have found a ditto in the “Spectator” or the dictionary; but all

these minutiæ I bequeath to the Lilliputian literati of this sagacious

community, who are fond of hunting “such small deer,” and I earnestly

pray they may find full employment for a twelvemonth to come.

But the most outrageous plagiarisms of friend Launcelot are those made

on sundry living personages. Thus: Tom Straddle has been evidently

stolen from a distinguished Brummagem emigrant, since they both ride on

horseback; Dabble, the little great man, has his origin in a certain

aspiring counselor, who is rising in the world as rapidly as the

heaviness of his head will permit; mine uncle John will bear a tolerable

comparison, particularly as it respects the sterling qualities of his

heart, with a worthy yeoman of Westchester County; and to deck out Aunt

Charity, and the amiable Miss Cocklofts, he has rifled the charms of

half the ancient vestals in the city. Nay, he has taken unpardonable

liberties with my own person!—elevating me on the substantial pedestals

of a worthy gentleman from China, and tricking me out with claret coats,

tight breeches, and silver-sprigged dickeys, in such sort that I can

scarcely recognize my own resemblance; whereas I absolutely declare that

I am an exceeding good-looking man, neither too tall nor too short, too

old nor too young, with a person indifferently robust, a head rather

inclining to be large, an easy swing in my walk, and that I wear my own

hair, neither queued, nor cropped, nor turned up, but in a fair,

pendulous oscillating club, tied with a yard of ninepenny black ribbon.

And now having said all that occurs to me on the present pathetic

occasion—having made my speech, wrote my eulogy, and drawn my portrait,

I bid my readers an affectionate farewell; exhorting them to live

honestly and soberly—paying their taxes, and reverencing the state, the

church, and the corporation—reading diligently the Bible and almanac,

the newspaper and SALMAGUNDI; which is all the reading an honest citizen

has occasion for—and eschewing all spirit of faction, discontent,

irreligion, and criticism.

Which is all at present

From their departed friend,

WILLIAM WIZARD.

THE END.

-----

Footnote 1:

The title of a newspaper published in New York, the columns of which,

among other miscellaneous topics, occasionally contained strictures on

the performances at the theatres.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 2:

David Longworth, an eccentric bookseller, had filled a large apartment

with the valuable engravings of “Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery,”

magnificently framed, and had nearly obscured the front of his house

with a huge sign—a colossal painting in _chiaroscuro_, of the crowning

of Shakespeare. Longworth had an extraordinary propensity to publish

elegant works, to the great gratification of persons of taste, and the

no small diminution of his own slender fortune. He alludes ironically

to this circumstance in the present notice.—_Paris Ed._ Longworth’s

store was in Park Row, near the Park Theatre. He was the dramatic

publisher of New York in his day, and long issued the City Directory.

Footnote 3:

It was not originally the intention of the authors to insert the above

address in the work; but, unwilling that a _morceau_ so precious

should be lost to posterity, they have been induced to alter their

minds. This will account for any repetition of idea that may appear in

the introductory essay.—_Note to original Ed._

Footnote 4:

Amongst the amusements of the citizens in times gone by was that of

making excursions in the winter evenings, on sleighs, to some

neighboring village, where the social party had a ball and supper.

Kissing-bridge had its name from the circumstance that here the beaux

exacted from their fair companions the forfeiture of a kiss before

permitting their travelling vehicles to pass over.—_Paris Ed._

The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of Greenwich, in his “Travels through

the Middle Settlements in North America, in the years 1759 and 1760,”

has this mention of the spot, fixing the locality near Fiftieth

street, near the site of old Cato’s. “The amusements of the New

Yorkers,” says Burnaby, “are balls and sleighing expeditions in the

winter; in the summer, going in parties upon the water and fishing, or

making excursions into the country. There are several houses

pleasantly suited upon East River, near New York, where it is common

to have turtle feasts: these happen once or twice in a week. Thirty or

forty gentlemen and ladies meet and dine together, drink tea in the

afternoon, fish and amuse themselves till evening, and then return

home in Italian chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise. In the

way there is a bridge, about three miles distant from New York, which

you always pass over as you return, called the Kissing-bridge, where

it is a part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself

under your protection.” From this it would appear that the privileges

of Kissing-bridge were not confined to sleighing parties.

