CHAPTER VI.
Trenton—built above the head of navigation to encourage commerce—capital of the State—only wants a castle, a bay, a mountain, a sea, and a volcano, to bear a strong resemblance to the Bay of Naples[32]—supreme court sitting—fat chief justice—used to get asleep on the bench after dinner—gave judgment, I suppose, like Pilate’s wife, from his dreams—reminded me of Justice Bridlegoose deciding by a throw of a die, and of the oracle of the holy bottle[33]—attempted to kiss the chambermaid—boxed my ears till they rung like our theatre-bell—girl had lost one tooth—mem. all the American ladies prudes, and have bad teeth; Anacreon Moore’s opinion on the matter. State house—fine place to see the sturgeons jump up—query, whether sturgeons jump up by an impulse of the tail, or whether they bounce up from the bottom by the elasticity of their noses? Linkum Fidelius of the latter opinion—I too—sturgeon’s nose capital for tennis-balls—learnt that at school—went to a ball—negro wench principal musician! N. B. People of America have no fiddlers but females!—origin of the phrase, “fiddle of your heart”—reasons why men fiddle better than women; expedient of the Amazons, who were expert at the bow; waiter at the city tavern—good story of his—nothing to the purpose—never mind—fill up my book like Carr—make it sell. Saw a democrat get into a stage followed by his dog.[34] N. B. This town remarkable for dogs and democrats—superfine sentiment[35]—good story from Joe Miller—ode to a piggin of butter—pensive meditations on a mouse-hole—make a book as clear as a whistle!
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
I have observed a particular intimacy for these few days past between that dry wag, Will Wizard, and my cousin Pindar. The latter has taken his winter quarters at old Cockloft’s, in the corner room opposite mine, in order to be at hand and overlook the town. They hardly gave themselves time, on Sunday last, to wait for the family toast of “our absent friends,” before they adjourned to Pindar’s chamber. In the course of an hour my cousin’s enormous mandarin inkstand was sent down to be replenished. I began to be seriously alarmed, for I thought if they had exhausted its contents without exhausting their subject, there was no knowing where it would end.
On returning to tea, my cousin Pindar was observed to rub his hands, a sure sign that something tickled his fancy; he, however, maintained as mysterious a countenance as a Seventh Ward politician. As to Will Wizard, he took longer strides than usual, his inflexible phiz had an uncommonly knowing air, and a sagacious wink occasionally betrayed that he had more in his head than he chose to communicate. The whole family (who in truth are much given to _wonder_ at everything) were sadly puzzled to conjecture what their two precious noddles had been bothering about.
In the evening, after I had retreated to my citadel, the elbow-chair, I was surprised by the abrupt entrance of these two worthies. My cousin opened the budget at once: he declared that it was as necessary for a modern poet to have an assistant, as for Don Quixote to have a Sancho—that it was the fashion for poets, nowadays, to write so ineffably obscure, that every line required a page of notes to explain its meaning, and render its “darkness visible”—that a modern poem could no more succeed without notes, than a paper kite could fly without a tail. In a word, Pegasus had become a most mulish animal, and would not budge a foot, unless he lumbered along a cart-load of quotations and explanations, and illustrations at his heels: he had therefore prevailed on Will Wizard to assist him occasionally as annotator and illustrator. As a specimen of their united labors, he handed me the following complimentary ode to that king of the buzzards, Dr. Christopher Costive, informing me that he had plenty more on hand whenever occasion required it. I had been rather surprised lately at the Doctor’s meddling with us, as he was sure of gaining more kicks than coppers in return; but I am told an ass loves to have his muzzle scratched with nettles. On expressing my surprise, Will informed me that it was all a sham battle; that he was very intimate with the Doctor, and could relate a thousand diverting anecdotes concerning him; and that the Doctor, finding we were in want of a butt, had generously volunteered himself as our target. I wish him joy of his bargain.
In the following poem it will be observed that, while my cousin Pindar tunes his pipe on the top of the page, Will Wizard worries away at his thorough bass below. The notes of a modern poem being like the sound of a French horn, bassoon, kettle-drum, and bass viol, in our orchestra, which make such a confounded racket, that they entirely drown the song; and no man, who has not the sublime ear of a connoisseur, can tell what the devil they’re playing.
FLUMMERY.
FROM THE MILL[36] OF PINDAR COCKLOFT, ESQ.
_Being a Poem with Notes, or rather_ Notes with a Poem;[37] _in the manner of_
DOCTOR[38] CHRISTOPHER COSTIVE.
“Prick me Bull calf till he roars.”[39] _Falstaff._
The greatest[40] poet of our day, From State of Maine to Louisiana;[41] The hero who did ’sist upon’t, He wou’dn’t be deputy to Mr. Hunt;[42] Who rear’d a gallows for each elf, and Did for _hangman_ his own self stand.[43] And made folks think it very odd, he Should turn _Jack Ketch_ to everybody, The modern mounter of Pegasus, The clumsy jolter of Jackasses,[44] Who, now the poet’s dray horse starts on, Anon, the gibbet hurdle carts on, Now o’er a poem dozes happy, And next expertly draws the cap; he Who cares not though the world should know it That he’s half hangman, half a poet.[45] Who gibbeted the knaves so knowing, That kept Democracy a-going, Hung his _fac-simile_ famed Toney[46] Pasquin, the friend of Mr. Honé. Who drags like snail his filthy slime Through many a ragged, hobbling rhyme, Then calls his billingsgate—sarcastic! His drabbling doggrel—Hudibrastic! [Good lack, my friends, ’twould make you soon[47] laugh, To see this jolter-headed moon-calf, From Hudibras his honors steal And break Sam Butler on the wheel.][48] With other things that I might tell ye on Performed by this rump-fed hellion[49] —But not o’er long to dwell upon’t, This man as big as an elephant,[50] This _sweetest_ witling of the age,[51] This hero, hangman, critic, sage,[52] This poet of five hundred pound[53] Has come to grace our hapless town. And when he entered, every goose Began to cackle like the deuce; The asses brayed to one another— ’Twas plain—the creatures smelt a brother.
NOTES, BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.
Footnote 36:
_Mill._] As we are not a little anxious to cultivate the intimacy so happily commenced between the Doctor and ourselves, we feel bound in candor to confess the charge made against us, of having borrowed from him some of the phrases and ideas of our last number; and we justify ourselves by attributing it to our high regard for his talents: for what can be a greater proof of friendship, nowadays, than borrowing? If we were his enemies, we might justify it by the old maxim of “foiling the devil with his own weapons.” As to the “mill,” which the Doctor so vociferously claims, honest Pindar acknowledges that he borrowed the idea from the Doctor’s writings in general, for he never dipped in them without thinking of our nocturnal music-grinder, who continually grinds over and over the same sleepy tune of, “O, hard is my fate.”
Footnote 37:
_Notes with a Poem._] Whatever merit may appear in this Poem, my friend Cockloft must own that it is entirely owing to his close adherence to his _big_ prototype, Dr. Caustic. The rhymes are generally _borrowed_ from the Doctor’s own works, possessing all that quaintness, cuteness, and clumsiness, for which he is remarkable. As the lesser thing should always depend upon the greater, we have rather inverted the usual title of such works, and made the poem minor. We recommend the Doctor’s mode of _compiling_ a book to all the nums of the day—as an example, we instance his “Terrible Tractoration,” of which, as few buy, and still fewer read it (a proof that the town are not quite such fools as the Doctor would make them), we shall say little. The book was smothered in notes, like a goose in onions—some ill-natured cynics have asserted that what little whim the work contained lay entirely in the notes, which we are sorry to say were not written by the Doctor; his poem might therefore be said to resemble the _leg of a stool_, dressed up with _savory sauce_; or, as the Doctor will understand it better, that famous dish called _pumpkin-pie_, where, though the _pumpkin_ gives the _name_ to the dish, yet the great skill of the cook is to hide the twang of it as much as possible with _spice_ and _sugar_.
Footnote 38:
_Doctor._] The Doctor, we are told, was not bred a physician; nor was he indebted for his appellation to a gratuitous donation from any university, as Doctor of Laws—he was humorously so dubbed by his neighbors in Vermont, on account of having once benevolently physicked a sick horse—his works bear testimony to his drenching abilities; and we may justly apply to him an unlucky epigram, written on a brother quack in physic and poetry:—
“For physic and farces His equal there scarce is— His _farces_ are _physic_— His _physic_ a _farce_ is.”
Footnote 39:
_Prick Bull calf, etc._] We had not the least expectation that our notice of Doctor Costive, in the last number, would have put him into such an indecent passion. Bless us, how he has roared! and like Falstaff not only roared but “ran and roared”—
——“unpack’d his heart with words, And fell a cursing—like a very drab! A scullion!”
He has given us a most woful _scolding_ through some eight or nine columns, and plainly proved that our work was not worth a fig, because “Salmagundi” had been heretofore given as a title to another work—Launcelot Langstaff was evidently copied from Isaac Bickerstaff, because they both ended with _staff_—“Whimwhams” was the same as “Flimflams”—“Will Wizard” was taken from—the Lord knows where; _Wintry_ was accidentally misspelled or misprinted _Wintery_, and “_Weakly_” was borrowed from his own _Weakly_ productions. O, Midas, Midas, how thine ears do loom through the fog of thy writings. When a man of the Doctor’s gumption can write nine columns against our work, and discover no greater faults, we may well be vain—were we to criticise our own writings, they would stand a much poorer chance. In spite of the Doctor’s crustiness we still love him in our hearts—he may scold like an old woman but we know it all arises from that excessive irritability common to all men who have “written a book,” and particularly a book of doggerel rhymes. We again assure him of our perfect good-will toward himself and his most amiable offspring, that delectable pair of twin brothers, _Terrible Tractoration_ and _Democracy Unveiled_. May the whole world in general, and posterity in particular, know the proper distinction between Hudibrastic and Doggerel, and acquit the Doctor from the imputation meanly leveled against him by sundry nincoms of imitating Hudibras. We are sorry that he should ever have been thought capable of descending to be a copyist, and we challenge the whole world to deny that the Doctor’s verse is doggerel, genuine, broken-winded, rickety doggerel, whatever his enemies may insist to the contrary. The Doctor’s waggery, however, like that of many other double-headed wits, seems often to have been taken by the wrong end. On the first appearance of his _Terrible Tractoration_, the critics were absolutely at a loss, such was the delicacy of his wit, to say whether he was the champion or opponent of Perkinism. Thus the _Critical Review_ for 1803: “His real object cannot always be ascertained—we _think_ him, however, the friend of the Tractors.” Either the Doctor or the critic must have been a dunderhead—we charitably suppose the critic. The Doctor afterward, like “John-a-Gudgeon” in the _Pleader’s Guide_, explained, and his explanation proved so perfectly satisfactory that there were very few of the reviewers but could tell, or at least _guess_ at his object. The fact was, the Doctor, good inoffensive soul, did not mean to attack anything—except common sense. We recommend this work as a soporific specimen of the Doctor’s skill in _balderdash_.
Footnote 40:
_Greatest poet._] _Great_ is sometimes a positive, sometimes a figurative term—as we say a _great man_, a _great mountain_, or when speaking of the Doctor, _great man mountain_—having no allusion here to the mountain which brought forth a mouse. When, however, we speak of the Doctor as a _great_ man or great poet, we mean to be understood that he is some six feet six inches high—three feet across the shoulders, nine round the paunch—that he weighs about half a ton, and is withal most clumsily hung together.
Footnote 41:
_Louisiana._] Though we plume ourselves on adhering closely to the Doctor’s rhymes, yet we have taken the liberty of differing a little in the pronunciation of this word—the Doctor gives it in the true eastern dialect, Lousy-anee—but to give it _à la Costive_—
“Which late, ’tis said, in weather rainy, Was melted in Louisiana.”
Again: for when the Doctor gets hold of a good rhyme, he is a “woundy” toad for harping on it.
“But please his highness ship, I won’t Be deputy to Mr. Hunt: No—were it offered ’twould be vain, he Won’t catch me in Louisiana (or Lousy-anee”).
These two latter lines are truly as musical as marrowbones and cleavers, and remind us of that sweet couplet, by the Doctor’s rival, the inimitable Searson
“From this seat I pass’d to Alexandria, And am pleased through rural scenes to wander.” Sear. _Mount Ver._
If our reader wishes for more specimens of the Doctor’s knack at rhyming, we’ll give him the oft-repeated tags of “rogues and demagogues,” “brewing and ruin,” “wildering and children,” “women and common,” “trimming and women,” “well-knows and fellows,” “comparison and harass’d-em;” together with an occasional mixture of those attic eastern jingles of “dandy and handy” and “sugar candy.” The Doctor and Searson’s poetic contest is similar to one that whilom took place between two honest tars (we beg the gentle Joe Miller’s pardon for _borrowing_ an anecdote); one gave as _prize couplet_:—
“As she slips she slides along, A faithful friend is hard to find.”
but the other _rhymester_ beat him all hollow by singing out
“My quart pot holds a gallon, By zounds.”
Footnote 42:
_Deputy to Mr. Hunt._] Mr. Hunt was a _little_ man and a young man; the Doctor, although of the same age, feeling the _immensity_ of his qualifications, refuses to second such a governor, urging his _size_, and like Billy Bugby, alleging that what he wanted in years he made up in _bulk_; and if he lacked in brains, he atoned for all in _garbage_.
Footnote 43:
_Did for hangman, etc._] How the Doctor ever came to stumble on this unhappy idea, we are at a loss to imagine—it is an odd “whimwham” for a fellow to dub himself with the humorous epithet of _hangman_. “We would not have his enemies say so.” Whether the Doctor has a _hanging look_ or no, we leave others to determine. We are certain he is in no danger of the gallows himself; but we warn him to take care how he visits Connecticut—he may chance to be burnt for a witch. We give the Doctor’s own claim to his _Tyburn title_.
“Now since ye are a ruffian crew, As honest Jack Ketch ever knew; No threats nor growling shall prohibit My hanging you on satire’s gibbet.” _Vide_ Costive.
Footnote 44:
_This clumsy jolter of jackasses._] As this line partakes of the true Costive obscurity, we beg leave to explain. There is no intention of calling the Doctor a jackass, we only mean that he makes an ass of Pegasus, and even when on poor Pegasus (so degraded) he is but a miserable rider. His trotting, pacing, nigglety-nagglety lines, put us often in mind of that pious but quaint expression about the “devil riding rough shod over a soul.”
Footnote 45:
_Half a poet._] O, fie! friend Cockloft, this savors of sheer envy. Were there any doubts of the Doctor’s being a whole poet—aye, and a _big_ poet, the following verse would set them at rest. It shows that he is a complete jockey on Pegasus; and when the poor nag won’t pace, he’ll cudgel him as soundly as he does his own brains:—
“Yes, we were ’raptured when he said We’re all republican, all fed- Ral fellow-citizens, Americans, And hoped we’d done with faction’s hurricanes!”—_Costive._
Is this poetic frenzy (alias idiotism), or is it turgid stupidity? Truly it is as smooth as a pine-log causeway; it confirms the Doctor’s right to his _sir-name_, and can only be matched by a stave from the Doctor’s contemporary bard and rival _rhymester_, Searson—videlicet:—
“From house to house soon took my departure, And to the garden look’d for sweet nature. The fishing very great at Mount Vernon, When there with other scenes I look’d upon. This pleasing seat hath its prospects so high, That one would think ’twas for astronomy, ’Twould answer for an observatory.”
The reader will perceive the similarity in taste, style, and ear of these rival poets. I have their works bound up together, and Minshull’s into the bargain. It shall go hard but they shall all descend the gutter of immortality together.
Footnote 46:
_His fac-simile, famed Toney._] The Doctor’s abusing poor Toney Pasquin, brought forcibly to our recollection the vulgar cant saying about the pot and the kettle. Perhaps no two of the _great_ poets of the day are more alike, in most particulars, than Doctor Costive and honest Toney. The Doctor is a true poetic blackguard—and so is Toney. The Doctor is an adept in the Billingsgate vocabulary—so is Toney. The Doctor has bespattered many a poor devil who never offended him—so has Toney. The Doctor has written a book—so has Toney. It may be said of each of them—
“We will not rake the dunghill for his crimes, Who knows the man will never read his rhymes.”
