Howling of the grizly Bears--Alarm and excitement about
the docks--Scuffle for luggage--Scene at the Grecian
Hotel--Landing the grizly Bears--Author's journey to
London--Ibbotson's Hotel--First sally into the streets--First
impressions of London--Adventure in the fog and mud--Amusing
occurrence in the street--Beggars at the crossings of the
streets--Ingenious mode of begging--Rich shops--No pigs
in the streets--Soot and smoke of London--Author returns
to Liverpool--Daniel's trouble with the Bears--Passing
the Indian Collection and grizly Bears through the
Customs--Arrival in London with Collection and Bears--Daniel
in difficulty--Howling of Bears passing through the
Tunnel--The "King of New York," and "King Jefferson."
On nearing the docks at Liverpool, not only all the passengers of the
ship, but all the inhabitants of the hills and dales about, and the
shores, were apprised of our approach to the harbour by the bellowing
and howling of the grizlies, who were undoubtedly excited to this sort
of _Te Deum_ for their safe deliverance and approach to _terra firma_,
which they had got a sight (and probably a smell) of.
The arrival of the Roscius on that occasion was of course a conspicuous
one, and well announced; and we entered the dock amidst an unusual
uproar and crowd of spectators. After the usual manner, the passengers
were soon ashore, and our luggage examined, leaving freight and grizly
bears on board, to be removed the next morning. From the moment of
landing on the wharf to the Custom-house, and from that to the hotel
where I took lodgings, I was obliged to "fend off," almost with foot
and with fist, the ragamuffins who beset me on every side; and in
front, in the rear, and on the right and the left, assailed me with
importunities to be allowed to carry my luggage. In the medley of
voices and confusion I could scarcely tell myself to which of these
poor fellows I had committed my boxes; and no doubt this (to them)
delightful confusion and uncertainty encouraged a number of them to
keep close company with my luggage until it arrived at the Grecian
Hotel. When it was all safely landed in the hall, I asked the lad who
stood foremost and had brought my luggage in his cart, how much was to
pay for bringing it up? "Ho, Sir, hi leaves it to your generosity, Sir,
has you are a gentleman, Sir; hit's been a werry eavy load, Sir."
I was somewhat amused with the simple fellow's careless and easy
manner, and handed him eighteen pence, thinking it a reasonable
compensation for bringing two small trunks and a carpet-bag; but
he instantly assumed a different aspect, and refused to take the
money, saying that no gentleman would think of giving him less than
half-a-crown for such a load as he had brought. I soon settled with and
dismissed him by giving him two shillings; and as he departed, and I
was about entering the coffee-room, another of his ragged fraternity
touched my elbow, when I asked him what he wanted. "Wo, Sir, your
luggage there--" "But I have paid for my luggage--I paid the man you
see going out there." "Yes, Sir; but then you sees, hi elped im put
it hon; hand I elped im along with it, hand it's werry ard, Sir, hif
Ise not to be paid has well as im." I paid the poor fellow a sixpence
for his ingenuity; and as he left, a third one stepped up, of whom I
inquired, "What do _you_ want?" "Why, Sir, your luggage, you know,
there--I am very sorry, Sir, to see you pay that worthless rascal
what's just going out there--I am indeed sorry, Sir--he did nothing,
but was hol the time hin our way--hit urts me, Sir, to see a gentleman
throw is money away upon sich vagabonds, for it's hundoubtedly ard
earned, like the few shillings we poor fellows get." "Well, my good
fellow, what do you want of me?" "Ho, Sir, hit's honly for the cart,
Sir--you will settle with me for the cart, Sir, hif you please--that
first chap you paid ad my cart, hand I'll be bound you ave paid im
twice has much has you hought." "Well, to make short," said I, "here,
take this sixpence for your cart, and be off." I was thus brief, for I
saw two or three others edging and siding up in the passage towards me,
whom I recollected to have seen escorting my luggage, and I retreated
into the coffee-room as suddenly as possible, and stated the case to
one of the waiters, who promised to manage the rest of the affair.