Footnote 5:

_Old_ Vauxhall stood at the corner of Warren and Greenwich streets,

and was originally the residence of Sir Peter Warren. It fell into the

hands of Sam Fraunces, the famous tavern-keeper, who kept it as a

public garden. Fraunces was the steward of General Washington. A later

Vauxhall was kept in the neighborhood of Broome Street by Delacroix,

who removed the establishment about 1808 to the better known Vauxhall

Garden, which extended from the Bowery to Broadway, crossing the

present Lafayette Place and site of the Astor Library. The Bull’s

Head, the chief cattle mart, occupied the site of the Bowery Theatre,

and has travelled upward with the growth of city, making one or two

halting-places on that avenue on its way to its present position in

the Fifth Avenue.

Footnote 6:

Two fashionable milliners of rival celebrity in the city of New

York.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 7:

In this instance, as well as on several other occasions, a little

innocent pleasantry is indulged at Mr. Jefferson’s expense. The

allusion made here is to the red velvet small clothes with which the

President, in defiance of good taste, used to attire himself on levee

days and other public occasions.—_Paris Ed._

In one of his splenetic moods in Virginia, John Randolph once vented

his complaint of Jefferson, with an allusion to the old scandal. “I

cannot live,” said he, “in this miserable undone country, where, as

the Turks follow their sacred standard, which is a pair of Mahomet’s

green breeches, we are governed by the old red breeches of that prince

of projectors, St. Thomas of Cantingbury; and surely, Becket himself

never had more pilgrims at his shrine, than the saint of Monticello.”

As for the proboscis of Paine, “I shall secure him to a nicety,” said

Jarvis, when he was about to take the bust of Paine, now in the New

York Historical Society, “if I can get plaster enough for his

carbuncled nose.” Dr. Francis, who relates the anecdote in one of the

interesting historical sketches which he has given to the public, also

furnishes a couplet sung by the boys in the street:—

“Tom Paine is come from far, from far;

His nose is like a blazing star!”

Footnote 8:

An imaginary association, the object of which was to set the North

River (the Hudson) on fire. A number of young men of some fashion,

little talent, and great pretension, were ridiculed as members.—_Paris

Ed._

Footnote 9:

This edifice, the corner-stone of which was laid by Mayor Edward

Livingston in 1803, was not finished till 1812.

Footnote 10:

An emblematical device, suspended from a poplar in front of the shop

of Paff, a music-seller in Broadway.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 11:

The numbers of Salmagundi were originally published in this form.

Footnote 12:

Cockloft Hall had its origin in a favorite resort of Irving and his

companions, in an old country house, once the residence of the

Kembles, on the Passaic, near Newark. It was then known, says the

writer of a pleasant reminiscence in the Newark Advertiser, as the

“Gouverneur Place,” from which family it had descended to Mr.

Gouverneur Kemble; but during most of the time referred to it was not

inhabited by the family, but was in charge of a respectable couple,

who kept it in order, and acted as host and hostess to Irving,

Paulding, and the three or four others, constituting their coterie.

Mr. Irving, in a letter to the New Jersey Historical Society,

referring to these visits, remarked, “With Newark are associated in my

mind many pleasant recollections of early days, and of social meetings

at an old mansion on the banks of the Passaic.”

Footnote 13:

Several Tripolitan prisoners, taken by an American squadron, in an

action off Tripoli, were brought to New York, where they lived at

large, objects of the curiosity and hospitality of the inhabitants,

until an opportunity presented to restore them to their own

country.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 14:

This is another allusion to the primitive habits of Mr. Jefferson,

who, even while the first magistrate of the Republic, and on occasions

when a little of the “pomp and circumstance” of office would not have

been incompatible with that situation, was accustomed to dress in the

plainest garb, and when on horseback to be without an attendant; so

that it not unfrequently happened that he might be seen, when the

business of the state required his personal presence, riding up alone

to the government house at Washington, and having tied his steed to

the nearest post, proceed to transact the important business of the

nation.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 15:

Dyde’s public-house was in Park Row. It was brought into notice by a

famous coalition supper of the Burrites and Clintonians. A pamphlet

was published giving an account of the Dyde Supper.