The only particular in which they disagree is, that Toney has occasionally been convicted of saying a good thing—the gentle stupidity of the Doctor being entirely innocent of anything of the kind.
“Oh, here’s another pumpion, the cramm’d son of a starved usurer, Cacafogo. Both their brains buttered cannot make two spoonsful.”—_Rule a Wife._
Footnote 47:
_Soon._] This word is entirely unnecessary to the sense, and is dragged in for no other purpose whatever but to eke out the line, in humble _imitation_ of a dull, but honest expedient, frequently made use of by the illustrious Searson, and his great rival, Doctor Costive.
Footnote 48:
_And break, etc._] It has for some time been a trick with many a sleepy scribbler, beside the Doctor, though now it has grown rather notorious, to break their crabbed lines with a “fist or stick,” or a crowbar, and then term their _chopped hay_ Hudibrastic—thus is poetry daily put on the rack; and thus is poor Butler crucified every hour.
Footnote 49:
_Rump-fed hellion._] Lest the Doctor should here again accuse us of _borrowing_—a thing, by the by, we strongly suspect him of, as we think we can discover that many of his thoughts, and certainly some of his rhymes, are _borrowed_ from the immortal Searson and the inimitable Minshull—we acknowledge that we are indebted for this line to Shakespeare. Whether the term _rump-fed_ applies to the Doctor or not, we cannot exactly tell; but if we were not afraid of swelling our notes, we would, following the example of the Doctor in his _Democracy Unveiled_, give our readers an account of the famous _Rump_ Parliament—and truly ’twould be as much in point as most of the notes in that celebrated work.
_Hellion._ “A deputy scullion employed in regions below ‘to cook up the broth.’”—Link. Fid. The Doctor, good man, has employed himself, while on earth, as far as his _weakly_ powers would go, in stewing up many a woful kettle of fish.
“Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
Shakespeare must certainly have had the Doctor’s weekly mess of _bubble_ and _squeak_ in view, when he wrote the above.
Footnote 50:
_As big as an elephant._] There is more truth than poetry in this comparison. The following curious anecdote was told me by the Doctor himself, when I breakfasted with him the other morning: The elephant which travelled lately through our country, was shown in New England; two simple country girls, desirous of seeing what kind of a beast it was, applied for admittance. On entering the room, the Doctor, who was stooping to tie his shoe-string with his back toward them, was for a moment taken for the elephant! They declared it was a clumsy creature—“they could not make head nor tail of it.” No wonder, poor things, the critics were as much puzzled themselves, as we have already shown.
Footnote 51:
_Sweetest witling._] A poetic license, the Doctor certainly being none of the sweetest of personages. Many a fair flower, however, springs out of a dunghill—and the Doctor is not the first poet who has written a _sweet_ song in “marvelous dirty linen.”
Footnote 52:
_This hero, hangman, etc._]
“All hushed in mute attention sit, To hear this critic, poet, wit, Philosopher, all, all at once, And to complete them, all this DUNCE.” _Lloyd._
Footnote 53:
_Five hundred pound._] _i. e._ five hundred pounds weight; or in true avoirdupois, 4 cwt. 1 qu. 24 lbs.
GENERAL REMARK.
We have endeavored to copy the Doctor’s style and manner as correctly as possible throughout this charming poem; the _rhymes_ are chiefly “filched” from his own _labors_, and jingle as harmoniously as sleigh bells—like him, we have sometimes risen and sometimes descended, with all his leaden profundity. Some poets sip in the Heliconian stream, others dabble in it. The Doctor exceeds them all—he has a true poetic DIVING-BELL—plunges boldly to the bottom, and there drabbles in the mud like a flounder. In the _gallows_ part of his poem, the Doctor may truly be said to _rise_; and in our touch on the Helicon, we have almost equaled those profound sinkings of his genius, where the Doctor even descends _below himself_. We conclude with _borrowing_ a speech from old Shakespeare—“Give me thy hand,” Doctor, “I am sorry I beat thee; but while thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.”
NOTICE.
While in a “state militant,” waging war with folly and stupidity, and assailed on all sides by a combination of nincoms and numsculls, we are gratified to find that our careless effusions have received the approbation of men of wit and genius. We have expressed heretofore our contempt for the applause of _the million_, but we confess ourselves ambitious of the praises of _the few_; we have read, therefore, with infinite self-congratulation the encomiums passed on our productions by the learned and liberal editor of the “People’s Friend.” The attacks of that _billingsgate droll_, Dr. Costive, and his whole _North River fraternity_, could not give us greater delight. We also publish with pride the following Card from the authors of “The Echo,”[54] a work which we have commended to a conspicuous post in our library, and we do hereby shake its authors by the hand as a set of right merry wags, choice spirits, and, what we think better than all, genuine humorists.
CARD.
“The authors of THE ECHO send a copy of it to the writers of SALMAGUNDI, which they request them to accept, as a mark of the pleasure they have received from their Cervantic effusions.”
Now we are in the humor of card writing, we would acknowledge the reception of several effusions in prose and verse, which, though they do great credit to the writers, and would doubtless be both pleasing and instructive to the public, yet do not come exactly within the intention of our work; the authors, therefore, will excuse our not publishing them.
We have likewise received a note written in a French hand, but in villainous bad English. Will Wizard has been at much pains to decipher it, but in vain; it is as unintelligible as a Herculanean manuscript. He has discovered, however, that it is a vindication of dancing, together with a long eulogy on the _pas de chat_.
As a considerable part of this paper is taken up with a stupid subject, namely; the Doctor, and we do not wish that our readers should pay for “flummery” merely, we have directed our publisher to give them eight pages extra; this will account for the unusual size of the present number. We confess we _borrowed_ this idea, among many others, from the Doctor, who lately finding that his readers were dissatisfied with the _contents_ of his “_weekly_” paper, endeavored to put them in good humor by doubling the _bulk_; this he waggishly enough terms _doubling the dose_—O, the droll dog!
NO. V.—SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1807.
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
The following letter from my friend Mustapha appears to have been written some time subsequent to the one already published. Were I to judge from its contents, I should suppose it was suggested by the splendid review of the twenty-fifth of last November, when a pair of colors were presented at the City Hall, to the regiments of artillery; and when a huge dinner was devoured by our corporation, in the honorable remembrance of the evacuation of this city. I am happy to find that the laudable spirit of military emulation which prevails in our city has attracted the attention of a stranger of Mustapha’s sagacity; by military emulation I mean that spirited rivalry in the size of a hat, the length of a feather, and the gingerbread finery of a sword-belt.
LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN, TO ABDALLAH EB’N AL RAHAB, SURNAMED THE SNORER, MILITARY SENTINEL AT THE GATE OF HIS HIGHNESS’ PALACE.
Thou hast heard, O Abdallah, of the great magician Muley Fuz, who could change a blooming land blessed with all the elysian charms of hill and dale, of glade and grove, of fruit and flower, into a desert, frightful, solitary, and forlorn; who, with the wave of his wand could transform even the disciples of Mahomet into grinning apes and chattering monkeys. Surely, thought I to myself this morning, the dreadful Muley has been exercising his infernal enchantments on these unhappy infidels. Listen, O Abdallah, and wonder! Last night I committed myself to tranquil slumber, encompassed with all the monotonous tokens of peace, and this morning I awoke enveloped in the noise, the bustle, the clangor, and the shouts of war. Everything was changed, as if by magic. An immense army had sprung up, like mushrooms, in a night, and all the cobblers, tailors, and tinkers of the city had mounted the nodding plume; had become, in the twinkling of an eye, helmeted heroes and war-worn veterans.
Alarmed at the beating of drums, the braying of trumpets, and the shouting of the multitude, I dressed myself in haste, sallied forth, and followed a prodigious crowd of people to a place called the Battery. This is so denominated, I am told, from having once been defended with formidable _wooden_ bulwarks, which in the course of a hard winter were _thriftily_ pulled to pieces by an _economic_ corporation, to be distributed for fire-wood among the poor; this was done at the hint of a cunning old engineer, who assured them it was the only way in which their fortifications would ever be able to keep up a warm fire. ECONOMY, my friend, is the watch-word of this nation; I have been studying for a month past to divine its meaning, but truly am as much perplexed as ever. It is a kind of national starvation; an experiment how many comforts and necessaries the body politic can be deprived of before it perishes. It has already arrived to a lamentable degree of debility, and promises to share the fate of the Arabian philosopher, who proved that he could live without food, but unfortunately died just as he had brought his experiment to perfection.
On arriving at the Battery, I found an immense army of SIX HUNDRED MEN, drawn up in a true Mussulman crescent. At first I supposed this was in compliment to myself, but my interpreter informed me that it was done merely for want of room—the corporation not being able to afford them sufficient to display in a straight line. As I expected a display of some grand evolutions and military maneuvers, I determined to remain a tranquil spectator, in hopes that I might possibly collect some hints which might be of service to His Highness.
This great body of men, I perceived, was under the command of a small _bashaw_, in yellow and gold, with white nodding plumes, and most formidable whiskers; which, contrary to the Tripolitan fashion, were in the neighborhood of his ears instead of his nose. He had two attendants called aid-de-camps (or _tails_), being similar to a bashaw with two tails. The bashaw, though commander-in-chief, seemed to have little more to do than myself; he was a spectator within the lines, and I without: he was clear of the rabble, and I was encompassed by them; this was the only difference between us, except that he had the best opportunity of showing his clothes. I waited an hour or two with exemplary patience, expecting to see some grand military evolutions or a sham battle exhibited; but no such thing took place; the men stood stock still, supporting their arms, groaning under the fatigues of war, and now and then sending out a foraging party to levy contributions of beer and a favorite beverage which they denominated grog. As I perceived the crowd very active in examining the line, from one extreme to the other, and as I could see no other purpose for which these sunshine warriors should be exposed so long to the merciless attacks of the wind and weather, I of course concluded that this must be _the review_.
In about two hours the army was put in motion, and marched through some narrow streets—there the economic corporation had carefully provided a soft carpet of mud—to a magnificent castle of painted brick, decorated with grand pillars of pine boards. By the ardor which brightened in each countenance, I soon perceived that this castle was to undergo a vigorous attack. As the ordnance of the castle was perfectly silent, and as they had nothing but a straight street to advance through, they made their approaches with great courage and admirable regularity, until within about a hundred feet of the castle a pump opposed a formidable obstacle in their way, and put the whole army to a nonplus. The circumstance was sudden and unlooked for: the commanding officer ran over all the military tactics with which his head was crammed, but none offered any expedient for the present awful emergency. The pump maintained its post, and so did the commander; there was no knowing which was most at a stand. The commanding officer ordered his men to wheel and take it in flank; the army accordingly wheeled and came full butt against it in the rear, exactly as they were before, “Wheel to the left!” cried the officer; they did so, and again as before the inveterate pump intercepted their progress. “Right about face!” cried the officer; the men obeyed, but bungled—they _faced back to back_. Upon this the bashaw with two tails, with great coolness, undauntedly ordered his men to push right forward, pell-mell, pump or no pump; they gallantly obeyed; after unheard-of acts of bravery the pump was carried, without the loss of a man, and the army firmly intrenched itself under the walls of the castle. The bashaw had then a council of war with his officers; the most vigorous measures were resolved on. An advanced guard of musicians were ordered to attack the castle without mercy. Then the whole band opened a most tremendous battery of drums, fifes, tambourines, and trumpets, and kept up a thundering assault, as if the castle like the walls of Jericho, spoken of in the Jewish Chronicles, would tumble down at the blowing of rams’ horns. After some time a parley ensued. The grand bashaw of the city appeared on the battlements of the castle, and as far as I could understand from circumstances, dared the little bashaw of two tails to single combat—this thou knowest was in the style of ancient chivalry—the little bashaw dismounted with great intrepidity, and ascended the battlements of the castle, where the great bashaw waited to receive him, attended by numerous dignitaries and worthies of his court, one of whom bore the splendid banners of the castle. The battle was carried on entirely by words, according to the universal custom of this country, of which I shall speak to thee more fully hereafter. The grand bashaw made a furious attack in a speech of considerable length; the little bashaw, by no means appalled, retorted with great spirit. The grand bashaw attempted to rip him up with an argument, or stun him with a solid fact; but the little bashaw parried them both with admirable adroitness, and run him clean through and through with a syllogism. The grand bashaw was overthrown, the banners of the castle yielded up to the little bashaw, and the castle surrendered after a vigorous defense of three hours, during which the besiegers suffered great extremity from muddy streets and a drizzling atmosphere.
On returning to dinner I soon discovered that as usual I had been indulging in a great mistake. The matter was all clearly explained to me by a fellow-lodger, who on ordinary occasions moves in the humble character of a tailor, but in the present instance figured in a high military station, denominated _corporal_. He informed me that what I had mistaken for a castle was the splendid palace of the municipality, and that the supposed attack was nothing more than the delivery of a flag given by the authorities, to the army, for its magnanimous defense of the town for upward of twenty years past, that is, ever since the last war! O my friend, surely everything in this country is on a great scale!—The conversation insensibly turned upon the military establishment of the nation; and I do assure thee that my friend, the tailor, though being, according to a national proverb, but the ninth part of a man, yet acquitted himself on military concerns as ably as the grand bashaw of the empire himself. He observed that their rulers had decided that wars were very useless and expensive, and ill befitting an economic, philosophic nation; they had therefore made up their minds never to have any wars, and consequently there was no need of soldiers or military discipline. As, however, it was thought highly ornamental to a city to have a number of men dressed in fine clothes and _feathers_, strutting about the streets on a holiday,—and as the women and children were particularly fond of such _raree shows_, it was ordered that the tailors of the different cities throughout the empire should, forthwith, go to work and cut out and manufacture soldiers as fast as their shears and needles would permit.
These soldiers have no pecuniary pay; and their only recompense for the immense services which they render their country, in their voluntary parades, is the plunder of smiles, and winks, and nods which they extort from the ladies. As they have no opportunity, like the vagrant Arabs, of making inroads on their neighbors: and as it is necessary to keep up their military spirit, the town is therefore now and then, but particularly on two days of the year, given up to their ravages. The arrangements are contrived with admirable address, so that every officer, from the bashaw down to the drum-major, the chief of the eunuchs, or musicians, shall have his share of that invaluable booty, the admiration of the fair. As to the soldiers, poor animals, they, like the privates in all great armies, have to bear the brunt of danger and fatigue, while their officers receive all the glory and reward. The narrative of a parade day will exemplify this more clearly.
The chief bashaw, in the plenitude of his authority, orders a grand review of the whole army at two o’clock. The bashaw with two tails, that he may have an opportunity of vaporing about, as greatest man on the field, orders the army to assemble at twelve. The kiay, or colonel, as he is called, that is, commander of one hundred and twenty men, orders his regiment or tribe to collect one mile at least from the place of parade at eleven. Each captain, or fag-rag, as we term them, commands his squad to meet at ten at least half a mile from the regimental parade; and to close all, the chief of the eunuchs orders his infernal concert of fifes, trumpets, cymbals, and kettle-drums to assemble at ten!—from that moment the city receives no quarter. All is noise, hooting, hubbub, and combustion. Every window, door, crack, and loophole, from the garret to the cellar, is crowded with the fascinating fair of all ages and of all complexions. The mistress smiles through the windows of the drawing-room; the chubby chambermaid lolls out of the attic casement, and a host of sooty wenches roll their white eyes and grin and chatter from the cellar door. Every nymph seems anxious to yield voluntarily that tribute which the heroes of their country demand. First struts the chief eunuch, or drum-major, at the head of his sable band, magnificently arrayed in tarnished scarlet. Alexander himself could not have spurned the earth more superbly. A host of ragged boys shout in his train, and inflate the bosom of the warrior with tenfold self-complacency. After he has rattled his kettle-drums through the town, and swelled and swaggered like a turkey-cock before all the dingy Floras, and Dianas, and Junos, and Didos of his acquaintance, he repairs to his place of destination loaded with a rich booty of smiles and approbation. Next comes the FAG-RAG, or captain, at the head of his mighty band, consisting of one lieutenant, one ensign, or mute, four sergeants, four corporals, one drummer, one fifer, and if he has any privates so much the better for himself. In marching to the regimental parade, he is sure to paddle through the street or lane which is honored with the residence of his mistress or intended, whom he resolutely lays under a heavy contribution. Truly it is delectable to behold these heroes, as they march, cast side glances at the upper windows; to collect the smiles, the nods, and the winks, which the enraptured fair ones lavish profusely on the magnanimous defenders of their country.