I was thus very comfortable for the night, having no further annoyance
or real excitement until the next morning after breakfast, when it
became necessary to disembark the grizly bears. My other heavy freight
had gone to Her Majesty's Custom-house, and all the passengers from
the cabin and steerage had gone to comfortable quarters, leaving the
two deck passengers, the grizlies, in great impatience, and as yet
undisposed of. My man Daniel had been on the move at an early hour, and
had fortunately made an arrangement with a simple and unsuspecting old
lady in the absence of her "good man," to allow the cage to be placed
in a small yard adjoining her house, and within the same inclosure,
which had a substantial pavement of round stones.
This arrangement for a few days promised to be an advantageous one for
each party. Daniel was to have free access and egress for the purpose
of giving them their food, and the price proposed to the good woman was
met as a liberal reward for the reception of any living beings that
she could imagine, however large, that could come within her idea of
the dimensions of a cage. Daniel had told her that they were two huge
bears; and in his reply to inquiries, assured her that they were not
harmless by any means, but that the enormous strength of their cage
prevented them from doing any mischief.
The kind old lady agreed, for so much per day, to allow the cage to
stand in her yard, by the side of her house, at least until her husband
returned. With much excitement and some growling about the docks and
the wharf, they were swung off from the vessel, and, being placed on a
"float," were conveyed to, and quietly lodged and fed in, the retired
yard of the good woman, when the gate was shut, and they fell into a
long and profound sleep.
The grizly bears being thus comfortably and safely quartered in the
immediate charge of my man Daniel, who had taken an apartment near
them, and my collection being lodged in the Custom-house, I started by
the railway for London to effect the necessary arrangements for their
next move. I had rested in and left Liverpool in the midst of rain, and
fog, and mud, and seen little else of it; and on my way to London I
saw little or nothing of the beautiful country I was passing through,
travelling the whole distance in the night. The luxurious carriage in
which I was seated, however, braced up and embraced on all sides by
deep cushions; the grandeur of the immense stations I was occasionally
passing under; the elegance and comfort of the cafés and restaurants I
was stumbling into with half-sealed eyes, with hundreds of others in
the middle of the night, with the fat, and rotund, and ruddy appearance
of the night-capped fellow-travellers around me, impressed me at once
with the conviction that I was in the midst of a world of comforts and
luxuries that had been long studied and refined upon.
I opened my eyes at daylight at the terminus in the City of London,
but could see little of it, as I was driven to Ibbotson's Hotel, in
Vere-street, through one of the dense fogs peculiar to the metropolis
and to the season of the year in which I had entered it. To a foreigner
entering London at that season, the first striking impression is the
blackness and gloom that everywhere shrouds all that is about him. It
is in his hotel--in his bed-chamber--his dining-room, and if he sallies
out into the street it is there even worse; and added to it dampness,
and fog, and mud, all of which, together, are strong inducements for
him to return to his lodgings, and adopt them as comfortable, and as a
luxury.
I am speaking now of the elements which the Almighty alone can control,
and which only we strangers first see, as the surface of things, when
we enter a foreign land, and before our letters of introduction, or
the kind invitations of strangers, have led us into the participation
of the hospitable and refined comforts prepared and enjoyed by the
ingenuity of enlightened man, within. These I soon found were all
around me, in the midst of this gloom; and a deep sense of gratitude
will often induce me to allude to them again in the future pages of
this work.