Footnote 16:

The “Weekly Inspector,” here alluded to, was a neatly printed octavo

journal, chiefly political, conducted by Thomas Green Fessenden. It

was commenced Aug. 30, 1806, and was published in New York by Ezra

Sargent, 39 Wall Street, with the motto from Hamilton: “Of those men

who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greater number

have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the

people—commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

Feb. 7, 1807, a fortnight after its publication, Fessenden notices

SALMAGUNDI, a “new literary publication,” with an opening fling or

two at the club of wits who profess themselves supremely

indifferent to the reception of their work. In the next number but

one of the “Inspector” the attack is followed up by an

article—“SALMAGUNDI—_alias_ BUBBLE AND SQUEAK—again.” In reply to

the notice of the former which had appeared in the interim in

SALMAGUNDI, Christopher Caustic raves in his extraordinary slang

at these “frothy productions.” “The disease,” he says, “is

becoming epidemic, the fever rising to frenzy, spreading from fool

to fool; a numberless number of nameless names have already caught

the infection, and from one end of the town to the other, all is

nonsense and ‘Salmagundi.’” He calls it “a mere hodge-podge of

train oil and garlic, instead of ‘Salmagundi.’... This is, in

English, a ‘gibe cat,’ smothered in onions and eaten with fennel,

rue, and caraway seed. In fact, there was one Huddesford, an

English wit, who wrote a poem with _that are_ title, which this

worst of wizards may have purloined in some of their rambles, and

thus gained a _legal_ claim to the wit it contains.” He proposes,

to his own great delight, “Silly-kickaby” as a substitute for

“Salmagundi.” Having dispatched ‘Salmagundi’ or _Silly-kickaby_,

we come next to ‘Whimwhams and Opinions.’ What a broken-backed

metaphor! It is as bad as to have christened your nonsense _Apple

Dumpling_; or _Flights of Fancy_.

‘Atque idem jungat vulpes

Et mulgeat hircos’—

That is, in English:—

This sorry set of silly shoats,

Should be employed to milk _he-goats_,

Or sent to Carolina bogs,

To yoke ox-teams of prairie dogs.

‘Whimwhams’ is taken by this junto of notables from an English

publication. Launcelot Langstaff is a vile daub of a caricature of

Isaac Bickerstaff. Will Honeycomb sat for Anthony Evergreen; Will

Wizard’s original may be found in the British classics; and in short,

the prototype of every other character, with the exception of a few

scurrilous personalities. The work ought to have been styled

_Silly-kickaby_, alias _Tag-locks of common English Publications_,

compiled by Dunderpate, Doughhead, Dumpling and Co., published by

Peter Pettyman, sold at the sign of the Ditch delving driveller,

Caughnawaugher Slip, dedicated, and to be devoted, to a certain

goddess. The Doctor ends with abusing the metre of Pindar Cockloft,

and then asserting that it was stolen from “Dr. Caustic’s

nick-nackatory.”

We shall see in a future number how the Doctor’s literary billingsgate

was followed up in SALMAGUNDI. The “Weekly Inspector” replies in the

small shot of a handful of “squibs” in his number for March 6, leveled

at “the lilliputian journal,” alluding to the small page of the

original edition of SALMAGUNDI, and the war dies out.

The “Inspector” makes his exit at the close of his second volume, Aug.

22, 1807.

These mutual random hits and editorial discourtesies of a type too

common in the annals of literature—these quarrels of authors—should be

remembered for what they were, the passing nonsense of the hour.

Thomas Green Fessenden, notwithstanding this nonsensical raving, was a

man of mark and merit—not only of humor and spirit in the comic verses

with which he enlivened the newspaper discussions of his day, but to

be held in memory for his more sober labors in the cause of

agriculture. There is a very pleasing reminiscence of his later

years—he died at the age of sixty-six in 1837—by Nathaniel Hawthorne,

in which he celebrates “the amiable temper and abstracted habits” of

his old friend.