The fag-rags having conducted their squads to their respective regiments, then comes the turn of the colonel, a bashaw with no tails, for all eyes are now directed to him; and the fag-rags, and the eunuchs, and the kettle-drummers, having had their hour of notoriety, are confounded and lost in the military crowd. The colonel sets his whole regiment in motion; and mounted on a mettlesome charger, frisks and fidgets, and capers, and plunges in front, to the great entertainment of the multitude, and the great hazard of himself and his neighbors. Having displayed himself, his trappings, his horse, and his horsemanship, he at length arrives at the place of general rendezvous, blessed with the universal admiration of his countrywomen. I should perhaps mention a squadron of hardy veterans, most of whom have seen a deal of service during the nineteen or twenty years of their experience, and who, most gorgeously equipped in tight green jackets and breeches, trot and amble, and gallop and scamper like little devils through every street and nook and corner and poke-hole of the city, to the great dread of all old people, and sage matrons with young children. This is truly sublime! this is what I call making a mountain out of a molehill. O, my friend, on what a great scale is everything done in this country. It is in the style of the wandering Arabs of the desert _El-tih_. Is a village to be attacked, or a hamlet to be plundered, the whole desert, for weeks beforehand, is in a buzz: such marching and counter-marching, ere they can concentrate their ragged forces! and the consequence is, that before they can bring their troops into action, the whole enterprise is blown.
The army being all happily collected on the Battery, though, perhaps, two hours after the time appointed, it is now the turn of the bashaw with two tails to distinguish himself. Ambition, my friend, is implanted alike in every heart, it pervades each bosom, from the bashaw to the drum-major. This is a sage truism, and I trust, therefore, it will not be disputed. The bashaw, fired with that thirst for glory, inseparable from the noble mind, is anxious to reap a full share of the laurels of the day and bear off his portion of female plunder. The drums beat, the fifes whistle, the standards wave proudly in the air. The signal is given! thunder roars the cannon! away goes the bashaw, and away go the tails! The review finished, evolutions and military maneuvers are generally dispensed with for three excellent reasons: first, because the army knows very little about them; second, because, as the country has determined to remain always at peace, there is no necessity for them to know anything about them; and third, as it is growing late, the bashaw must dispatch, or it will be too dark for him to get his quota of the plunder. He, of course, orders the whole army to march; and now, my friend, now comes the tug of war, now is the city completely sacked. Open fly the Battery gates, forth sallies the bashaw with his two tails, surrounded by a shouting body-guard of boys and negroes! then pour forth his legions, potent as the pismires of the desert! the customary salutations of the country commence—these tokens of joy and admiration which so much annoyed me on first landing; the air is darkened with old hats, shoes, and dead cats; they fly in showers like the arrows of the Parthians. The soldiers, no ways disheartened, like the intrepid followers of Leonidas, march gallantly under their shade. On they push, splash, dash, mud or no mud. Down one lane, up another; the martial music resounds through every street; the fair ones throng to their windows; the soldiers look every way but straight forward. “Carry arms!” cries the bashaw—“tan-ta ra-ra,” brays the trumpet—“rub-a-dub,” roars the drum—“hurraw,” shout the ragamuffins. The bashaw smiles with exultation—every fag-rag feels himself a hero—“none but the brave deserves the fair!” Head of the immortal Amrou, on what a great scale is everything in this country!
Ay, but you’ll say, is not this unfair that the officers should share all the sports while the privates undergo all the fatigue? truly, my friend, I indulged the same idea, and pitied from my heart the poor fellows who had to drabble through the mud and the mire, toiling under ponderous cocked hats, which seemed as unwieldy and cumbrous as the shell which the snail lumbers along on his back. I soon found out, however, that they have their quantum of notoriety. As soon as the army is dismissed, the city swarms with little scouting parties, who fire off their guns at every corner, to the great delight of all the women and children in their vicinity; and woe unto any dog, or pig, or hog, that falls in the way of these magnanimous warriors; they are shown no quarter. Every gentle swain repairs to pass the evening at the feet of his dulcinea, to play, “the soldier tired of war’s alarms,” and to captivate her with the glare of his regimentals; excepting some ambitious heroes who strut to the theatre, flame away in the front boxes, and hector every old apple-woman in the lobbies.
Such, my friend, is the gigantic genius of this nation, and its faculty for swelling up nothings into importance. Our bashaw of Tripoli will review his troops of some thousands, by an early hour in the morning. Here a review of six hundred men is made the mighty work of a day! with us a bashaw of two tails is never appointed to a command of less than ten thousand men; but here we behold every grade, from the bashaw down to the drum-major, in a force of less than one-tenth of the number. By the beard of Mahomet! but everything here is indeed on a great scale.
BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.
I was not a little surprised the other morning at a request from Will Wizard that I would accompany him that evening to Mrs. ——’s ball. The request was simple enough in itself, it was only singular as coming from Will; of all my acquaintance, Wizard is the least calculated and disposed for the society of ladies—not that he dislikes their company; on the contrary, like every man of pith and marrow, he is a professed admirer of the sex; and had he been born a poet, would undoubtedly have bespattered and berhymed some hard-named goddess, until she became as famous as Petrarch’s Laura, or Waller’s Sacharissa; but Will is such a confounded bungler at a bow, has so many odd bachelor habits, and finds it so troublesome to be gallant, that he generally prefers smoking his cigar and telling his stories among cronies of his own gender—and thundering long stories they are, let me tell you; set Will once a-going about China or Crim Tartary, or the Hottentots, and Heaven help the poor victim who has to endure his prolixity; he might better be tied to the tail of a jack-o’-lantern. In one word—Will talks like a traveller. Being well acquainted with his character, I was the more alarmed at his inclination to visit a party; since he has often assured me, that he considered it as equivalent to being stuck up for three hours in a steam engine. I even wondered how he had received an invitation; this he soon accounted for. It seems Will, on his last arrival from Canton, had made a present of a case of tea to a lady for whom he had once entertained a sneaking kindness when at grammar school; and she in return had invited him to come and drink some of it; a cheap way enough of paying off little obligations. I readily acceded to Will’s proposition, expecting much entertainment from his eccentric remarks; and as he has been absent some few years, I anticipated his surprise at the splendor and elegance of a modern rout.
On calling for Will in the evening, I found him full dressed, waiting for me. I contemplated him with absolute dismay. As he still retained a spark of regard for the lady who once reigned in his affections, he had been at unusual pains in decorating his person, and broke upon my sight arrayed in the true style that prevailed among our beaux some years ago. His hair was turned up and tufted at the top, frizzled out at the ears, a profusion of powder puffed over the whole, and a long plaited club swung gracefully from shoulder to shoulder, describing a pleasing semicircle of powder and pomatum. His claret-colored coat was decorated with a profusion of gilt buttons, and reached to his calves. His white cassimere small clothes were so tight that he seemed to have grown up in them; and his ponderous legs, which are the thickest part of his body, were beautifully clothed in sky-blue silk stockings, once considered so becoming. But above all, he prided himself upon his waistcoat of China silk, which might almost have served a good housewife for a shortgown; and he boasted that the roses and tulips upon it were the work of _Nang-Fou_, daughter of the great _Chin-Chin-Fou_, who had fallen in love with the graces of his person, and sent it to him as a parting present; he assured me she was a remarkable beauty, with sweet obliquity of eyes, and a foot no larger than the thumb of an alderman; he then dilated most copiously on his silver-sprigged dickey, which he assured me was quite the rage among the dashing young mandarins of Canton.
I hold it an ill-natured office to put any man out of conceit with himself; so, though I would willingly have made a little alteration in my friend Wizard’s picturesque costume, yet I politely complimented him on his rakish appearance.
On entering the room I kept a good look-out on Will, expecting to see him exhibit signs of surprise; but he is one of those knowing fellows who are never surprised at anything, or at least will never acknowledge it. He took his stand in the middle of the floor, playing with his great steel watch-chain; and looking round on the company, the furniture, and the pictures, with the air of a man “who has seen d—d finer things in his time;” and to my utter confusion and dismay, I saw him coolly pull out his villainous old japanned tobacco-box, ornamented with a bottle, a pipe, and a scurvy motto, and help himself to a quid in face of all the company.
I knew it was all in vain to find fault with a fellow of Will’s Socratic turn, who is never to be put out of humor with himself; so, after he had given his box its prescriptive rap and returned it to his pocket, I drew him into a corner where we might observe the company without being prominent objects ourselves.
“And pray who is that stylish figure,” said Will, “who blazes away in red, like a volcano, and who seems wrapped in flames like a fiery dragon?” “That,” cried I, “is Miss Laurella Dashaway—she is the highest flash of the ton—has much whim and more eccentricity, and has reduced many an unhappy gentleman to stupidity by her charms; you see she holds out the red flag in token of ‘no quarter.’” “Then keep me safe out of the sphere of her attractions,” cried Will, “I would not e’en come in contact with her train, lest it should scorch me like the tail of a comet. But who, I beg of you, is that amiable youth who is handing a young lady, and at the same time contemplating his sweet person in a mirror as he passes?” “His name,” said I, “is Billy Dimple; he is a universal smiler, and would travel from Dan to Beersheba and smile on everybody as he passed. Dimple is a slave to the ladies—a hero at tea-parties, and is famous at the _pirouette_ and the pigeon-wing; a fiddle-stick is his idol, and a dance his elysium.” “A very pretty young gentleman, truly,” cried Wizard, “he reminds me of a contemporary beau at Hayti. You must know that the magnanimous Dessalines gave a great ball to his court one fine sultry summer’s evening; Dessy and me were great cronies—hand and glove—one of the most condescending great men I ever knew. Such a display of black and yellow beauties! such a show of Madras handkerchiefs, red beads, cocks’ tails and peacocks’ feathers!—it was, as here, who should wear the highest top-knot, drag the longest tails, or exhibit the greatest variety of combs, colors, and gewgaws. In the middle of the rout, when all was buzz, slip-slop, crack, and perfume, who should enter but Tucky Squash! The yellow beauties blushed blue, and the black ones blushed as red as they could, with pleasure; and there was a universal agitation of fans; every eye brightened and whitened to see Tucky; for he was the pride of the court, the pink of courtesy, the mirror of fashion, the adoration of all the sable fair ones of Hayti. Such breadth of nose, such exuberance of lip! his shins had the true cucumber curve; his face in dancing shone like a kettle; and provided you kept to windward of him in summer, I do not know a sweeter youth in all Hayti than Tucky Squash. When he laughed, there appeared from ear to ear a chevaux-de-frise of teeth, that rivaled the shark’s in whiteness; he could whistle like a northwester; play on a three-stringed fiddle like Apollo; and as to dancing no Long Island negro could shuffle you ‘double trouble,’ ‘hoe corn and dig potatoes’ more scientifically—in short, he was a second Lothario. And the dusky nymphs of Hayti, one and all, declared him a perpetual Adonis. Tucky walked about, whistling to himself, without regarding anybody; and his _nonchalance_ was irresistible.”
I found Will had got neck and heels into one of his travellers stories; and there is no knowing how far he would have run his parallel between Billy Dimple and Tucky Squash, had not the music struck up from an adjoining apartment and summoned the company to a dance. The sound seemed to have an inspiring effect on honest Will, and he procured the hand of an old acquaintance for a country dance. It happened to be the fashionable one of “the Devil among the Tailors,” which is so vociferously demanded at every ball and assembly; and many a torn gown, and many an unfortunate toe did rue the dancing of that night; for Will thundered down the dance like a coach and six, sometimes right, sometimes wrong; now running over half a score of little Frenchmen, and now making sad inroads into ladies’ cobweb muslins and spangled tails. As every part of Will’s body partook of the exertion, he shook from his capacious head such volumes of powder that, like pious Æneas on his first interview with Queen Dido, he might be said to have been enveloped in a cloud. Nor was Will’s partner an insignificant figure in the scene; she was a young lady of most voluminous proportions, that quivered at every skip; and being braced up in the fashionable style, with whalebone, stay-tape, and buckram, looked like an apple-pudding tied in the middle; or, taking her flaming dress into consideration, like a bed and bolsters rolled up in a suit of red curtains. The dance finished, I would gladly have taken Will off; but no, he was now in one of his happy moods, and there was no doing anything with him. He insisted on my introducing him to Miss Sophy Sparkle, a young lady unrivaled for playful wit and innocent vivacity, and who like a brilliant adds lustre to the front of fashion. I accordingly presented him to her, and began a conversation in which, I thought, he might take a share; but no such thing. Will took his stand beside her, straddling like a Colossus, with his hands in his pockets, and an air of the most profound attention; nor did he pretend to open his lips for some time, until, upon some lively sally of hers, he electrified the whole company with a most intolerable burst of laughter. What was to be done with such an incorrigible fellow? To add to my distress, the first word he spoke was to tell Miss Sparkle that something she had said reminded him of a circumstance that happened to him in China; and at it he went in the true traveller style; described the Chinese mode of eating rice with chop-sticks; entered into a long eulogium on the succulent qualities of boiled bird’s nests; and I made my escape at the very moment when he was on the point of squatting down on the floor, to show how the little Chinese _Joshes_ sit cross-legged.
TO THE LADIES.
FROM THE MILL OF PINDAR COCKLOFT, ESQ.
Though jogging down the hill of life, Without the comfort of a wife; And though I ne’er a helpmate chose, To stock my house and mend my hose; With care my person to adorn; And spruce me up on Sunday morn; Still do I love the gentle sex, And still with cares my brain perplex. To keep the fair ones of the age Unsullied as the spotless page; All pure, all simple, all refined, The sweetest solace of mankind. I hate the loose insidious jest To beauty’s modest ear addrest, And hold that frowns should never fail To check each smooth, but fulsome tale; But he whose impious pen should dare Invade the morals of the fair; To taint that purity divine Which should each female heart enshrine; Though soft his vicious strains should swell, As those which erst from Gabriel fell, Should yet be held aloft to shame, And foul dishonor shade his name. Judge then, my friends, of my surprise, The ire that kindled in my eyes, When I relate, that t’other day I went a morning call to pay, On two young nieces, just come down To take the polish of the town: By which I mean no more or less Than _à la Française_ to undress; To whirl the modest waltz’s rounds, Taught by Duport for snug ten pounds; To thump and thunder through a song, Play _fortes_ soft and _dolces_ strong: Exhibit loud _piano_ feats, Caught from that crotchet-hero, Meetz; To drive the rose-bloom from the face, And fix the lily in its place; To doff the white, and in its stead To bounce about in brazen red. While in the parlor I delay’d Till they their persons had array’d, A dapper volume caught my eye, That on the window chanced to lie: A book’s a friend—I always choose To turn its pages and peruse; It proved those poems known to fame For praising every cyprian dame; The bantlings of a dapper youth, Renown’d for gratitude and truth; A little pest, hight Tommy Moore, Who hopp’d and skipp’d our country o’er; Who sipp’d our tea and lived on sops, Revel’d on syllabubs and slops, And when his brain, of cobweb fine, Was fuddled with five drops of wine, Would all his puny loves rehearse, And many a maid debauch—in verse. Surprised to meet in open view, A book of such lascivious hue, I chid my nieces, but they say ’Tis all the passion of the day; That many a fashionable belle Will with enraptured accents dwell On the sweet _morceau_ she has found In this delicious, curst compound! Soft do the tinkling numbers roll, And lure to vice the unthinking soul; They tempt by softer sounds away, They lead entranced the heart astray; And Satan’s doctrine sweetly sing, As with a seraph’s heavenly string. Such sounds, so good old Homer sung, Once warbled from the Siren’s tongue; Sweet melting tones were heard to pour Along Ausonia’s sun-gilt shore; Seductive strains in ether float, And every wild, deceitful note That could the yielding heart assail, Were wafted on the breathing gale; And every gentle accent bland, To tempt Ulysses to their strand. And can it be this book so base, Is laid on every window-case? O! fair ones, if you will profane Those breasts where heaven itself should reign; And throw those pure recesses wide, Where peace and virtue should reside, To let the holy pile admit A guest unhallowed and unfit; Pray, like the frail ones of the night, Who hide their wanderings from the light, So let your errors secret be, And hide, at least, your fault from me; Seek some by-corner to explore The smooth polluted pages o’er: There drink the insidious poison in, There silly nurse your souls for sin; And while that purity you blight, Which stamps you messengers of light, And sap those mounds the gods bestow, To keep you spotless here below; Still, in compassion to our race, Who joy, not only in the face, But in that more exalted part, The sacred temple of the heart; O! hide forever from our view The fatal mischief you pursue; Let MEN your praises still exalt, And none but ANGELS mourn your fault.