My breakfast and a clean face were the first necessary things
accomplished at my hotel, and next to them was my first sally into
the streets of the great metropolis, to inhale the pleasure of first
impressions, and in my rambles to get a glance at the outer walls
and the position of the famous Egyptian Hall, which I have already
said my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had conditionally secured,
as the locale of my future operations. It is quite unnecessary,
and quite impossible also, for me to describe the route I pursued
through the mud and the fog in search of the Hall. Its direction had
been pointed out to me at my start, and something like the distance
explained, which, to an accustomed woodsman like myself, seemed a
better guarantee of success than the names of a dozen streets and
turnings, &c.; and I had "leaned off" on the point of compass, as
I thought, without any light of the sun to keep me to my bearings,
until I thought myself near its vicinity, and at a proper position to
make some inquiry for its whereabouts. I ran against a young man at
the moment (or, rather, he ran against me, as he darted across the
street to the pavement, with a black bag under his arm), whom I felt
fully at liberty to accost; and to my inquiry for the Egyptian Hall,
he very civilly and kindly directed me in the following manner, with
his hand pointing down the street in the opposite direction to the one
in which I was travelling:--"Go to the _bottom_, d'ye see, sir, and
you are at the _top_, of Piccadilly; you then pass the third turning
to the left, and you will see the hexibition of the uge hox; that hox
is in the Hegyptian All, and ee _his_ a wapper, sure enough!" By this
kind fellow's graphic direction I was soon in the Hall, got a glance
of it and "the fat ox," and then commenced my first peregrination,
amidst the mazes of fog and mud, through the Strand, Fleet-street,
and Cheapside; the names of which had rung in my ears from my early
boyhood, and which the sort of charm they had wrought there had created
an impatient desire to see.
I succeeded quite well in wending my way down the Haymarket, the
Strand, and Fleet-street, slipping and sliding through the mud, until I
was in front or in the rear (I could not tell which) of the noble St.
Paul's, whose black and gloomy walls, at the apparent risk of breaking
my neck, I could follow up with my eye, until they were lost in the
murky cloud of fog that floated around them. I walked quite round it,
by which I became duly impressed with its magnitude below, necessarily
leaving my conjectures as to its elevation, for future observations
through a clearer atmosphere.
I then commenced to retrace my steps, when a slight tap upon my
shoulder brought me around to look upon a droll and quizzical-looking
fellow, who very obsequiously proceeded (as he pointed to the collar
of my cloak, the lining of which, it seems, had got a little exposed),
"The lining of your cloak, sir; hit don't look very well for a
gentleman, sir; hexcuse me, hif you please, sir." "Certainly," said
I; "I am much obliged to you," as I adjusted it and passed on. In my
jogging along for some distance after this rencontre, and while my
eyes were intent upon the mud, where I was selecting the places for
my footsteps, I observed a figure that was keeping me close company
by my side, and, on taking a fairer look at him, found the same droll
character still at my elbow, when I turned around and inquired of him,
"What now?" "Ho, sir, your cloak, you know, sir; hit didn't look well,
for a gentleman like you, sir. Your pardon, sir; ha sixpence, hif you
please, sir." I stopped and gave the poor fellow a sixpence for his
ingenuity, and jogged on.
The sagacity of this stratager in rags had detected the foreigner or
stranger in me at first sight, as I learned in a few moments, in
the following amusing way. I had proceeded but a few rods from the
place where I had given him his sixpence and parted company with him,
when, crossing an intersecting street, I was met by a pitiable object
hobbling on one leg, and the other twisted around his hip, in an
unnatural way, with a broom in one hand, and the other extended towards
me in the most beseeching manner, and his face drawn into a triangular
shape, as he was bitterly weeping. I saw the poor fellow's occupation
was that of sweeping the crossing under my feet, and a sixpence that
I slipped into his hand so relaxed the muscles of his face, by this
time, that I at once recognised in him the adjuster of the lining of my
cloak; but I had no remedy, and no other emotion, at the instant, than
that of amusement, with some admiration of his adroitness, and again
passed on.