Footnote 17:

It is not a little singular, that this mode of ridiculing the

gossiping productions of Sir John Carr, and other tourists of the day,

should have been successfully adopted almost at the same moment by two

writers placed in different and distant quarters of the globe. _My

Pocket-Book_ appeared in London only two or three weeks after the

publication of these “Memorandums” in New York—so that neither writer

could possibly have borrowed from the other—and by its ingenious

pleasantry and poignant satire, crushed a whole host of book-making

tourists, with the luckless knight at their head.—_Paris Ed._ This

matter is again referred to at the close of No. XIII.

Footnote 18:

_Vide_ Carr’s _Stranger in Ireland_. John Carr, Esq., of the Honorable

Society of the Middle Temple, wrote several slip-slop entertaining

books of travel, _A Northern Summer_, _The Stranger in France_, and

_The Stranger in Ireland, a Tour in 1805_. The last appears to have

been popular in America. It reached its third edition from the New

York press of Riley, this very year, 1807.

Footnote 19:

_Vide_ Weld. Isaac Weld travelled through the United States in 1795–7.

Footnote 20:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 21:

_Vide_ Weld. “General Washington,” says Weld, “told me that he never

was so much annoyed by mosquitoes in any part of America, as in

Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the thickest boot.”

Footnote 22:

_Vide_ Carr; _vide_ Moore; _vide_ Weld; _vide_ Parkinson; _vide_

Priest. Richard Parkinson, late of Orange Hill, near Baltimore,

published in London, 1805, his tour in America, in 1798–1800,

exhibiting sketches of Society and Manners, and a particular account

of the American system of agriculture, etc. William Priest, who signs

himself on the title-page of his book, “Musician, late of the theatres

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston,” travelled in the United States

between the years 1793 and 1797, and published his journals in London,

in a thin octavo in 1802. _Vide_ Linkum Fidelius, and _vide_ Messrs.

Tag, Rag, and Bobtail.

Footnote 23:

_Vide_ the Sentimental Kotzebue.

Footnote 24:

_Vide_ Carr and Blind _Bet_. Carr, in his travels, meets on the

roadside in Wales a stone-blind woman, supporting herself and infirm

mother by the sale of gloves and stockings. The traveller perpetrates

some verses on the occasion, which he introduces in this ludicrous

fashion: “Upon her quitting us, the following lines found their way

into my pocket-book!”

Footnote 25:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 26:

_Vide_ Priest. “At two,” says Priest, “the Philadelphians dine on what

is usual in England, both a variety of American dishes, such as bear,

opossum, raccoon, etc.!”

Footnote 27:

Gulliver is announced by the town crier in Brobdignag as “a strange

creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a

_splacnuck_, an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six

feet long.”

Footnote 28:

Jeremy Cockloft appears, in this enumeration, to have come from a

recent perusal of Voltaire’s _Candide_.

Footnote 29:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 30:

_Vide_ Carr’s learned derivation of _gee_ and _whoa_.

Footnote 31:

Moore:—

“Is this the region then, is this the clime

For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,

Which all their miracles of light reveal

To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?

Alas! not so—the Muse of nature lights

Her glories round; she scales the mountain heights,

And roams the forests; every wondrous spot

Burns with her step, yet man regards it not.

She whispers round, her words are in the air,

But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,

Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,

One ray of mind, to thaw them into song.”

—_Epistle to the Hon. W. R. Spencer, from Buffalo, upon Lake Erie._

Footnote 32:

Carr.

Footnote 33:

Rabelais’ Judge Bridlegoose and famous Oracle. There was a slight

difficulty in the Judge’s method of decision, “he was become old, and

his sight of late was very much failed, and become dimmer than it was

wont to be; by reason of which infirmity he was not able so distinctly

and clearly to discern the points of the dice, as formerly he had been

accustomed to do.”

Footnote 34:

Moore.

Footnote 35:

Carr.

Footnote 54:

The famous production of the Hartford wits, Alsop, Dwight, Hopkins, &

Co.

Footnote 59:

General Eaton’s famous adventure on the land expedition from Egypt to

rescue Bainbridge and the prisoners at Tripoli.

Footnote 60:

_Vide_ Solomon Lang.