NO. VI.—FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 1807.
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
The Cockloft family, of which I have made such frequent mention, is of great antiquity, if there be any truth in the genealogical tree which hangs up in my cousin’s library. They trace their descent from a celebrated Roman knight, cousin to the progenitor of his majesty of Britain, who left his native country on occasion of some disgust, and coming into Wales, became a great favorite of Prince Madoc, and accompanied that famous Argonaut in the voyage which ended in the discovery of this continent. Though a member of the family, I have sometimes ventured to doubt the authenticity of this portion of their annals, to the great vexation of cousin Christopher, who is looked up to as the head of our house, and who, though as orthodox as a bishop, would sooner give up the whole decalogue than lop off a single limb of the family tree. From time immemorial, it has been the rule for the Cocklofts to marry one of their own name; and, as they always bred like rabbits, the family has increased and multiplied like that of Adam and Eve. In truth, their number is almost incredible; and you can hardly go into any part of the country without starting a warren of genuine Cocklofts. Every person of the least observation or experience must have observed that where this practice of marrying cousins, and second cousins, prevails in a family every member, in the course of a few generations, becomes queer, humorous, and original; as much distinguished from the common race of mongrels as if he was of a different species. This has happened in our family, and particularly in that branch of it of which Mr. Christopher Cockloft, or, to do him justice, Mr. Christopher Cockloft, Esq., is the head. Christopher is, in fact, the only married man of the name who resides in town; his family is small, having lost most of his children, when young, by the excessive care he took to bring them up like vegetables. This was one of his first whimwhams, and a confounded one it was, as his children might have told, had they not fallen victims to this experiment before they could talk. He had got from some quack philosopher or other a notion that there was a complete analogy between children and plants, and that they ought to be both reared alike. Accordingly he sprinkled them every morning with water; laid them out in the sun, as he did his geraniums; and, if the season was remarkably dry, repeated this wise experiment three or four times of a morning. The consequence was, that the poor little souls died one after the other, except Jeremy and his two sisters; who, to be sure, are a trio of as odd, runty, mummy-looking originals as ever Hogarth fancied in his most happy moments. Mrs. Cockloft, the larger if not the better half of my cousin, often remonstrated against this vegetable theory; and even brought the parson of the parish, in which my cousin’s country house is situated, to her aid; but in vain: Christopher persisted, and attributed the failure of his plan to its not having been exactly conformed to. As I have mentioned Mrs. Cockloft, I may as well say a little more about her while I am in the humor. She is a lady of wonderful notability, a warm admirer of shining mahogany, clean hearths, and her husband, who she considers the wisest man in the world, bating Will Wizard and the parson of our parish, the last of whom is her oracle on all occasions. She goes constantly to church every Sunday and Saint’s-day; and insists upon it that no man is entitled to ascend a pulpit unless he has been ordained by a bishop: nay, so far does she carry her orthodoxy, that all the argument in the world will never persuade her that a Presbyterian or Baptist, or even a Calvinist, has any possible chance of going to Heaven. Above everything else, however, she abhors paganism; can scarcely refrain from laying violent hands on a pantheon when she meets with it; and was very nigh going into hysterics when my cousin insisted one of his boys should be christened after our laureate, because the parson of the parish had told her that Pindar was the name of a pagan writer, famous for his love of boxing-matches, wrestling, and horse-racing. To sum up all her qualifications in the shortest possible way, Mrs. Cockloft is, in the true sense of the phrase, a good sort of woman; and I often congratulate my cousin on possessing her. The rest of the family consists of Jeremy Cockloft, the younger, who has already been mentioned, and the two Miss Cocklofts, or rather the young ladies, as they have been called by the servants time out of mind; not that they are really young, the younger being somewhat on the shady side of thirty, but it has ever been the custom to call every member of the family young under fifty. In the southeast corner of the house I hold quiet possession of an old-fashioned apartment, where myself and my elbow-chair are suffered to amuse ourselves undisturbed, save at meal-times. This apartment old Cockloft has facetiously denominated Cousin Launce’s Paradise; and the good old gentleman has two or three favorite jokes about it, which are served up as regularly as the standing family dish of beef-steaks and onions, which every day maintains its station at the foot of the table, in defiance of mutton, poultry, or even venison itself.
Though the family is apparently small, yet, like most old establishments of the kind, it does not want for honorary members. It is the city rendezvous of the Cocklofts; and we are continually enlivened by the company of half a score of uncles, aunts, and cousins, in the fortieth remove, from all parts of the country, who profess a wonderful regard for Cousin Christopher, and overwhelm every member of his household, down to the cook in the kitchen, with their attentions. We have for three weeks past been greeted with the company of two worthy old spinsters, who came down from the country to settle a lawsuit. They have done little else but retail stories of their village neighbors, knit stockings, and take snuff all the time they have been here; the whole family are bewildered with churchyard tales of sheeted ghosts, white horses without heads, and with large goggle eyes in their buttocks; and not one of the old servants dare budge an inch after dark without a numerous company at his heels. My cousin’s visitors, however, always return his hospitality with due gratitude, and now and then remind him of their fraternal regard, by a present of a pot of apple sweetmeats, or a barrel of sour cider at Christmas. Jeremy displays himself to great advantage among his country relations, who all think him a prodigy, and often stand astounded, in “gaping wonderment,” at his natural philosophy. He lately frightened a simple old uncle almost out of his wits, by giving it as his opinion that the earth would one day be scorched to ashes by the eccentric gambols of the famous comet, so much talked of; and positively asserted that this world revolved round the sun, and that the moon was certainly inhabited.
The family mansion bears equal marks of antiquity with its inhabitants. As the Cocklofts are remarkable for their attachment to everything that has remained long in the family, they are bigoted toward their old edifice, and I dare say would sooner have it crumble about their ears than abandon it. The consequence is, it has been so patched up and repaired, that it has become as full of whims and oddities as its tenants; requires to be nursed and humored like a gouty old codger of an alderman, and reminds one of the famous ship in which a certain admiral circumnavigated the globe, which was so patched and timbered, in order to preserve so great a curiosity, that at length not a particle of the original remained. Whenever the wind blows, the old mansion makes a most perilous groaning; and every storm is sure to make a day’s work for the carpenter, who attends upon it as regularly as the family physician. This predilection for everything that has been long in the family shows itself in every particular. The domestics are all grown gray in the service of our house. We have a little, old, crusty, gray-headed negro, who has lived through two or three generations of the Cocklofts, and of course has become a personage of no little importance in the household. He calls all the family by their Christian names; tells long stories about how he dandled them on his knee when they were children; and is a complete Cockloft chronicle for the last seventy years. The family carriage was made in the last French war, and the old horses were most indubitably foaled in Noah’s ark: resembling marvelously, in gravity of demeanor, those sober animals which may be seen any day of the year in the streets of Philadelphia walking their snail’s pace, a dozen in a row, and harmoniously jingling their bells. Whimwhams are the inheritance of the Cocklofts, and every member of the household is a humorist _sui generis_, from the master down to the footman. The very cats and dogs are humorists; and we have a little runty scoundrel of a cur, who whenever the church bells ring, will run to the street door, turn up his nose in the wind, and howl most piteously. Jeremy insists that this is owing to a peculiar delicacy in the organization of his ears, and supports his position by many learned arguments which nobody can understand; but I am of opinion that it is a mere Cockloft whimwham, which the little cur indulges, being descended from a race of dogs which has flourished in the family ever since the time of my grandfather. A propensity to save everything that bears the stamp of family antiquity has accumulated an abundance of trumpery and rubbish with which the house is encumbered from the cellar to the garret; and every room, and closet, and corner is crammed with three-legged chairs, clocks without hands, swords without scabbards, cocked hats, broken candlesticks, and looking-glasses with frames carved into fantastic shapes of feathered sheep, woolly birds, and other animals that have no name except in books of heraldry. The ponderous mahogany chairs in the parlors are of such unwieldy proportions that it is quite a serious undertaking to gallant one of them across the room, and sometimes make a most equivocal noise when you sit down in a hurry; the mantel-piece is decorated with little lacquered earthen shepherdesses, some of which are without toes, and others without noses; and the fire-place is garnished out with Dutch tiles, exhibiting a great variety of Scripture pieces, which my good old soul of a cousin takes infinite delight in explaining. Poor Jeremy hates them as he does poison; for, while a younker, he was obliged by his mother to learn the history of a tile every Sunday morning before she would permit him to join his playmates; this was a terrible affair for Jeremy, who, by the time he had learned the last, had forgotten the first, and was obliged to begin again. He assured me the other day, with a round college oath, that if the old house stood out till he inherited it, he would have these tiles taken out, and ground into powder, for the perfect hatred he bore them.
My cousin Christopher enjoys unlimited authority in the mansion of his forefathers; he is truly what may be termed a hearty old blade; has a florid, sunshine countenance; and if you will only praise his wine and laugh at his long stories, himself and his house are heartily at your service. The first condition is indeed easily complied with; for, to tell the truth, his wine is excellent; but his stories, being not of the best, and often repeated, are apt to create a disposition to yawn—being, in addition to their other qualities, most unreasonably long. His prolixity is the more afflicting to me, since I have all his stories by heart; and when he enters upon one, it reminds me of Newark causeway, where the traveller sees the end at the distance of several miles. To the great misfortune of all his acquaintance, Cousin Cockloft is blest with a most provokingly retentive memory; and can give day and date, and name, and age, and circumstance, with the most unfeeling precision. These, however, are but trivial foibles, forgotten, or remembered only with a kind of tender, respectful pity, by those who know with what a rich, redundant harvest of kindness and generosity his heart is stored. It would delight you to see with what social gladness he welcomes a visitor into his house; and the poorest man that enters his door never leaves it without a cordial invitation to sit down, and drink a glass of wine. By the honest farmers round his country-seat he is looked up to with love and reverence; they never pass him by without his inquiring after the welfare of their families, and receiving a cordial shake of his liberal hand. There are but two classes of people who are thrown out of the reach of his hospitality, and these are Frenchmen and Democrats. The old gentleman considers it treason against the majesty of good breeding to speak to any visitor with his hat on; but the moment a Democrat enters his door, he forthwith bids his man Pompey bring his hat, puts it on his head, and salutes him with an appalling “Well, sir, what do you want of me?”
He has a profound contempt for Frenchmen, and firmly believes that they eat nothing but frogs and soupe-maigre in their own country. This unlucky prejudice is partly owing to my great-aunt Pamela having been many years ago run away with by a French count, who turned out to be the son of a generation of barbers; and partly to a little vivid spark of toryism which burns in a secret corner of his heart. He was a loyal subject of the crown, has hardly yet recovered the shock of independence; and, though he does not care to own it, always does honor to his majesty’s birthday, by inviting a few cavaliers, like himself, to dinner, and gracing his table with more than ordinary festivity. If by chance the Revolution is mentioned before him, my cousin shakes his head; and you may see, if you take good note, a lurking smile of contempt in the corner of his eye which marks a decided disapprobation of the sound. He once, in the fullness of his heart, observed to me that green peas were a month later than they were under the old government. But the most eccentric manifestation of loyalty he ever gave was making a voyage to Halifax for no other reason under heaven but to hear his majesty prayed for in church, as he used to be here formerly. This he never could be brought fairly to acknowledge; but it is a certain fact, I assure you. It is not a little singular that a person so much given to long story-telling as my cousin, should take a liking to another of the same character; but so it is with the old gentleman. His prime favorite and companion is Will Wizard, who is almost a member of the family; and will sit before the fire, with his feet on the massy andirons, and smoke his cigar, and screw his phiz, and spin away tremendous long stories of his travels, for a whole evening, to the great delight of the old gentleman and lady, and especially of the young ladies, who, like Desdemona, do “seriously incline,” and listen to him with innumerable “O dears,” “Is it possibles,” “Goody graciouses,” and look upon him as a second Sinbad the sailor.
The Misses Cockloft, whose pardon I crave for not having particularly introduced them before, are a pair of delectable damsels, who, having purloined and locked up the family Bible, pass for just what age they please to plead guilty to. Barbara, the eldest, has long since resigned the character of a belle, and adopted that staid, sober, demure, snuff-taking air becoming her years and discretion. She is a good-natured soul, whom I never saw in a passion but once, and that was occasioned by seeing an old favorite beau of hers kiss the hand of a pretty, blooming girl; and, in truth, she only got angry because, as she very properly said, it was spoiling the child. Her sister Margery, or Maggie, as she is familiarly termed, seemed disposed to maintain her post as a belle, until a few months since; when accidentally hearing a gentleman observe that she broke very fast, she suddenly left off going to the assembly, took a cat into high favor, and began to rail at the forward pertness of young misses. From that moment I set her down for an old maid; and so she is, “by the hand of my body.” The young ladies are still visited by some half dozen of veteran beaux, who grew and flourished in the _haut ton_, when the Miss Cocklofts were quite children; but have been brushed rather rudely by the hand of time, who, to say the truth, can do almost anything but make people young. They are, notwithstanding, still warm candidates for female favor; look venerably tender, and repeat over and over the same honeyed speeches and sugared sentiments to the little belles that they poured so profusely into the ears of their mothers. I beg leave here to give notice that by this sketch I mean no reflection on old bachelors; on the contrary, I hold that next to a fine lady, the _ne plus ultra_, an old bachelor to be the most charming being upon earth; inasmuch as by living in “single blessedness,” he of course does just as he pleases; and if he has any genius, must acquire a plentiful stock of whims, and oddities, and whalebone habits; without which I esteem a man to be mere beef without mustard—good for nothing at all but to run on errands for ladies, take boxes at the theatre, and act the part of a screen at tea-parties, or a walking-stick in the streets. I merely speak of these old boys who infest public walks, pounce upon ladies from every corner of the street, and worry, and frisk, and amble, and caper before, behind, and round about the fashionable belles, like old ponies in a pasture, striving to supply the absence of youthful whim and hilarity, by grimaces and grins, and artificial vivacity. I have sometimes seen one of these “reverend youths” endeavoring to elevate his wintry passions into something like love, by basking in the sunshine of beauty; and it did remind me of an old moth, attempting to fly through a pane of glass toward a light, without ever approaching near enough to warm itself, or scorch its wings.
