_Election of the Numnoonce, or town-constable--Violence
of parties--Singular institution of the Syringe Boys--The
prize-fighters--Domestic manufactures._
When we got back to the city, we found an unusual stir and bustle among
the citizens, and on inquiring the cause, we understood they were about
to elect the town-constable. After taking some refreshment at our
lodgings, where we were very kindly received, we again went out, and
were hurried along with the crowd, to a large building near the centre
of the city. The multitude were shouting and hallooing with great
vehemence. The Brahmin remarking an elderly man, who seemed very quiet
in the midst of all this ferment, he thought him a proper person to
address for information.
"I suppose," says he, "from the violence of these partisans, they are on
different sides in religion or politics?"
"Not at all," said the other; "those differences are forgotten at the
present, and the ground of the dispute is, that one of the candidates is
tall, and the other is short--one has a large foretop, and the other is
bald. Oh, I forgot; one has been a schoolmaster, and the other
a butcher."
Curiosity now prompted me to enter into the thickest of the throng; and
I had never seen such fury in the maddest contests between old George
Clinton and Mr. Jay, or De Witt Clinton and Governor Tompkins, in my
native State. They each reproached their adversaries in the coarsest
language, and attributed to them the vilest principles and motives. Our
guide farther told us that the same persons, with two others, had been
candidates last year, when the schoolmaster prevailed; and, as the
supporters of the other two unsuccessful candidates had to choose now
between the remaining two, each party was perpetually reproaching the
other with inconsistency. A dialogue between two individuals of opposite
sides, which we happened to hear, will serve as a specimen of the rest.
"Are you not a pretty fellow to vote for Bald-head, whom you have so
often called rogue and blockhead?"
"It becomes you to talk of consistency, indeed! Pray, sir, how does it
happen that you are now against him, when you were so lately sworn
friends, and used to eat out of the same dish?"
"Yes; but I was the butcher's friend too. I never abused him. You'll
never catch me supporting a man I have once abused."
"But I catch you abusing the man you once supported, which is rather
worse. The difference between us is this:--you professed to be friendly
to both; I professed to be hostile to both: you stuck to one of your
friends, and cast the other off; and I acted the same towards my
enemies." A crowd then rushed by, crying "Huzza for the Butcher's
knives! Damn pen and ink--damn the books, and all that read in them!
Butchers' knives and beef for ever!"
We asked our guide what these men were to gain by the issue of the
contest.
"Nineteenths of them nothing. But a few hope to be made deputies, if
their candidates succeed, and they therefore egg on the rest."
We drew near to the scaffold where the candidates stood, and our ears
were deafened with the mingled shouts and exclamations of praise and
reproach. "You cheated the corporation!" says one. "You killed two black
sheep!" says another. "You can't read a warrant!" "You let Dondon cheat
you!" "You tried to cheat Nincan!" "You want to build a watch-house!"
"You have an old ewe at home now, that you did not come honestly by!"
"You denied your own hand!"--with other ribaldry still more gross and
indecent. But the most singular part of the scene was a number of little
boys, dressed in black and white, who all wore badges of the parties to
which they belonged, and were provided with a syringe, and two canteens,
one filled with rose-water, and the other with a black liquid, of a very
offensive smell, the first of which they squirted at their favourite
candidates and voters, and the last on those of the opposite party. They
were drawn up in a line, and seemed to be under regular discipline; for,
whenever the captain of the band gave the word, "Vilti Mindoc!" they
discharged the dirty liquid from their syringes; and when he said "Vilti
Goulgoul!" they filled the air with perfume, that was so overpowering as
sometimes to produce sickness. The little fellows would, between whiles,
as if to keep their hands in, use the black squirts against one another;
but they often gave them a dash of the rose-water at the same time.
I wondered to see men submit to such indignity; but was told that the
custom had the sanction of time; that these boys were brought up in the
church, and were regularly trained to this business. "Besides," added my
informer, "the custom is not without its use; for it points out the
candidates at once to a stranger, and especially him who is successful,
those being always the most blackened who are the most popular." But it
was amusing to see the ludicrous figure that the candidates and some of
the voters made. If you came near them on one side, they were like roses
dripping with the morning dew; but on the other, they were as black as
chimney sweeps, and more offensive than street scavengers. As these
Syringe Boys, or Goulmins, are thus protected by custom, the persons
assailed affected to despise them; but I could ever and anon see some of
the most active partisans clapping them on the back, and saying, "Well
done, my little fellows! give it to them again! You shall have a
ginger-cake--and you shall have a new cap," &c. Surely, thought I, our
custom of praising and abusing our public men in the newspapers, is far
more rational than this. After the novelty of the scene was over, I
became wearied and disgusted with their coarseness, violence, and want
of decency, and we left them without waiting to see the result of
the contest.