Footnote 61:

An amusing verification of the fidelity of the character of Tom

Straddle, to the type of the Brummagem tourist, is afforded in an

anecdote related in a Memoir of Irving, prefixed to the Paris edition

of his works. “Some years ago,” it reads, “a man who was prosecuted in

Jamaica, for a libelous publication, produced a volume of _Salmagundi_

on his trial. This publication, it appeared, had been copied

literally, word for word, from the character of Tom Straddle, printed,

sold, sent abroad, mischievously enough, to be sure, while one of

those English travellers, whom Irving had so delightfully hit off, was

in Jamaica, exploring and astonishing the natives.”

Footnote 62:

The old Government house facing Bowling Green, built for the President

of the United States, afterwards the residence of George Clinton and

John Jay.

Footnote 63:

The allusion is here evidently to the experiment made by Fulton in New

York Harbor, on the 20th of July, 1807, shortly after his return from

Europe, bringing with him the favorite plans of “torpedo warfare,” as

he called it, which he had laid before the governments of France and

England. An old brig was, after some delay, blown up in the bay by one

of Fulton’s charged canisters. The affair, with Fulton’s appeal to the

Government, his previous lecture on Governor’s Island to the

magistracy of the city, when the audience was somewhat diminished on

the production of one of the loaded torpedoes, with his declaration

that it contained a hundred and seventy pounds of powder, and that, if

he were to suffer the clock-work to run fifteen minutes, he had no

doubt it would blow the fortification to atoms—all this, with his

letter to the Corporation the day after his successful experiment, was

well calculated to produce the stir in the city so pleasantly set

forth in this paper of SALMAGUNDI.

Footnote 64:

Dr. Francis, in his remarks on the life and character of Washington

Irving, before the Historical Society, alludes to this conflict of

spelling-books at the school in which they were both instructed.

“There was a curious conflict existing in the school between the

principal and his assistant instructor; the former a legitimate

burgher of the city, the latter a New England pedagogue. So far as I

can remember, something depended on the choice of the boy’s parents in

the selection of his studies; but if not expressed otherwise, the

principal stuck earnestly to Dilworth, while the assistant, for his

section of instruction, held to Noah Webster.”

Footnote 65:

Jefferson in his _Notes on Virginia_, says, “The legislative powers of

government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it

does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no

god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Footnote 66:

The writer of the reminiscence, whom we have already cited in the

previous mention of Cockloft Hall, Mr. W. A. Whitehead of Newark,

describes the recent condition of the summer-house. “The old man,” who

serves the purpose of the narrator, “sighed and turned away his head,

while he led the way to a small building standing not far from the

river’s brink, and near an artificial basin or pond, into which, as

the tide was full, the Passaic was pouring some of its surplus waters

through a narrow sluice. It was octagonal in shape, about eighteen

feet in diameter, containing only one apartment, with a door facing

the river on the east, and having windows opening toward each of the

other three cardinal points. It was built of stone, and had been

originally weather-boarded, although most of the boards had fallen

off. It had evidently been constructed with great care, being fully

plastered within and papered, having an ornamental cornice and

chair-board, an arched doorway, and cut stone steps: all indicating a

fastidiousness of finish not ordinarily found elsewhere than in

dwellings; but it was far gone toward utter ruin, the window sashes

being all out, the door gone, and the mutilated wood-work showing it

to be the resort only of the idle and the vicious. On looking to my

companion for an explanation, he said:—

“‘This, sir, was the Cockloft summer-house, and this the fish-pond

which Irving mentions when giving the portrait of the old proprietor.

You may remember the passage, “an 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. And 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.’ ‘As I

remember it, in the days of youth,’ continued my aged friend, ‘with

its window-seats and lockers, I think it requires no “Will Wizard” to

solve the mystery of the cellar, but that _there_ the bottles were

kept that were wont to surrender their exhilarating contents at the

summons of the occupants of the comfortable apartment above.’

“As I commented on the peculiar position of the building, my companion

remarked:—

“‘Here, too, you see an illustration of a peculiarity of the elder

“Cockloft.” “He was determined,” says Irving, “to have all his views

on his own land, and be beholden to no man for a prospect.” So he

placed, you see, the door of his summer-house on the side toward the

water, while the windows all look inland.’”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

31 Taking of concerts reminds me of Talking of concerts reminds me

that given of that given

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

● Renumbered footnotes and, except for those labeled as William

Wizard’s notes, placed them all at the end of the final chapter.

● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.