Never, I firmly believe, did there exist a family that went more by tangents than the Cocklofts. Everything is governed by whim; and if one member starts a new freak, away all the rest follow on like wild geese in a string. As the family, the servants, the horses, cats, and dogs have all grown old together, they have accommodated themselves to each other’s habits completely; and though every body of them is full of odd points, angles, rhomboids, and ins and outs, yet some how or other they harmonize together like so many straight lines; and it is truly a grateful and refreshing sight to see them agree so well. Should one, however, get out of tune, it is like a cracked fiddle, the whole concern is ajar; you perceive a cloud over every brow in the house and even the old chairs seem to creak, affetuoso. If my cousin, as he is rather apt to do, betray any symptoms of vexation or uneasiness, no matter about what, he is worried to death with inquiries, which answer no other end but to demonstrate the good will of the inquirer, and put him in a passion; for everybody knows how provoking it is to be cut short in a fit of the blues, by an impertinent question about “what is the matter?” when a man can’t tell himself. I remember a few months ago the old gentleman came home in quite a squall; kicked poor Cæsar the mastiff, out of his way, as he came through the hall, threw his hat on the table with most violent emphasis, and pulling out his box, took three huge pinches of snuff, and threw a fourth into the cat’s eyes as he sat purring his astonishment at the fireside. This was enough to set the body politic going; Mrs. Cockloft began “my dearing” it as fast as tongue could move; the young ladies took each a stand at an elbow of his chair; Jeremy marshaled in the rear; the servants came tumbling in; the mastiff put up an inquiring nose; and even grimalkin, after he had cleaned his whiskers and finished sneezing, discovered indubitable signs of sympathy. After the most affectionate inquiries on all sides, it turned out that my cousin, in crossing the street, had got his silk stockings bespattered with mud by a coach, which, it seems, belonged to a dashing gentleman who had formerly supplied the family with hot rolls and muffins! Mrs. Cockloft thereupon turned up her eyes, and the young ladies their noses; and it would have edified a whole congregation to hear the conversation which took place concerning the insolence of upstarts, and the vulgarity of would-be gentlemen and ladies, who strive to emerge from low life by dashing about in carriages to pay a visit two doors off; giving parties to people who laugh at them, and cutting all their old friends.
THEATRICS.
BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.
I went a few evenings since to the theatre, accompanied by my friend ’Sbidlikens, the cockney, who is a man deeply read in the history of Cinderella, Valentine and Orson, Blue Beard, and all those recondite works so necessary to enable a man to understand the modern drama. ’Sbidlikens is one of those intolerable fellows who will never be pleased with anything until he has turned and twisted it divers ways, to see if it corresponds with his notions of congruity; and as he is none of the quickest in his ratiocinations, he will sometimes come out with his approbation, when everybody else has forgotten the cause which excited it. ’Sbidlikens is, moreover, a great critic, for he finds fault with everything; this being what I understand by modern criticism. He, however, is pleased to acknowledge that our theatre is not so despicable, all things considered; and really thinks Cooper one of our best actors. The play was “Othello” and to speak my mind freely, I think I have seen it performed much worse in my time. The actors, I firmly believe, did their best; and whenever this is the case, no man has a right to find fault with them, in my opinion. Little Rutherford, the Roscius of the Philadelphia theatre, looked as big as possible; and what he wanted in size he made up in frowning. I like frowning in tragedy; and if a man but keeps his forehead in proper wrinkle, talks big, and takes long strides on the stage, I always set him down as a great tragedian; and so does my friend ’Sbidlikens.
Before the first act was over, ’Sbidlikens began to flourish his critical wooden sword like a harlequin. He first found fault with Cooper for not having made himself as black as a negro, “for,” said he, “that Othello was an arrant black, appears from several expressions of the play; as for instance, ‘thick lips,’ ‘sooty bosom,’ and a variety of others. I am inclined to think,” continued he, “that Othello was an Egyptian by birth, from the circumstance of the handkerchief given to his mother by a native of that country; and, if so, he certainly was as black as my hat; for Herodotus has told us, that the Egyptians had flat noses and frizzled hair—a clear proof that they were all negroes.” He did not confine his strictures to this single error of the actor, but went on to run him down in toto. In this he was seconded by a red-hot Philadelphian, who proved by a string of most eloquent logical puns, that Fennel was unquestionably in every respect a better actor than Cooper. I knew it was in vain to contend with them, since I recollected a most obstinate trial of skill these two great _Roscii_ had last spring in Philadelphia. Cooper brandished his blood-stained dagger at the theatre—Fennel flourished his snuff-box and shook his wig at the Lyceum, and the unfortunate Philadelphians were a long time at a loss to decide which deserved the palm. The literati were inclined to give it to Cooper, because his name was the most fruitful in puns; but then, on the other side, it was contended that Fennel was the best Greek scholar. Scarcely was the town of Strasburgh in a greater hubbub about the courteous stranger’s nose; and it was well that the doctors of the University did not get into the dispute, else it might have became a battle of folios. At length, after much excellent argument had been expended on both sides, recourse was had to Cocker’s Arithmetic and a carpenter’s rule; the rival candidates were both measured by one of their most steady-handed critics, and by the most exact measurement it was proved that Mr. Fennel was the greater actor by three inches and a quarter. Since this demonstration of inferiority, Cooper has never been able to hold up his head in Philadelphia.
In order to change a conversation in which my favorite suffered so much, I made some inquiries of the Philadelphian concerning the two heroes of his theatre, Wood and Cain; but I had scarcely mentioned their names, when, whack! he threw a whole handful of puns in my face; ’twas like a bowl of cold water. I turned on my heel, had recourse to my tobacco-box, and said no more about Wood and Cain; nor will I ever more, if I can help it, mention their names in the presence of a Philadelphian. Would that they could leave off punning! for I love every soul of them, with a cordial affection, warm as their own generous hearts, and boundless as their hospitality.
During the performance, I kept an eye on the countenance of my friend, the cockney; because, having come all the way from England, and having seen Kemble once, on a visit which he made from the button-manufactory to _Lunnun_, I thought his phiz might serve as a kind of thermometer to direct my manifestations of applause or disapprobation. I might as well have looked at the back side of his head; for I could not, with all my peering, perceive by his features that he was pleased with anything—except himself. His hat was twitched a little on one side, as much as to say, “Demme, I’m your sorts!” he was sucking the end of a little stick; he was a “gemman” from head to foot; but as to his face, there was no more expression in it than in the face of a Chinese lady on a tea-cup. On Cooper’s giving one of his gunpowder explosions of passion, I exclaimed, “Fine, very fine!” “Pardon me,” said my friend ’Sbidlikens, “this is damnable!—the gesture, my dear sir—only look at the gesture! how horrible! do you not observe that the actor slaps his forehead, whereas, the passion not having arrived at the proper height, he should only have slapped his—pocket-flap? this figure of rhetoric is a most important stage-trick, and the proper management of it is what peculiarly distinguishes the great actor from the mere plodding mechanical buffoon. Different degrees of passion require different slaps, which we critics have reduced to a perfect manual, improving upon the principle adopted by Frederic of Prussia, by deciding that an actor, like a soldier, is a mere machine; as thus—the actor, for a minor burst of passion, merely slaps his pocket-hole; good! for a major burst, he slaps his breast; very good! but for a burst maximus, he whacks away at his forehead, like a brave fellow; this is excellent; nothing can be finer than an exit, slapping the forehead from one end of the stage to the other.” “Except,” replied I, “one of those slaps on the breast, which I have sometimes admired in some of our fat heroes and heroines, which make their whole body shake and quiver like a pyramid of jelly.”
The Philadelphian had listened to this conversation with profound attention, and appeared delighted with ’Sbidlikens’ mechanical strictures; ’twas natural enough in a man who chose an actor as he would a grenadier. He took the opportunity of a pause to enter into a long conversation with my friend; and was receiving a prodigious fund of information concerning the true mode of emphasizing conjunctions, shifting scenes, snuffing candles, and making thunder and lightning, better than you can get every day from the sky, as practiced at the royal theatres; when, as ill luck would have it, they happened to run their heads full butt against a new reading. Now this was “a stumper,” as our old friend Paddle would say; for the Philadelphians are as inveterate new-reading hunters as the cockneys; and, for aught I know, as well skilled in finding them out. The Philadelphian thereupon met the cockney on his own ground, and at it they went, like two inveterate curs at a bone. ’Sbidlikens quoted Theobald, Hanmer, and a host of learned commentators, who have pinned themselves on the sleeve of Shakespeare’s immortality, and made the old bard, like General Washington, in General Washington’s life, a most diminutive figure in his own book; his opponent chose Johnson for his bottle-holder, and thundered him forward like an elephant to bear down the ranks of the enemy. I was not long in discovering that these two precious judges had got hold of that unlucky passage of Shakespeare which, like a straw, has tickled, and puzzled, and confounded many a somniferous buzzard of past and present time. It was the celebrated wish of Desdemona, that heaven had made her such a man as Othello. ’Sbidlikens insisted that “the gentle Desdemona” merely wished for such a man for a husband, which in all conscience was a modest wish enough, and very natural in a young lady who might possibly have had a predilection for flat noses; like a certain philosophical great man of our day. The Philadelphian contended, with all the vehemence of a member of Congress, moving the House to have “whereas,” or “also,” or “nevertheless” struck out of a bill, that the young lady wished heaven had made her a man instead of a woman, in order that she might have an opportunity of seeing the “anthropophagi, and the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders;” which was a very natural wish, considering the curiosity of the sex. On being referred to, I incontinently decided in favor of the honorable member who spoke last; inasmuch as I think it was a very foolish, and therefore very natural, wish for a young lady to make before a man she wished to marry. It was, moreover, an indication of the violent inclination she felt to wear the breeches, which was afterward, in all probability, gratified, if we may judge from the title of “our captain’s captain,” given her by Cassio—a phrase which, in my opinion, indicates that Othello was, at that time, most ignominiously henpecked. I believe my arguments staggered ’Sbidlikens himself, for he looked confoundedly queer, and said not another word on the subject.
A little while after, at it he went again on another tack, and began to find fault with Cooper’s manner of dying; “it was not natural,” he said; for it had lately been demonstrated by a learned doctor of physic, that when a man is mortally stabbed, he ought to take a flying leap of at least five feet, and drop down “dead as a salmon in a fishmonger’s basket.” Whenever a man, in the predicament above mentioned, departed from this fundamental rule, by falling flat down like a log, and rolling about for two or three minutes, making speeches all the time, the said learned doctor maintained that it was owing to the waywardness of the human mind, which delighted in flying in the face of nature, and dying in defiance of all her established rules. I replied, “for my part I held that every man had a right of dying in whatever position he pleased; and that the mode of doing it depended altogether on the peculiar character of the person going to die. A Persian could not die in peace unless he had his face turned to the east; a Mahometan would always choose to have his toward Mecca; a Frenchman might prefer this mode of throwing a somerset; but Mynheer Van Brumblebottom, the Roscius of Rotterdam, always chose to thunder down on his seat of honor whenever he received a mortal wound. Being a man of ponderous dimensions, this had a most electrifying effect, for the whole theatre ‘shook like Olympus at the nod of Jove.’” The Philadelphian was immediately inspired with a pun, and swore that Mynheer must be great in a dying scene, since he knew how to make the most of his latter end.
It is the inveterate cry of stage critics, that an actor does not perform the character naturally, if, by chance, he happens not to die exactly as they would have him. I think the exhibition of a play at Pekin would suit them exactly; and I wish, with all my heart, that they would go there and see one; nature is there imitated with the most scrupulous exactness in every trifling particular. Here an unhappy lady or gentleman, who happens, unluckily, to be poisoned or stabbed, is left on the stage to writhe and groan, and make faces at the audience, until the poet pleases they should die; while the honest folks of the _dramatis personæ_, bless their hearts! all crowd round and yield most potent assistance, by crying and lamenting most vociferously! The audience, tender souls, pull out their white pocket-handkerchiefs, wipe their eyes, blow their noses, and swear it is natural as life, while the poor actor is left to die without common Christian comfort. In China, on the contrary, the first thing they do is to run for the doctor and _tchoouc_, or notary. The audience are entertained throughout the fifth act with a learned consultation of physicians, and if the patient must die, he does it _secundum artem_, and always is allowed time to make his will. The celebrated Chow-Chow was the completest hand I ever saw at killing himself; he always carried under his robe a bladder of bull’s blood, which, when he gave the mortal stab, spirted out to the infinite delight of the audience. Not that the ladies of China are more fond of the sight of blood than those of our own country; on the contrary, they are remarkably sensitive in this particular; and we are told by the great Linkum Fidelius, that the beautiful Ninny Consequa, one of the ladies of the emperor’s seraglio, once fainted away on seeing a favorite slave’s nose bleed; since which time, refinement has been carried to such a pitch that a buskined hero is not allowed to run himself through the body in the face of the audience. The immortal Chow-Chow, in conformity to this absurd prejudice, whenever he plays the part of Othello, which is reckoned his masterpiece, always keeps a bold front, stabs himself slyly behind, and is dead before anybody suspects that he has given the mortal blow.
P. S.—Just as this was going to press, I was informed by Evergreen that Othello had not been performed here the Lord knows when; no matter, I am not the first that has criticised a play without seeing it, and this critique will answer for the last performance, if that was a dozen years ago.
NO. VII.—SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1807.
LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN, TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF TRIPOLI.
I promised in a former letter, good Asem, that I would furnish thee with a few hints respecting the nature of the government by which I am held in durance. Though my inquiries for that purpose have been industrious, yet I am not perfectly satisfied with their results; for thou mayst easily imagine that the vision of a captive is overshadowed by the mists of illusion and prejudice, and the horizon of his speculations must be limited indeed. I find that the people of this country are strangely at a loss to determine the nature and proper character of their government. Even their dervises are extremely in the dark as to this particular, and are continually indulging in the most preposterous disquisitions on the subject; some have insisted that it savors of an aristocracy; others maintain that it is a pure democracy; and a third set of theorists declare absolutely that it is nothing more or less than a mobocracy. The latter, I must confess, though still wide in error, have come nearest to the truth. You of course must understand the meaning of these different words, as they are derived from the ancient Greek language, and bespeak loudly the verbal poverty of these poor infidels, who cannot utter a learned phrase without laying the dead languages under contribution. A man, my dear Asem, who talks good sense in his native tongue, is held in tolerable estimation in this country; but a fool, who clothes his feeble ideas in a foreign or antique garb, is bowed down to as a literary prodigy. While I conversed with these people in plain English, I was but little attended to; but the moment I prosed away in Greek, every one looked up to me with veneration as an oracle.
Although the dervises differ widely in the particulars above mentioned, yet they all agree in terming their government one of the most pacific in the known world. I cannot help pitying their ignorance, and smiling, at times, to see into what ridiculous errors those nations will wander, who are unenlightened by the precepts of Mahomet, our divine prophet, and uninstructed by the five hundred and forty-nine books of wisdom of the immortal Ibrahim Hassan al Fusti. To call this nation pacific! Most preposterous! it reminds me of the title assumed by the sheik of that murderous tribe of wild Arabs, that desolate the valleys of Belsaden, who styles himself “Star of Courtesy—Beam of the Mercy-Seat.”
The simple truth of the matter is, that these people are totally ignorant of their own true character; for, according to the best of my observation, they are the most warlike, and I must say, the most savage nation that I have as yet discovered among all the barbarians. They are not only at war, in their own way, with almost every nation on earth, but they are at the same time engaged in the most complicated knot of civil wars that ever infested any poor unhappy country on which Allah has denounced his malediction!
To let thee at once into a secret, which is unknown to these people themselves, their government is a pure unadulterated _logocracy_, or government of words. The whole nation does everything _viva voce_, or by word of mouth; and in this manner is one of the most military nations in existence. Every man who has what is here called the gift of the gab, that is, a plentiful stock of verbosity, becomes a soldier outright; and is forever in a militant state. The country is entirely defended _vi et linguâ_; that is to say, by force of tongues. The account which I lately wrote to our friend, the snorer, respecting the immense army of six hundred men, makes nothing against this observation; that formidable body being kept up, as I have already observed, only to amuse their fair countrywomen by their splendid appearance and nodding plumes; and are, by way of distinction, denominated the “defenders of the fair.”