In returning to our lodgings, the Brahmin took me along a quarter of the
town in which I had never before been. In a little while we came to a
lofty building, before the gate of which a great crowd were assembled.
"This," said my companion, "is one of the courts of justice." Anxious to
see their modes of proceeding in court, I pushed through the crowd,
followed by the Brahmin, and on entering the building, found myself in a
spacious amphitheatre, in the middle of which I beheld, with surprise,
several men engaged, hand to hand, in single combat. On asking an
explanation of my friend, he informed me that these contests were
favourite modes of settling private disputes in Morosofia: that the
prize-fighters I saw, hired themselves to any one who conceived himself
injured in person, character, or property. "It seems a strange mode of
settling legal disputes," I remarked, "which determines a question in
favour of a party, according to the strength and wind of his champion."
"Nor is that all," said the Brahmin, "as the judges assign the victory
according to certain rules and precedents, the reasons of which are
known only to themselves, if known at all, and which are often
sufficiently whimsical--as sometimes a small scratch in the head avails
more than a disabling blow in the body. The blows too, must be given in
the right time, as well as in the right place, or they pass for nothing.
In short, of all those spectators who are present to witness the powers
and address of the prize-fighters, not one in a hundred can tell who has
gained the victory, until the judges have proclaimed it."
"I presume," said I, "that the champions who thus expose their persons
and lives in the cause of another, are Glonglims?"
"There," said he, "you are altogether mistaken. In the first place, the
prize-fighters seldom sustain serious injury. Their weapons do not
endanger life; and as each one knows that his adversary is merely
following his vocation, they often fight without animosity. After the
contest is over, you may commonly see the combatants walking and talking
very sociably together: but as this circumstance makes them a little
suspected by the public, they affect the greater rage when in conflict,
and occasionally quarrel and fight in downright earnest. No," he
continued, "I am told it is a very rare thing to see one of these
prize-fighters who is a Glonglim; but most of their employers belong to
this unhappy race."
On looking more attentively, I perceived many of these beings among the
spectators, showing, by their gestures, the greatest anxiety for the
issue of the contest. They each carried a scrip, or bag, the contents of
which they ever and anon gave to their respective champions, whose wind,
it is remarked, is very apt to fail, unless thus assisted.
Having learnt some farther particulars respecting this singular mode of
litigation, which would be uninteresting to the general reader, I took
my leave, not without secretly congratulating myself on the more
rational modes in which justice is administered on earth.
When we had nearly reached our lodgings, we heard a violent altercation
in the house, and on entering, we found our landlord and his wife
engaged in a dispute respecting their domestic economy, and they both
made earnest appeals to my companion for the correctness of their
respective opinions. The old man was in favour of their children making
their own shoes and clothes; and his wife insisted that it would be
better for them to stick to their garden and dairy, with the proceeds of
which they could purchase what they wanted. She asserted that they could
readily sell all the fruits and vegetables they could raise; and that
whilst they would acquire greater skill by an undivided attention to one
thing, they who followed the business of tailors, shoemakers, and
seamstresses, would, in like manner, become more skilful in their
employments, and consequently be able to work at a cheaper rate. She
farther added, that spinning and sewing were unhealthy occupations; they
would give the girls the habit of stooping, which would spoil their
shapes; and that their thoughts would be more likely to be running on
idle and dangerous fancies, when sitting at their needles, than when
engaged in more active occupations.
This dame was a very fluent, ready-witted woman, and she spoke with the
confidence that consciousness of the powers of disputation commonly
inspires. She went on enlarging on the mischiefs of the practice she
condemned, and, by insensible gradations, so magnified them, that at
last she clearly made out that there was no surer way of rendering their
daughters sickly, deformed, vicious, and unchaste, than to set them
about making their own clothes.