Casting my eyes before me I observed another poor fellow, at the
crossing of another street, plying his broom to the mud very nimbly (or
rather passing it over, just above the top of the mud), whilst his eye
was fixed intently upon me, whom he had no doubt seen patronizing the
lad whom I had passed. I dodged this poor fellow by crossing the street
to the right, and as I approached the opposite pavement I fell into the
hands of a young woman in rags, who placed herself before me in the
most beseeching attitude, holding on her arm a half-clad and sickly
babe, which she was pinching on one of its legs to make it cry, whilst
she supplicated me for aid. I listened to her pitiable lamentations a
moment, and in reproaching her for her cruelty in exposing the life of
her little infant for the purpose of extorting alms, I asked her why
she did not make her husband take care of her and her child? "Oh, my
kind sir," said she, "I give you my honour I've got no husband; I have
no good opinion of those husbands." "Then I am glad you have informed
me," said I; "you belong to a class of women whom I will not give to."
"Oh, but, kind sir, you mistake me; I am not a bad woman--I am _not_
a bad woman--I assure you! I am a decent woman, and God knows it:
the child is not mine; it is only one that I hires, and I's obliged
to pay eighteen pence a day for it; which is as true as God's holy
writ; that's what it is." "Then," said I, "you are a wretch, to keep
that innocent little thing here in the cold; and, instead of alms, you
deserve to be handed over to the police." She gave me many hard names
as I was stepping into a cab which I had beckoned up and directed to
drive me to Ibbotson's Hotel, in Vere-street.
"Where, sir?" asked the cab-driver as he mounted his seat. "Vy, sir,
didn't you ear the gentleman?" said a man with a large bronze medal
hanging on his breast, who had one hand on the door; "drive im to
Hibbotson's Otel, Were-street, Hoxford-street." "Who are you?" said I,
as we were moving off, and he held the door open with one hand and his
hat raised with the other; "what do you want?"
"I'm the vaterman, sir; you'll recollect the vaterman?" "Yes, I'll
not forget you in a long time." So I shut the door without giving the
poor man his ha'penny, not knowing the usual custom yet, and too much
pressed for time to learn it at that moment.
I observed, in passing several equestrian and other statues in the
streets, that they were all black; which seemed curious; and also,
in every street, I saw what was new to me, and not to be seen in
the streets of the American cities--meat-shops and fishmongers
indiscriminately mingled along the same side-walks with dry
goods--hosiers, china, and hardware--and fancy shops; and also
performed the whole route, outward and homeward, without having seen
a solitary pig ploughing the gutters, as we too familiarly meet them
in many of the American cities, though the gutters, much of the way,
would seem to have offered a tolerably rich field for their geological
researches.
I met with evidences enough, however, that I was not out of the land of
pigs, though they were not seen promenading or ploughing the streets.
I passed several shops, all open in front, where poor piggies were
displayed in a much less independent way--hanging by their hind legs
at full length, and the blood dripping from their noses upon the
sills of the shops and pavements, to amuse the eyes of the silken and
dazzling throng that was squeezing and brushing along by them; and
whilst I easily decided which was the most cruel to the poor brutes, I
was much at a loss to decide which mode was calculated to be the most
shocking to the nerves that would be weak enough to be offended by
either.
I was thus at the end of my first day's rambles in London, without at
present recollecting any other occurrences worthy of note, excepting
a little annoyance I had felt by discovering with my left eye, while
walking in the street, something like a small black spot on the side
of my nose, which, by endeavouring many times to remove by the brush
of my hand across it, I had evidently greatly enlarged, and which,
when I returned, I examined and found to have been at first, in all
probability, a speck of soot which had alighted there, and by passing
my hand over it had, as in other instances, on other parts of my face,
mashed it down and given it somewhat the shape and tail of a comet, or
the train of a falling star, though differing materially in brilliancy
and colour.
I used the rest of this gloomy day in obtaining from the Lords of
the Treasury the proper order for passing my collection through the
Customs, which has been before mentioned, arranging my letters of
credit, &c., and returned by the evening's train to Liverpool, to join
my collection again, and Daniel and the grizly bears.