In a logocracy thou well knowest there is little or no occasion for fire-arms, or any such destructive weapons. Every offensive or defensive measure is enforced by wordy battle, and paper war; he who has the longest tongue or readiest quill is sure to gain the victory—will carry horror, abuse, and ink-shed into the very trenches of the enemy; and, without mercy or remorse, put men, women, and children to the point of the—pen!
There is still preserved in this country some remains of that Gothic spirit of knight-errantry which so much annoyed the faithful in the middle ages of the Hegira. As, notwithstanding their martial disposition, they are a people much given to commerce and agriculture, and must, necessarily, at certain seasons be engaged in these employments, they have accommodated themselves by appointing knights, or constant warriors, incessant brawlers, similar to those who, in former ages, swore eternal enmity to the followers of our divine prophet. These knights, denominated editors or _slang-whangers_, are appointed in every town, village, or district, to carry on both foreign and internal warfare, and may be said to keep up a constant firing “in words.” O my friend, could you but witness the enormities sometimes committed by these tremendous slang-whangers, your very turban would rise with horror and astonishment. I have seen them extend their ravages even into the kitchens of their opponents, and annihilate the very cook with a blast; and I do assure thee, I beheld one of these warriors attack a most venerable bashaw, and at one stroke of his pen lay him open from the waistband of his breeches to his chin!
There has been a civil war carrying on with great violence for some time past, in consequence of a conspiracy, among the higher classes, to dethrone his highness, the present bashaw, and place another in his stead. I was mistaken when I formerly asserted to thee that this dissatisfaction arose from his wearing red breeches. It is true, the nation have long held that color in great detestation, in consequence of a dispute they had some twenty years since with the barbarians of the British islands. The color, however, is again rising into favor, as the ladies have transferred it to their heads from the bashaw’s —— body. The true reason, I am told, is, that the bashaw absolutely refuses to believe in the deluge, and in the story of Balaam’s ass; maintaining that this animal was never yet permitted to talk except in a genuine logocracy; where, it is true, his voice may often be heard, and is listened to with reverence, as “the voice of the sovereign people.” Nay, so far did he carry his obstinacy, that he absolutely invited a professed antediluvian from the Gallic empire, who illuminated the whole country with his principles—and his nose. This was enough to set the nation in a blaze—every slang-whanger resorted to his tongue or his pen; and for seven years have they carried on a most inhuman war, in which volumes of words have been expended, oceans of ink have been shed, nor has any mercy been shown to age, sex, or condition. Every day have these slang-whangers made furious attacks on each other, and upon their respective adherents; discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets, loaded with scoundrel! villain! liar! rascal! numskull! nincompoop! dunderhead! wiseacre! blockhead! jackass! and I do swear, by my beard, though I know thou wilt scarcely credit me, that in some of these skirmishes the grand bashaw himself has been wofully pelted! yea, most ignominiously pelted! and yet have these talking desperadoes escaped without the bastinado!
Every now and then a slang-whanger, who has a longer head, or rather a longer tongue than the rest, will elevate his piece and discharge a shot quite across the ocean, leveled at the head of the emperor of France, the king of England, or, wouldst thou believe it, O Asem, even at his sublime highness the bashaw of Tripoli! These long pieces are loaded with single ball, or language, as tyrant! usurper! robber! tiger! monster! and thou mayest well suppose they occasion great distress and dismay in the camps of the enemy, and are marvelously annoying to the crowned heads at which they are directed. The slang-whanger, though perhaps the mere champion of a village, having fired off his shot, struts about with great self-congratulation, chuckling at the prodigious bustle he must have occasioned, and seems to ask of every stranger, “Well, sir, what do they think of me in Europe?”[55] This is sufficient to show you the manner in which these bloody, or rather windy fellows fight; it is the only mode allowable, in a logocracy or government of words. I would also observe that their civil wars have a thousand ramifications.
NOTE, BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.
Footnote 55:
The sage Mustapha, when he wrote the above paragraph, had probably in his eye the following anecdote, related either by Linkum Fidelius, or Josephus Millerius, vulgarly called Joe Miller, of facetious memory.
The captain of a slave-vessel, on his first landing on the coast of Guinea, observed under a palm-tree a negro chief, sitting most majestically on a stump; while two women, with wooden spoons, were administering his favorite pottage of boiled rice; which, as his imperial majesty was a little greedy, would part of it escape the place of destination and run down his chin. The watchful attendants were particularly careful to intercept these scape-grace particles, and return them to their proper port of entry. As the captain approached, in order to admire this curious exhibition of royalty, the great chief clapped his hands to his sides, and saluted his visitor with the following pompous question—“Well, sir! what do they say of me in England?”
While the fury of the battle rages in the metropolis, every little town and village has a distinct broil, growing like excrescences out of the grand national altercation, or rather agitating within it, like those complicated pieces of mechanism where there is a “wheel within a wheel.”
But in nothing is the verbose nature of this government more evident than in its grand national divan, or Congress, where the laws are framed; this is a blustering, windy assembly, where everything is carried by noise, tumult, and debate; for thou must know, that the members of this assembly do not meet together to find wisdom in the multitude of counselors, but to wrangle, call each other hard names, and hear themselves talk. When the Congress opens, the bashaw first sends them a long message, _i. e._, a huge mass of words—_vox et præterea nihil_, all meaning nothing; because it only tells them what they perfectly know already. Then the whole assembly are thrown into a ferment, and have a long talk about the quantity of words that are to be returned in answer to this message; and here arise many disputes about the correction and alteration of “if so be’s” and “how so ever’s.” A month, perhaps, is spent in thus determining the precise number of words the answer shall contain; and then another, most probably, in concluding whether it shall be carried to the bashaw on foot, on horseback, or in coaches. Having settled this weighty matter, they next fall to work upon the message itself, and hold as much chattering over it as so many magpies over an addled egg. This done, they divide the message into small portions, and deliver them into the hands of little juntoes of talkers, called committees; these juntoes have each a world of talking about their respective paragraphs, and return the results to the grand divan, which forthwith falls to and retalks the matter over more earnestly than ever. Now, after all, it is an even chance that the subject of this prodigious arguing, quarreling, and talking is an affair of no importance, and ends entirely in smoke. May it not then be said, the whole nation have been talking to no purpose? The people, in fact, seem to be somewhat conscious of this propensity to talk, by which they are characterized, and have a favorite proverb on the subject, viz., “all talk and no cider;” this is particularly applied when their Congress, or assembly of all the sage chatterers of the nation, have chattered through a whole session, in a time of great peril and momentous event, and have done nothing but exhibit the length of their tongues and the emptiness of their heads. This has been the case more than once, my friend; and to let thee into a secret, I have been told in confidence, that there have been absolutely several old women smuggled into Congress from different parts of the empire; who, having once got on the breeches, as thou mayest well imagine, have taken the lead in debate, and overwhelmed the whole assembly with their garrulity; for my part, as times go, I do not see why old women should not be as eligible to public councils as old men who possess their dispositions; they certainly are eminently possessed of the qualifications requisite to govern in a logocracy.
Nothing, as I have repeatedly insisted, can be done in this country without talking; but they take so long to talk over a measure, that by the time they have determined upon adopting it, the period has elapsed which was proper for carrying it into effect. Unhappy nation! thus torn to pieces by intestine talks! never, I fear, will it be restored to tranquillity and silence. Words are but breath; breath is but air; and air put into motion is nothing but wind. This vast empire, therefore, may be compared to nothing more or less than a mighty windmill, and the orators, and the chatterers, and the slang-whangers, are the breezes that put it in motion; unluckily, however, they are apt to blow different ways, and their blasts counteracting each other—the mill is perplexed, the wheels stand still, the grist is unground, and the miller and his family starved.
Everything partakes of the windy nature of the government. In case of any domestic grievance, or an insult from a foreign foe, the people are all in a buzz; town-meetings are immediately held where the quidnuncs of the city repair, each like an Atlas, with the cares of the whole nation upon his shoulders, each resolutely bent upon saving his country, and each swelling and strutting like a turkey-cock; puffed up with words, and wind, and nonsense. After bustling, and buzzing, and bawling for some time, and after each man has shown himself to be indubitably the greatest personage in the meeting, they pass a string of resolutions, _i. e._ words, which were previously prepared for the purpose; these resolutions are whimsically denominated the sense of the meeting, and are sent off for the instruction of the reigning bashaw, who receives them graciously, puts them into his red breeches pocket, forgets to read them—and so the matter ends.
As to his highness, the present bashaw, who is at the very top of the logocracy, never was a dignitary better qualified for his station. He is a man of superlative ventosity, and comparable to nothing but a huge bladder of wind. He talks of vanquishing all opposition by the force of reason and philosophy: throws his gauntlet at all the notions of the earth, and defies them to meet him—on the field of argument! Is the national dignity insulted, a case in which his highness of Tripoli would immediately call forth his forces, the bashaw of America—utters a speech. Does a foreign invader molest the commerce in the very mouth of the harbors, an insult which would induce his highness of Tripoli to order out his fleets, his highness of America—utters a speech. Are the free citizens of America dragged from on board the vessels of their country, and forcibly detained in the war ships of another—his highness utters a speech. Is a peaceable citizen killed by the marauders of a foreign power, on the very shores of his country—his highness utters a speech. Does an alarming insurrection break out in a distant part of the empire—his highness utters a speech!—nay, more, for here he shows his “energies”—he most intrepidly dispatches a courier on horseback, and orders him to ride one hundred and twenty miles a day, with a most formidable army of proclamations, _i. e._ a collection of words, packed up in his saddlebags. He is instructed to show no favor nor affection; but to charge the thickest ranks of the enemy, and to speechify and batter by words the conspiracy and the conspirators out of existence. Heavens, my friend, what a deal of blustering is here! It reminds me of a dunghill cock in a farmyard, who, having accidentally in his scratchings found a worm, immediately begins a most vociferous cackling—calls around him his hen-hearted companions, who run chattering from all quarters to gobble up the poor little worm that happened to turn under his eye. O, Asem! Asem! on what a prodigious great scale is everything in this country!
Thus, then, I conclude my observations. The infidel nations have each a separate characteristic trait, by which they may be distinguished from each other; the Spaniards, for instance, may be said to sleep upon every affair of importance; the Italians to fiddle upon everything; the French to dance upon everything; the Germans to smoke upon everything; the British islanders to eat upon everything; and the windy subjects of the American logocracy to talk upon everything.
For ever thine, MUSTAPHA.
FROM THE MILL OF PINDAR COCKLOFT, ESQ.
How oft in musing mood my heart recalls, From gray-beard father Time’s oblivious halls, The modes and maxims of my early day, Long in those dark recesses stow’d away: Drags once more to the cheerful realms of light Those buckram fashions, long since lost in night, And makes, like Endor’s witch, once more to rise My grogram grandames to my raptured eyes! Shades of my fathers! in your pasteboard skirts, Your broidered waistcoats and your plaited shirts, Your formal bag-wigs—wide-extended cuffs, Your five-inch chitterlings and nine-inch ruffs Gods! how ye strut, at times, in all your state, Amid the visions of my thoughtful pate! I see ye move the solemn minuet o’er, The modest foot scarce rising from the floor; No thundering rigadoon with boisterous prance, No pigeon-wing disturb your _contre-danse_. But silent as the gentle Lethe’s tide, Adown the festive maze ye peaceful glide! Still in my mental eye each name appears— Each modest beauty of departed years; Close by mamma I see her stately march, Or sit, in all the majesty of starch;— When for the dance a stranger seeks her hand. I see her doubting, hesitating stand; Yield to his claim with most fastidious grace, And sigh for her intended in his place! Ah! golden days; when every gentle fair On sacred Sabbath conn’d with pious care Her Holy Bible, or her prayer-book o’er, Or studied honest Bunyan’s drowsy lore; Travell’d with him the “Pilgrim’s Progress” through, And storm’d the famous town of Man-soul too:— Beat Eye and Ear-gate up with thundering jar, And fought triumphant through the “Holy War;” Or if, perchance, to lighter works inclined, They sought with novels to relax the mind, ’Twas “Grandison’s politely” formal page, Or “Clelia” or “Pamela” were the rage. No plays were then—theatrics were unknown— A learned pig, a dancing monkey shown, The feats of Punch, a cunning juggler’s sleight, Were sure to fill each bosom with delight. An honest, simple, humdrum race we were, Undazzled yet by fashion’s wildering glare; Our manners unreserved, devoid of guile, We knew not then the modern monster, Style: Style, that with pride each empty bosom swells, Puffs boys to manhood, little girls to belles. Scarce from the nursery freed, our gentle fair Are yielded to the dancing-master’s care; And, ere the head one mite of sense can gain, Are introduced ‘mid folly’s frippery train. A stranger’s grasp no longer gives alarms, Our fair surrender to their very arms. And in the insidious waltz[56] will swim and twine, And whirl and languish tenderly divine! O, how I hate this loving, hugging dance; This imp of Germany brought up in France: Nor can I see a niece its windings trace, But all the honest blood glows in my face. “Sad, sad refinement this,” I often say; ’Tis modesty indeed refined away! Let France its whim, its sparkling wit supply, The easy grace that captivates the eye; But curse their waltz—their loose, lascivious arts, “That smooth our manners, to corrupt our hearts!”[57] Where now those books, from which in days of yore Our mothers gained their literary store? Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives place To novels of a new and rakish race; And honest Bunyan’s pious dreaming lore, To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore. And, last of all, behold the mimic stage, Its morals lend to polish off the age; With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d, Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald, With puns most puny, and a plenteous store Of smutty jokes, to catch a gallery roar. Or see, more fatal, graced with every art To charm and captivate the female heart, The false, “the gallant, gay Lothario” smiles.[58] And loudly boasts his base seductive wiles— In glowing colors paint Calista’s wrongs, And with voluptuous scenes the tale prolongs. When Cooper lends his fascinating powers, Decks vice itself in bright alluring flowers, Pleased with his manly grace, his youthful fire, Our fair are lured the villain to admire; While humbler virtue, like a stalking horse, Struts clumsily and croaks in honest Morse. Ah, hapless days! when trials thus combined. In pleasing garb assail the female mind; When every smooth, insidious snare is spread To sap the morals and delude the head! Not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, To prove their faith and virtue here below, Could more an angel’s helping hand require To guide their steps uninjured through the fire, Where had but heaven its guardian aid denied, The holy trio in the proof had died. If, then, their manly vigor sought supplies From the bright stranger in celestial guise, Alas! can we from feebler natures claim, To brave seduction’s ordeal, free from blame; To pass through fire unhurt like golden ore, Though ANGEL MISSIONS bless the earth no more!
NOTES, BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.
Footnote 56:
_Waltz._] As many of the retired matrons of this city, unskilled in “gestic lore” are doubtless ignorant of the movements and figures of this modest exhibition, I will endeavor to give some account of it, in order that they may learn what odd capers their daughters sometimes cut when from under their guardian wings.
On a signal being given by the music, the gentleman seizes the lady round her waist; the lady scorning to be outdone in courtesy, very politely takes the gentleman round the neck, with one arm resting against his shoulder to prevent encroachments. Away then they go, about, and about, and about—“About what, sir?”—about the room, madam, to be sure. The whole economy of this dance consists in turning round and round the room in a certain measured step: and it is truly astonishing that this continued revolution does not set all their heads swimming like a top; but I have been positively assured that it only occasions a gentle sensation which is marvelously agreeable. In the course of this circumnavigation, the dancers, in order to give the charm of variety, are continually changing their relative situations;—now the gentleman, meaning no harm in the world, I assure you, madam, carelessly flings his arm about the lady’s neck, with an air of celestial impudence, and anon, the lady, meaning as little harm as the gentleman, takes him round the waist with most ingenuous modest languishment, to the great delight of numerous spectators and amateurs, who generally form a ring, as the mob do about a pair of amazons pulling caps, or a couple of fighting mastiffs.