After she had ceased, (which she did under a persuasion that she had
anticipated and refuted every argument that could be urged in opposition
to her doctrine,) the husband, with an emotion of anger that he could
not conceal, began to defend his opinion. He said, as to the greater
economy of his plan, there could be no doubt; for although they might,
at particular times, make more by gardening than they could save by
spinning or sewing, yet there were other times when they could not till
the ground, and when, of course, if they did not sew or spin, they would
be idle; but if they did work, the proceeds would be clear gain. He said
he did not wish his daughters to be constantly employed in making
clothes, nor was it necessary that they should be. A variety of other
occupations, equally indispensable, claimed their attention, and would
leave but a comparatively small portion of time for needlework: that in
thus providing themselves with employment at home, they at least saved
the time of going backwards and forwards, and were spared some trips to
market, for the sale of vegetables to pay, as would then be necessary,
for the work done by others. Besides, the tailor who was most convenient
to them, and who, it was admitted, was a very good one, was insolent and
capricious; would sometimes extort extravagant prices, or turn them into
ridicule; and occasionally went so far as to set his water-dogs upon
them, of which he kept a great number. He declared, that for his part he
would incur a little more expense, rather than he would be so imposed
upon, and subjected to so much indignity and vexation.
He denied that sewing would affect his daughters' health, unless,
perhaps, they followed it exclusively as an occupation; but, as they
would have it in their power to consult their inclinations and
convenience in this matter, they might take it up when the occasion
required, and lay it down whenever they found it irksome or fatiguing:
that as they themselves were inclined to follow this course, it was a
plain proof that the occupation was not unhealthy. He maintained that
they would stoop just as much in gardening, and washing and nursing
their children, as in sewing; and that we were not such frail or
unpliant machines as to be seriously injured, unless we persisted in one
set of straight, formal notions, but that we were adapted to variety,
and were benefited by it. That as to the practice being favourable to
wantonness and vice, while he admitted that idleness was productive of
these effects, he could not see how one occupation encouraged them more
than another. That the tailor, for example, whom he had been speaking
of, though purse-proud, overbearing, and rapacious, was not more immoral
or depraved than his neighbours, and had probably less of the libertine
than most of them. He admitted that evil thoughts would enter the mind
in any situation, and could not reasonably be expected to be kept out of
his daughters' heads (being, as he said, but women): yet he conceived
such a result as far less probable, if they were suffered to ramble
about in the streets, and to chaffer with their customers, than if they
were kept to sedate and diligent employment at home.
Having, with great warmth and earnestness, used these arguments, he
concluded, by plainly hinting to his wife that she had always been the
apologist of the tailor, in all their disputes; and that she could not
be so obstinately blind to the irrefragable reasoning he had urged, if
she were not influenced by her old hankering after this fellow, and did
not consult his interests in preference to those of her own family. Upon
this remark the old woman took fire, and, in spite of our presence, they
both had recourse to direct and the coarsest abuse.
The Brahmin did not, as I expected, join me in laughing at the scene we
had just witnessed; but, after some musing, observed: "There is much
truth in what each of these parties say. I blame them only for the
course they take towards each other. Their dispute is, in fact, of a
most frivolous and unmeaning character; for, if the father was to carry
his point, the girls would occasionally sell the productions of their
garden, and pay for making their clothes, or even buy them ready made.
Were the mother, on the other hand, to prevail, they would still
occasionally use their needles, and exercise their taste and skill in
sewing, spinning, knitting, and the like. Nay," added he, "if you had
not been so much engrossed with this angry and indecorous altercation,
you might have seen two of them at their needles, in an adjoining
apartment, while one was busy at work in the garden, and another up to
the elbows in the soap-suds--all so closely engaged in their several
pursuits, that they hardly seemed to know they were the subject of
discussion."
I told the Brahmin that a dispute, not unlike this, had taken place in
my own country, a few years since; some of our politicians contending
that agricultural labour was most conducive to the national wealth,
whilst others maintained that manufacturing industry was equally
advantageous, wherever it was voluntarily pursued;--but that the
controversy had lately assumed a different character--the question now
being, not whether manufactures are as beneficial as agriculture, but
whether they deserve extraordinary encouragement, by taxing those who do
not give them a preference.
"That is," said the Brahmin, "as if our landlady, by way of inducing her
daughters to give up gardening for spinning, were to tell them, if they
did not find their new occupation as profitable as the old, she would
more than make up the difference out of her own pocket, which, though it
might suit the daughters very well, would be a losing business to
the family."