On my return to that city I found poor Daniel in a sad dilemma with
the old lady about the bears, and the whole neighbourhood under a high
excitement, and in great alarm for their safety. The bears had been
landed in the briefest manner possible; exempted from the usual course
that almost everything else takes through the Queen's warehouse; and,
though relieved from the taxes of the customs, I soon found that I had
duties of a different character accumulating that required my attention
in another quarter. The agreement made by the old lady with Daniel to
keep them in her yard for so much per day, and for as long a time as he
required, had been based upon the express and very judicious condition
that they were to do no harm. From the moment of their landing they
had kept up an almost incessant howling, so Rocky-Mountain-ish and so
totally unlike any attempts at music ever heard in the country before,
that it attracted a crowd night and day about the old lady's door, that
almost defeated all attempts at ingress and egress. A little vanity,
however, which she still possessed, enabled her to put up with the
inconvenience, which she was turning to good account, and counting
good luck, until it was ascertained, to her great amazement as well as
alarm, that the bears were passing their huge paws out of the cage,
between the iron bars, and lifting up the round stones of her pavement
for the pleasure of once more getting their nails into the dirt, their
favourite element, and which they had for a long time lost sight of.
In their unceasing pursuit of this amusement, by night and by day,
they had made a sad metamorphosis of the old lady's pavement, as, with
the strength of their united paws, they had drawn the cage around to
different parts of the yard, totally unpaving as they went along. At
the time of the poor old lady's bitterest and most vehement complaint,
they were making their move in the direction of her humble tenement,
the walls of which were exceedingly slight; and her alarm became
insupportable. The ignorant crowd outside of the inclosure, who could
get but a partial view of their operations now and then, had formed
the most marvellous ideas of these monsters, from the report current
amongst them that they were eating the paving-stones; and had taken the
most decided and well-founded alarm from the fact that the bears had
actually hurled some of the paving-stones quite over the wall amongst
their heads, which were calling back an increased shower of stones and
other missiles, adding fresh rage and fears to the growling of the
bears, which altogether was threatening results of a more disastrous
kind.
In this state of affairs I was very justly appealed to by the old lady
for redress and a remedy, for it was quite evident that the condition
of her agreement with Daniel had been broken, as the bears were now
decidedly doing much harm to her premises; destroying all her rest,
and (as she said) "her appetite and her right mind;" and I agreed
that it was my duty, as soon as possible, to comply with her urgent
request that they should be removed. She insisted on its being done
that day, as "it was quite impossible to pass another night in her
own bed, when there was such howling and groaning and grunting in
her yard, by the side of her house." Daniel took my directions and
immediately went through the town in search of other quarters for
them, and was to attend to their moving whilst I was to spend the day
in the Custom-house, attending to the examination of my collection of
600 paintings and many thousand Indian costumes, weapons and other
curiosities, which were to be closely inspected and inventoried, for
duties.
Immersed in this mystery of difficulties and vexations at the customs
during the day, I had lost sight of Daniel and his pets until I was
free at night, when I was assailed with a more doleful tale than ever
about the bears. Troubles were gathering on all sides. Poor Daniel
had positively arranged in several places for them, but when "their
characters were asked from their last places," he met defeat in every
case, and was obliged to meet, at last, the increased plaints of his
old landlady, whose rage and ranting were now quite beyond control.
She had made complaint to the police, of whom a _posse_ had been sent
to see to their removal. Daniel in the mean time had dodged them, and
was smiling amidst the crowd at the amusing idea of their laying hold
of them, or of even going into the yard to them. The police reported
on the utter impossibility of removing them to any other part of the
town, their "character" having been so thoroughly published already to
all parts; and it was advised, to the utter discomfiture of the old
lady, that it would be best for them to remain there until they should
be removed to London, and that I should pay for all damages. The poor
old lady afterwards had a final interview with Daniel in the crowd,
when she very judiciously resolved that if the bears did not move, _she
must_--which she did that night, and placed Daniel in her bed, as the
guardian of her property and of his pets, until the third or fourth
day afterwards, when they were moved to the railway, and by it (night
and day, catching what glimpses they could of the country they were
serenading with their howls and growls as they passed through it under
their tarpaulin) they were conveyed to the great metropolis.