After continuing this divine interchange of hands, arms, et cætera, for half an hour or so, the lady begins to tire, and with “eyes upraised,” in most bewitching languor, petitions her partner for a little more support. This is always given without hesitation. The lady leans gently on his shoulder, their arms entwine in a thousand seducing, mischievous curves—don’t be alarmed, madam—closer and closer they approach each other, and in conclusion, the parties being overcome with ecstatic fatigue, the lady seems almost sinking into the gentleman’s arms, and then—“Well, sir! and what then?”—Lord, madam, how should I know?
Footnote 57:
\.] My friend Pindar, and in fact our whole junto, has been accused of an unreasonable hostility to the French nation; and I am informed by a Parisian correspondent, that our first number played the very devil in the court of St. Cloud. His imperial majesty got into a most outrageous passion, and being withal a waspish little gentleman, had nearly kicked his bosom friend, Talleyrand, out of the cabinet, in paroxysms of his wrath. He insisted upon it that the nation was assailed in its most vital part, being, like Achilles, extremely sensitive to any attacks upon the heel. When my correspondent sent off his dispatches, it was still in doubt what measures would be adopted; but it was strongly suspected that vehement representations would be made to our government. Willing, therefore, to save our Executive from any embarrassment on the subject, and above all, from the disagreeable alternative of sending an apology by the “Hornet,” we do assure Mr. Jefferson that there is nothing further from our thoughts than the subversion of the Gallic empire, or any attack on the interests, tranquillity, or reputation of the nation at large, which we seriously declare possesses the highest rank in our estimation. Nothing less than the national welfare could have induced us to trouble ourselves with this explanation; and in the name of the junto, I once more declare, that when we toast a Frenchman, we merely mean one of these inconnus, who swarmed to this country from the kitchens and barbers’ shops of Nantz, Bordeaux, and Marseilles—played game of leap-frog at all our balls and assemblies—set this unhappy town hopping mad, and passed themselves off on our tender-hearted damsels for unfortunate noblemen, ruined in the revolution! Such only can wince at the lash, and accuse us of severity; and we should be mortified in the extreme if they did not feel our well-intended castigation.
Footnote 58:
_Fair Penitent._] The story of this play, if told in its native language, would exhibit a scene of guilt and shame which no modest ear could listen to without shrinking with disgust; but, arrayed as it is, in all the splendor of harmonious, rich, and polished verse, it steals into the heart like some gay, luxurious, smooth-faced villain, and betrays it insensibly to immorality and vice; our very sympathy is enlisted on the side of guilt; and the piety of Altamont, and the gentleness of Lavinia, are lost in the splendid debaucheries of the “gallant, gay Lothario,” and the blustering, hollow repentance of the fair Calista, whose sorrow reminds us of that of Pope’s Heloise—“I mourn the lover, not lament the fault.” Nothing is more easy than to banish such plays from our stage. Were our ladies, instead of crowding to see them again and again repeated, to discourage their exhibition by absence, the stage would soon be indeed the school of morality, and the number of “Fair Penitents,” in all probability, diminish.
NO. VIII.—SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1807.
BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee—nor without thee.”
“Never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, has there been known a more backward spring.” This is the universal remark among the almanac quidnuncs, and weather-wiseacres of the day; and I have heard it at least fifty-five times from old Mrs. Cockloft, who, poor woman, is one of those walking almanacs that foretell every snow, rain, or frost, by the shooting of corns, a pain in the bones, or an “ugly stitch in the side.” I do not recollect, in the whole course of my life, to have seen the month of March indulge in such untoward capers, caprices, and coquetries, as it has done this year; I might have forgiven these vagaries, had they not completely knocked up my friend Langstaff; whose feelings are ever at the mercy of a weathercock, whose spirits sink and rise with the mercury of a barometer, and to whom an east wind is as obnoxious as a Sicilian _sirocco_. He was tempted some time since, by the fineness of the weather, to dress himself with more than ordinary care, and take his morning stroll, but before he had half finished his peregrination, he was utterly discomfited, and driven home by a tremendous squall of wind, hail, rain, and snow, or, as he testily termed it, “a most villainous congregation of vapors.”
This was too much for the patience of friend Launcelot; he declared he would humor the weather no longer in its whimwhams; and, according to his immemorial custom on these occasions, retreated in high dudgeon to his elbow-chair to lie in of the spleen and rail at nature for being so fantastical: “Confound the jade,” he frequently exclaims, “what a pity Nature had not been of the masculine instead of the feminine gender; the almanac-makers might then have calculated with some degree of certainty.”
When Langstaff invests himself with the spleen, and gives audience to the blue devils from his elbow-chair, I would not advise any of his friends to come within gun-shot of his citadel with the benevolent purpose of administering consolation or amusement; for he is then as crusty and crabbed as that famous coiner of false money, Diogenes himself. Indeed his room is at such times inaccessible; and old Pompey is the only soul that can gain admission, or ask a question with impunity; the truth is, that on these occasions there is not a straw’s difference between them, for Pompey is as grum and grim and cynical as his master.
Launcelot has now been above three weeks in this desolate situation, and has, therefore, had but little to do in our last number. As he could not be prevailed on to give any account of himself in our introduction, I will take the opportunity of his confinement, while his back is turned, to give a slight sketch of his character—fertile in whimwhams and bachelorisms, but rich in many of the sterling qualities of our nature. Annexed to this article, our readers will perceive a striking likeness of my friend which was taken by that cunning rogue, Will Wizard, who peeped through the keyhole and sketched it off, as honest Launcelot sat by the fire, wrapped up in his flannel _robe de chambre_, and indulging in a mortal fit of the _hyp_. Now take my word for it, gentle reader, this is the most auspicious moment in which to touch off the phiz of a genuine humorist.
Of the antiquity of the Langstaff family I can say but little; except that I have no doubt it is equal to that of most families who have the privilege of making their own pedigree, without the impertinent interposition of a college of heralds. My friend Launcelot is not a man to blazon anything; but I have heard him talk with great complacency of his ancestor, Sir Rowland, who was a dashing buck in the days of Hardiknute, and broke the head of a gigantic Dane, at a game of quarter-staff, in presence of the whole court. In memory of this gallant exploit, Sir Rowland was permitted to take the name of Langstoffe, and to assume as a crest to his arms a hand grasping a cudgel. It is, however, a foible so ridiculously common in this country for people to claim consanguinity with all the great personages of their own name in Europe, that I should put but little faith in this family boast of friend Langstaff, did I not know him to be a man of most unquestionable veracity.
The whole world knows already that my friend is a bachelor; for he is, or pretends to be, exceedingly proud of his personal independence, and takes care to make it known in all companies where strangers are present. He is forever vaunting the precious state of “single blessedness,” and was, not long ago, considerably startled at a proposition of one of his great favorites, Miss Sophy Sparkle, “that old bachelors should be taxed as luxuries.” Launcelot immediately hied him home, and wrote a tremendous long representation in their behalf, which I am resolved to publish if it is ever attempted to carry the measure into operation. Whether he is sincere in these professions, or whether his present situation is owing to choice or disappointment, he only can tell; but if he ever does tell, I will suffer myself to be shot by the first lady’s eye that can twang an arrow. In his youth he was forever in love; but it was his misfortune to be continually crossed and rivaled by his bosom friend and contemporary beau, Pindar Cockloft, Esq., for as Langstaff never made a confidant on these occasions, his friends never knew which way his affections pointed; and so, between them both, the lady generally slipped through their fingers.
It has ever been the misfortune of Launcelot, that he could not for the soul of him restrain a good thing; and this fatality has drawn upon him the ill-will of many whom he would not have offended for the world. With the kindest heart under heaven, and the most benevolent disposition under heaven toward every being around him, he has been continually betrayed by the mischievous vivacity of his fancy, and the good-humored waggery of his feelings, into satirical sallies which have been treasured up by the invidious, and retailed out with the bitter sneer of malevolence, instead of the playful hilarity of countenance which originally sweetened and tempered and disarmed them of their sting. These misrepresentations have gained him many reproaches and lost him many a friend.
This unlucky characteristic played the mischief with him in one of his love affairs. He was, as I have before observed, often opposed in his gallantries by that formidable rival, Pindar Cockloft, Esq., and a most formidable rival he was; for he had Apollo, the nine muses, together with all the joint tenants of Olympus, to back him; and everybody knows what important confederates they are to a lover. Poor Launcelot stood no chance; the lady was cooped up in the poet’s corner of every weekly paper; and at length Pindar attacked her with a sonnet, that took up a whole column, in which he enumerated at least a dozen cardinal virtues, together with innumerable others of inferior consideration. Launcelot saw his case was desperate, and that unless he sat down forthwith, be-cherubimed and be-angeled her to the skies, and put every virtue under the sun in requisition, he might as well go hang himself, and so make an end of the business. At it, therefore, he went; and was going on very swimmingly, for in the space of a dozen lines he had enlisted under her command at least three-score and ten substantial housekeeping virtues, when unluckily for Launcelot’s reputation as a poet and the lady’s as a saint, one of those confounded good thoughts struck his laughter-loving brain—it was irresistible; away he went, full sweep before the wind, cutting and slashing, and tickled to death with his own fun; the consequence was, that by the time he had finished, never was poor lady so most ludicrously lampooned since lampooning came into fashion. But this was not half; so hugely was Launcelot pleased with this frolic of his wits, that nothing would do but he must show it to the lady, who, as well she might, was mortally offended, and forbid him her presence. My friend was in despair, but, through the interference of his generous rival, was permitted to make his apology, which, however, most unluckily happened to be rather worse than the original offense; for though he had studied an eloquent compliment, yet, as ill luck would have it, a most preposterous whimwham knocked at his pericranium, and inspired him to say some consummate good things, which, all put together, amounted to a downright hoax, and provoked the lady’s wrath to such a degree, that sentence of eternal banishment was awarded against him.
Launcelot was inconsolable, and determined in the true style of novel heroics to make the tour of Europe, and endeavor to lose the recollection of this misfortune amongst the gayeties of France and the classic charms of Italy; he accordingly took passage in a vessel, and pursued his voyage prosperously as far as Sandy Hook, where he was seized with a violent fit of sea-sickness; at which he was so affronted that he put his portmanteau into the first pilot-boat, and returned to town completely cured of his love and his rage for travelling.
I pass over the subsequent amours of my friend Langstaff, being but little acquainted with them; for, as I have already mentioned, he never was known to make a confidant of anybody. He always affirmed that a man must be a fool to fall in love, but an idiot to boast of it; ever denominated it the villainous passion; lamented that it could not be cudgeled out of the human heart; and yet could no more live without being in love with somebody or other than he could without whimwhams.
My friend Launcelot is a man of excessive irritability of nerve, and I am acquainted with no one so susceptible of the petty “miseries of human life;” yet its keener evils and misfortunes he bears without shrinking, and however they may prey in secret on his happiness, he never complains. This was strikingly evinced in an affair where his heart was deeply and irrevocably concerned, and in which his success was ruined by one for whom he had long cherished a warm friendship. The circumstance cut poor Langstaff to the very soul; he was not seen in company for months afterward, and for a long time he seemed to retire within himself, and battle with the poignancy of his feelings; but not a murmur or a reproach was heard to fall from his lips, though, at the mention of his friend’s name, a shade of melancholy might be observed stealing across his face, and his voice assumed a touching tone, that seemed to say he remembered his treachery “more in sorrow than in anger.” This affair has given a slight tinge of sadness to his disposition, which, however, does not prevent his entering into the amusements of the world; the only effect it occasions is, that you may occasionally observe him, at the end of a lively conversation, sink for a few minutes into an apparent forgetfulness of surrounding objects, during which time he seems to be indulging in some melancholy retrospection.
Langstaff inherited from his father a love of literature, a disposition for castle-building, a mortal enmity to noise, a sovereign antipathy to cold weather and brooms, and a plentiful stock of whimwhams. From the delicacy of his nerves he is peculiarly sensible to discordant sounds; the rattling of a wheelbarrow is “horrible;” the noise of children “drives him distracted;” and he once left excellent lodgings merely because the lady of the house wore high-heeled shoes, in which she clattered up and down stairs, till, to use his own emphatic expression, “they made life loathsome” to him. He suffers annual martyrdom from the razor-edged zephyrs of our “balmy spring,” and solemnly declares that the boasted month of May has become a perfect “vagabond.” As some people have a great antipathy to cats, and can tell when one is locked up in a closet, so Launcelot declares his feelings always announce to him the neighborhood of a broom—a household implement which he abominates above all others. Nor is there any living animal in the world that he holds in more utter abhorrence than what is usually termed a notable housewife; a pestilent being, who, he protests, is the bane of goodfellowship, and has a heavy charge to answer for the many offenses committed against the ease, comfort, and social enjoyments of sovereign man. He told me, not long ago, “that he had rather see one of the weird sisters flourish through his keyhole on a broomstick, than one of the servant-maids enter the door with a besom.”
My friend Launcelot is ardent and sincere in his attachments, which are confined to a chosen few, in whose society he loves to give free scope to his whimsical imagination; he, however, mingles freely with the world, though more as a spectator than an actor; and without an anxiety, or hardly a care to please, is generally received with welcome and listened to with complacency. When he extends his hand, it is in a free, open, liberal style; and when you shake it, you feel his honest heart throb in its pulsations. Though rather fond of gay exhibitions, he does not appear so frequently at balls and assemblies since the introduction of the drum, trumpet, and tambourine; all of which he abhors on account of the rude attack they make on his organs of hearing: in short, such is his antipathy to noise, that though exceedingly patriotic, yet he retreats every Fourth of July to Cockloft Hall, in order to get out of the way of the hubbub and confusion which make so considerable a part of the pleasure of that splendid anniversary.
I intend this article as a mere sketch of Langstaff’s multifarious character; his innumerable whimwhams will be exhibited by himself, in the course of this work, in all their strange varieties and the machinery of his mind, more intricate than the most subtile piece of clock-work, be fully explained. And trust me, gentle folk, his are the whimwhams of a courteous gentleman, full of most excellent qualities; honorable in his disposition, independent in his sentiments, and of unbounded good nature, as may be seen through all his works.
ON STYLE.
BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.
STYLE, a manner of writing; title; pin of a dial; the pistil of plants.—_Johnson._
STYLE, is ... style.—_Linkum Fidelius._
Now I would not give a straw for either of the above definitions, though I think the latter is by far the most satisfactory; and I do wish sincerely every modern numskull, who takes hold of a subject he knows nothing about, would adopt honest Linkum’s mode of explanation. Blair’s Lectures on this article have not thrown a whit more light on the subject of my inquiries; they puzzled me just as much as did the learned and laborious expositions and illustrations of the worthy professor of our college, in the middle of which I generally had the ill luck to fall asleep.
This same word Style, though but a diminutive word, assumes to itself more contradictions, and significations, and eccentricities, than any monosyllable in the language is legitimately entitled to. It is an arrant little humorist of a word, and full of whimwhams, which occasions me to like it hugely; but it puzzled me most wickedly on my first return from a long residence abroad, having crept into fashionable use during my absence; and had it not been for friend Evergreen, and that thrifty sprig of knowledge, Jeremy Cockloft the younger, I should have remained to this day ignorant of its meaning.
Though it would seem that the people of all countries are equally vehement in the pursuit of this phantom, style, yet in almost all of them there is a strange diversity in opinion as to what constitutes its essence; and every different class, like the pagan nations, adore it under a different form. In England, for instance, an honest cit packs up himself, his family and his style, in a buggy or tim-whisky, and rattles away on Sunday with his fair partner blooming beside him, like an eastern bride, and two chubby children, squatting like Chinese images at his feet. A baronet requires a chariot and pair; a lord must needs have a barouche and four; but a duke—O! a duke cannot possibly lumber his style along under a coach and six, and half a score of footmen into the bargain. In China a puissant Mandarin loads at least three elephants with style; and an overgrown sheep at the Cape of Good Hope, trails along his tail and his style on a wheelbarrow. In Egypt, or at Constantinople, style consists in the quantity of fur and fine clothes a lady can put on without danger of suffocation; here it is otherwise, and consists in the quantity she can put off without the risk of freezing. A Chinese lady is thought prodigal of her charms if she expose the tip of her nose, or the ends of her fingers, to the ardent gaze of bystanders; and I recollect that all Canton was in a buzz in consequence of the great belle, Miss Nangfous, peeping out of the window with her face uncovered! Here the style is to show not only the face, but the neck, shoulders, etc.; and a lady never presumes to hide them except when she is not “at home,” and not sufficiently undressed to see company.