Owing to the multiplicity of articles to be examined and inventoried
in the customs, and the great embarrassment of the clerics in writing
down their Indian names, my labours were protracted there to much
tediousness; but when all was brought to a close by their proposing,
most judiciously, to count the number of curiosities instead of wasting
paper and time and paralysing my jaws by pronouncing half a dozen times
over, and syllable by syllable, their Indian names, my collection of
eight tons weight was all on the road and soon at the Euston station in
London, where we again recognised the mournful cries of the grizlies,
who had arrived the night before.
On arriving at the station, I found Daniel at a small inn in the
vicinity, where he seemed highly excited by some unpleasant altercation
he had had with the landlord and inmates of the house, growing out of
national and political prejudices, which had most probably been too
strongly advanced on both sides. Daniel had suddenly raised a great
excitement in the neighbourhood by his arrival with the grizly bears,
whose occasional howlings had attracted crowds of people, curious to
know the nature of the strange arrival; and all inquirers about the
station being referred to their keeper, who was at the inn, brought
Daniel and his patience into notoriety at once.
Daniel (_Plate No. 2_) is an Irishman, who emigrated to the United
States some twenty years since, and, by dint of his industry and hard
labour, had met with success in acquiring an humble independence, and
had formed the most undoubted attachment to the Government and its
institutions; and, from his reading, and conversation with the world,
had informed himself tolerably well in political matters, which he was
always ready to discuss; and being rather of a hasty and irascible
temperament, he often got into debates of that nature, that led him
into danger of unpleasant results. It was in the midst of one of
these that I found him at the inn, surrounded by at least a hundred
labouring men and idlers from the streets, who had been drawn around
him at first, as I have said, to get some information of the bears,
but who had changed their theme, and were now besieging him on all
sides, to combat him on some political dogma he had advanced relative
to his favourite and adopted country, the United States; or to taunt
him with slaunts at his native country, all of which, with his native
wit, he was ready to meet with ability, until, as he afterwards told
me, "they were showered upon him so rapidly, and from so many quarters
at once, that it became quite impossible to answer them, and that the
stupid ignorance and impertinence of some of them had worn out all
his patience, and irritated him to that degree, that I must excuse
him for the excitement I had found him under when I arrived." With
much difficulty I rescued him from the crowd that had enclosed him,
and, retiring to a private room, after matters of business had been
arranged, he gave me the following account of the difficulties he had
just been in, and of the incidents of his journey from Liverpool to
London with the bears.
[Illustration: N^o. 2.]
At Liverpool he had had great difficulty in getting permission to
travel by the luggage train, to keep company with the bears, the
necessity of which he urged in vain, until he represented that, unless
he was with them to feed them, their howlings and other terrific noises
and ravings would frighten their hands all out of the stations, and
even add probabilities to their breaking loose from the cage in
which they were confined, to feed upon the human flesh around them, and
of which they were peculiarly fond. Upon these representations, he was
allowed the privilege of a narrow space, to stand or to sit, in the
corner of one of the luggage-trains, and thus bore the bears company
all the way.
When they entered the first tunnel on their way, they raised a hideous
howl, which they continued until they were through it, which might
have been from a feeling of pleasure, recognizing in it something of
the character of the delightful gloominess of their own subterranean
abodes; or their outcries might have been from a feeling of dread or
fear from those narrow and damp caverns, too much for their delicate
tastes and constitutions. This, however, is matter for the bears to
decide. At Birmingham, where they rested on the truck for the greater
part of a day, their notification to the town had called vast crowds
of spectators around them; and though their tarpaulin prevented them
from being seen, many, very many, drew marvellous accounts of them
from one another, and from the flying reports which had reached them
several days before from Liverpool, of "two huge monsters imported from
the Rocky Mountains, that had scales like alligators, with long spears
of real flint at the ends of their tails; that they made nothing of
eating paving-stones when they were hungry, and that in Liverpool they
had escaped, and were travelling to the north, and demolishing all the
inhabitants of Lancashire as they went along," &c. Their occasional
howls and growls, with, once in a while, a momentary display of one
of their huge paws, exhibited from under the tarpaulin, riveted the
conviction of the gaping multitude as to the terror and danger of these
animals, while it put at rest all apprehensions as to their being at
large and overrunning the country. Poor Daniel had to stand between
the crowd and his pets, to save them from the peltings and insults
of the crowd, and at the same time, to muster every talent he had at
natural history, to answer the strange queries and theories that were
raised about them. He was assailed on every side with questions as
to the appearance and habits of the animals, and at last, about "the
other animals," as they called them, "running on two legs, in America;"
for many of them, from his representations, had come fresh from the
coal-pits and factories, with ideas that Americans were a sort of
savages, and that savages, they had understood, were "a sort of wild
beastises, and living on raw meat." These conjectures and queries were
answered amusingly for them, by Daniel; and, after he had a little
enlightened them by the information he gave them, their conversation
took a sort of political turn, which, I have before said, he was prone
to run into; and thus, luckily, the time was whiled away, without any
_set-to_ to bother the bears and himself, which he had seen evidently
preparing, until the whistle announced them and him on their way again
for the metropolis.
The next morning he found himself and the bears safe landed at the
terminus in London, where I have already said that I found him and
released him from a medley of difficulties he had worked himself into.
The keeper of the inn had himself been the first to provoke poor
Daniel, but when he found it for his interest, and advised a different
course, he endeavoured to turn his criticisms into good nature, and
had taken sides with him. Daniel, very amusingly however, describes
his remarks as so excessively ignorant, that they excited his mirth
more than anger, and he repeated several of them in the following
manner:--He first provoked Daniel by inquiring "who his master was,
and where he was at that time." Daniel replied to him, somewhat to his
surprise, "I have no master, Sir; I live in a country, thank God, where
we are our own masters. My 'boss' (if you will have it that way) is a
Mr. Catlin, who I expect here in a few hours." Finding that Daniel and
the bears were from America, of which country he had heard some vague
accounts, he very innocently enquired who was the King in America at
that time, apologizing, that by the treacherousness of his memory he
had lost the run of them. Daniel told him that they had no king in
America. He then said "he well recollected when the old fellow died,
but he had equally forgotten the name of the Queen; he recollected to
have read of the King of New York." Daniel soon put his recollection
right, and in doing so had given umbrage to the poor man, which led to
the long and excited political debate with which I found Daniel so much
exasperated when I arrived.
Daniel had, in the beginning of this affair, explained to the
bystanders around him the difference between a King and a President,
and then had provoked his landlord by amusingly and pleasantly
repeating the anecdote of "King Jefferson" (which is current in
America) in reply to his questions about the "King of New York;" and in
the following manner:--
"During the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who lived in the city of
Washington, two poor emigrants from the county of Cork, in my own
country, made their way to America in a vessel which landed them in
Philadelphia; they got ashore, and as they were taking their first
stroll through the streets in the 'land of liberty and equality,'
without a shilling in their pockets, they began to 'sing out' 'Huzza
for King George!' This of course excited too much opposition to last
long in the streets of a republican city, and a gentleman very kindly
stopped the poor fellows, and to their great surprise informed them
that he feared they would get into difficulty if they continued to
huzza for the king, as King George was not the king of the country they
were now in. He informed them that Mr. Jefferson was the great man in
America--that he was President of the United States, and that it would
not do for them to huzza for King George. They thanked him, and as
they proceeded on they increased the volume of their voices in huzzas
for 'King Jefferson!--huzza for King Jefferson!' This soon excited the
attention of the police, who silenced their bawling by 'putting them in
the jug!'"