This style has ruined the peace and harmony of many a worthy household; for no sooner do they set up for style, but instantly all the honest old comfortable _sans cérémonie_ furniture is discarded; and you stalk cautiously about, amongst the uncomfortable splendor of Grecian chairs, Egyptian tables, Turkey carpets, and Etruscan vases. This vast improvement in furniture demands an increase in the domestic establishment; and a family that once required two or three servants for convenience, now employs half a dozen for style.
Bell Brazen, late favorite of my unfortunate friend Dessalines, was one of these patterns of style; and whatever freak she was seized with, however preposterous, was implicitly followed by all who would be considered as admitted in the stylish arcana. She was once seized with a whimwham that tickled the whole court. She could not lay down to take an afternoon’s loll, but she must have one servant to scratch her head, two to tickle her feet, and a fourth to fan her delectable person while she slumbered. The thing took—it became the rage, and not a sable belle in all Hayti but what insisted upon being fanned, and scratched, and tickled in the true imperial style. Sneer not at this picture, my most excellent townswomen, for who among you but are daily following fashions equally absurd?
Style, accordingly to Evergreen’s account, consists in certain fashions, or certain eccentricities, or certain manners of certain people, in certain situations, and possessed of a certain share of fashion or importance. A red cloak, for instance, on the shoulders of an old market-woman is regarded with contempt; it is vulgar, it is odious: fling, however, its usurping rival, a red shawl, over the fine figure of a fashionable belle, and let her flame away with it in Broadway, or in a ball-room, and it is immediately declared to be the style.
The modes of attaining this certain situation, which entitle its holder to style, are various and opposite: the most ostensible is the attainment of wealth, the possession of which changes at once the pert airs of vulgar ignorance into fashionable ease and elegant vivacity. It is highly amusing to observe the gradation of a family aspiring to style, and the devious windings they pursue in order to attain it. While beating up against wind and tide, they are the most complaisant beings in the world; they keep “booing and booing,” as M’Sycophant says, until you would suppose them incapable of standing upright; they kiss their hands to everybody who has the least claim to style; their familiarity is intolerable, and they absolutely overwhelm you with their friendship and loving kindness. But having once gained the envied preeminence, never were beings in the world more changed. They assume the most intolerable caprices: at one time, address you with importunate sociability; at another, pass you by with silent indifference; sometimes sit up in their chairs in all the majesty of dignified silence; and at another time bounce about with all the obstreperous ill-bred noise of a little hoyden just broke loose from a boarding-school.
Another feature which distinguishes these new-made fashionables, is the inveteracy with which they look down upon the honest people who are struggling to climb up to the same envied height. They never fail to salute them with the most sarcastic reflections; and like so many worthy hodmen, clambering a ladder, each one looks down upon his next neighbor below, and makes no scruple of shaking the dust off his shoes into his eyes. Thus by dint of perseverance, merely, they come to be considered as established denizens of the great world; as in some barbarous nations an oyster shell is of sterling value, and a copper washed counter will pass current for genuine gold.
In no instance have I seen this grasping after style more whimsically exhibited, than in the family of my old acquaintance, Timothy Giblet. I recollect old Giblet when I was a boy, and he was the most surly curmudgeon I ever knew. He was a perfect scarecrow to the small-fry of the day, and inherited the hatred of all these unlucky little shavers: for never could we assemble about his door of an evening to play, and make a little hubbub, but out he sallied from his nest like a spider, flourished his formidable horsewhip, and dispersed the whole crew in the twinkling of a lamp. I perfectly remember a bill he sent in to my father for a pane of glass I had accidentally broken, which came well-nigh getting me a sound flogging; and I remember as perfectly that the next night I revenged myself by breaking half a dozen.
Giblet was as arrant a grubworm as ever crawled; and the only rules of right and wrong he cared a button for, were the rules of multiplication and addition, which he practiced much more successfully than he did any of the rules of religion or morality. He used to declare they were the true golden rules; and he took special care to put Cocker’s arithmetic in the hands of his children, before they had read ten pages in the Bible or the Prayer-book. The practice of these favorite maxims was at length crowned with the harvest of success; and after a life of self-denial and starvation, and after enduring all the pounds, shillings, and pence miseries of a miser, he had the satisfaction of seeing himself worth a plum, and of dying just as he had determined to enjoy the remainder of his days in contemplating his great wealth and accumulating mortgages.
His children inherited his money; but they buried the disposition, and every other memorial of their father, in his grave. Fired with a noble thirst for style, they instantly emerged from the retired lane in which themselves and their accomplishments had hitherto been buried; and they blazed, and they whizzed, and they cracked about town, like a nest of squibs and devils in a fire-work. I can liken their sudden eclat to nothing but that of the locust, which is hatched in the dust, where it increases and swells up to maturity, and after feeling for a moment the vivifying rays of the sun, bursts forth a mighty insect, and flutters, and rattles, and buzzes from every tree. The little warblers who have long cheered the woodlands with their dulcet notes, are stunned by the discordant racket of these upstart intruders, and contemplate, in contemptuous silence, their tinsel and their noise.
Having once started, the Giblets were determined that nothing should stop them in their career, until they had run their full course, and arrived at the very tip top of style. Every tailor, every shoemaker, every coachmaker, every milliner, every mantuamaker, every paperhanger, every piano teacher, and every dancing-master in the city, were enlisted in their service; and the willing wights most courteously answered their call; and fell to work to build up the fame of the Giblets, as they had done that of many an aspiring family before them. In a little time the young ladies could dance the waltz, thunder Lodoiska, murder French, kill time, and commit violence on the face of nature in a landscape in water-colors, equal to the best lady in the land; and the young gentlemen were seen lounging at corners of streets, and driving tandem; heard talking loud at the theatre, and laughing in church, with as much ease, and grace, and modesty, as if they had been gentlemen all the days of their lives.
And the Giblets arrayed themselves in scarlet, and in fine linen, and seated themselves in high places; but nobody noticed them except to honor them with a little contempt. The Giblets made a prodigious splash in their own opinion; but nobody extolled them except the tailors, and the milliners who had been employed in manufacturing their paraphernalia. The Giblets thereupon being, like Caleb Quotem, determined to have “a place at the review,” fell to work more fiercely than ever; they gave dinners, and they gave balls, they hired cooks, they hired fiddlers, they hired confectioners; and they would have kept a newspaper in pay, had they not all been bought up at that time for the election. They invited the dancing-men and the dancing-women, and the gormandizers, and the epicures of the city, to come and make merry at their expense; and the dancing-men and the dancing-women, and the epicures, and the gormandizers did come; and they did make merry at their expense; and they eat, and they drank, and they capered, and they danced, and they—laughed at their entertainers.
Then commenced the hurry and the bustle, and the mighty nothingness of fashionable life; such rattling in coaches! such flaunting in the streets! such slamming of box doors at the theatre! such a tempest of bustle and unmeaning noise wherever they appeared! The Giblets were seen here and there and everywhere; they visited everybody they knew, and everybody they did not know; and there was no getting along for the Giblets. Their plan at length succeeded. By dint of dinners, of feeding and frolicking the town, the Giblet family worked themselves into notice, and enjoyed the ineffable pleasure of being forever pestered by visitors who cared nothing about them; of being squeezed, and smothered, and parboiled at nightly balls and evening tea-parties; they were allowed the privilege of forgetting the very few old friends they once possessed; they turned their noses up in the wind at everything that was not genteel; and their superb manners and sublime affectation at length left it no longer a matter of doubt that the Giblets were perfectly in style.
——“Being, as it were, a small contentmente in a never contenting subjecte; a bitter pleasaunte taste of a sweete seasoned sower; and, all in all, a more than ordinarie rejoycing, in an extraordinarie sorrow of delyghts.”—
_Link. Fidelius._
We have been considerably edified of late by several letters of advice from a number of sage correspondents, who really seem to know more about our work than we do ourselves. One warns us against saying anything more about ’Sbidlikens, who is a very particular friend of the writer, and who has a singular disinclination to be laughed at. This correspondent in particular inveighs against personalities, and accuses us of ill-nature in bringing forward old Fungus and Billy Dimple, as figures of fun to amuse the public. Another gentleman, who states that he is a near relation of the Cocklofts, proses away most soporifically on the impropriety of ridiculing a respectable old family; and declares that if we make them and their whimwhams the subject of any more essays, he shall be under the necessity of applying to our theatrical champions for satisfaction. A third, who, by the crabbedness of the handwriting, and a few careless inaccuracies in the spelling, appears to be a lady, assures us that the Miss Cocklofts, and Miss Diana Wearwell, and Miss Dashaway, and Mrs. ——, Will Wizard’s quondam flame, are so much obliged to us for our notice, that they intend in future to take no notice of us at all, but leave us out of all their tea-parties, for which we make them one of our best bows, and say, “thank you, ladies.”
We wish to heaven these good people would attend to their own affairs, if they have any to attend to, and let us alone. It is one of the most provoking things in the world that we cannot tickle the public a little, merely for our own private amusement, but we must be crossed and jostled by these meddling incendiaries, and, in fact, have the whole town about our ears. We are much in the same situation with an unlucky blade of a cockney, who, having mounted his bit of blood to enjoy a little innocent recreation, and display his horsemanship along Broadway, is worried by all those little yelping curs that infest our city, and who never fail to sally out and growl, and bark, and snarl, to the great annoyance of the Birmingham equestrian.
Wisely was it said by the sage Linkum Fidelius, “howbeit, moreover, nevertheless, this thrice-wicked towne is charged up to the muzzle with all manner of ill-natures and uncharitablenesses, and is, moreover, exceedinglie naughte.” This passage of the erudite Linkum was applied to the city of Gotham, of which he was once Lord Mayor, as appears by his picture hung up in the hall of that ancient city; but his observation fits this best of all possible cities “to a hair.” It is a melancholy truth that this same New York, though the most charming, pleasant, polished, and praiseworthy city under the sun, and in a word the _bonne bouche_ of the universe, is most shockingly ill-natured and sarcastic, and wickedly given to all manner of backslidings; for which we are very sorry, indeed. In truth, for it must come out like murder, one time or other, the inhabitants are not only ill-natured, but manifestly unjust; no sooner do they get one of our random sketches in their hands, but instantly they apply it most unjustifiably to some “dear friend,” and then accuse us vociferously of the personality which originated in their own officious friendship! Truly it is an ill-natured town, and most earnestly do we hope it may not meet with the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah of old.
As, however, it may be thought incumbent upon us to make some apology for these mistakes of the town; and as our good-nature is truly exemplary, we would certainly answer this expectation, were it not that we have an invincible antipathy to making apologies. We have a most profound contempt for any man who cannot give three good reasons for an unreasonable thing; and will therefore condescend, as usual, to give the public three special reasons for never apologizing: first, an apology implies that we are accountable to somebody or another for our conduct; now, as we do not care a fiddle-stick, as authors, for either public opinion or private ill-will, it would be implying a falsehood to apologize; second, an apology would indicate that we had been doing what we ought not to have done. Now, as we never did and never intend to do anything wrong, it would be ridiculous to make an apology; third, we labor under the same incapacity in the art of apologizing that lost Langstaff his mistress; we never yet undertook to make an apology without committing a new offense, and making matters ten times worse than they were before; and we are, therefore, determined to avoid such predicaments in future.
But though we have resolved never to apologize, yet we have no particular objection to explain; and if this is all that’s wanted, we will go about it directly:—_allons_, gentlemen!—before, however, we enter upon this serious affair, we take this opportunity to express our surprise and indignation at the incredulity of some people. Have we not, over and over, assured the town that we are three of the best-natured fellows living? And is it not astonishing, that having already given seven convincing proofs of the truth of this assurance, they should still have any doubts on the subject? But as it is one of the impossible things to make a knave believe in honesty, so, perhaps, it may be another to make this most sarcastic, satirical, and tea-drinking city believe in the existence of good-nature. But to our explanation. Gentle reader!—for we are convinced that none but gentle or genteel readers can relish our excellent productions—if thou art in expectation of being perfectly satisfied with what we are about to say, thou mayest as well “whistle lillebullero,” and skip quite over what follows; for never wight was more disappointed than thou wilt be, most assuredly. But to the explanation: We care just as much about the public and its wise conjectures, as we do about the man in the moon and his whimwhams; or the criticisms of the lady who sits majestically in her elbow-chair in the lobster; and who, belying her sex, as we are credibly informed, never says anything worth listening to. We have launched our bark, and we will steer to our destined port with undeviating perseverance, fearless of being shipwrecked by the way. Good-nature is our steersman, reason our ballast, whim the breeze that wafts us along, and MORALITY our leading star.
NO. IX.—SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1807.
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
It in some measure jumps with my humor to be “melancholy and gentlemanlike” this stormy night, and I see no reason why I should not indulge myself for once. Away, then, with joke, with fun, and laughter, for a while; let my soul look back in mournful retrospect, and sadden with the memory of my good aunt Charity—who died of a Frenchman!
Stare not, O, most dubious reader, at the mention of a complaint so uncommon; grievously hath it afflicted the ancient family of the Cocklofts, who carry their absurd antipathy to the French so far, that they will not suffer a clove of garlic in the house; and my good old friend Christopher was once on the point of abandoning his paternal country mansion of Cockloft Hall, merely because a colony of frogs had settled in a neighboring swamp. I verily believe he would have carried his whimwham into effect, had not a fortunate drought obliged the enemy to strike their tents, and, like a troop of wandering Arabs, to march off towards a moister part of the country.
My aunt Charity departed this life in the fifty-ninth year of her age, though she never grew older after twenty-five. In her teens she was, according to her own account, a celebrated beauty, though I never could meet with anybody that remembered when she was handsome; on the contrary, Evergreen’s father, who used to gallant her in his youth, says she was as knotty a little piece of humanity as he ever saw; and that, if she had been possessed of the least sensibility, she would, like poor old _Acco_, have most certainly run mad at her own figure and face the first time she contemplated herself in a looking-glass. In the good old times that saw my aunt in the heyday of youth, a fine lady was a most formidable animal, and required to be approached with the same awe and devotion that a Tartar feels in the presence of his Grand Lama. If a gentleman offered to take her hand, except to help her into a carriage, or lead her into a drawing-room, such frowns! such a rustling of brocade and taffeta! her very paste shoe-buckles sparkled with indignation, and for a moment assumed the brilliancy of diamonds: in those days the person of a belle was sacred; it was unprofaned by the sacrilegious grasp of a stranger: simple souls!—they had not the waltz among them yet!
My good aunt prided herself on keeping up this buckram delicacy; and if she happened to be playing at the old-fashioned game of forfeits, and was fined a kiss, it was always more trouble to get it than it was worth; for she made a most gallant defense, and never surrendered until she saw her adversary inclined to give over his attack. Evergreen’s father says he remembers once to have been on a sleighing party with her, and when they came to Kissing-bridge, it fell to his lot to levy contributions on Miss Charity Cockloft, who, after squalling at a hideous rate, at length jumped out of the sleigh plump into a snow-bank, where she stuck fast like an icicle, until he came to her rescue. This Latonian feat cost her a rheumatism, from which she never thoroughly recovered.
It is rather singular that my aunt, though a great beauty, and an heiress withal, never got married. The reason she alleged was, that she never met with a lover who resembled Sir Charles Grandison, the hero of her nightly dreams and waking fancy; but I am privately of opinion that it was owing to her never having had an offer. This much is certain, that for many years previous to her decease, she declined all attentions from the gentlemen, and contented herself with watching over the welfare of her fellow creatures. She was, indeed, observed to take a considerable lean toward Methodism, was frequent in her attendance at love feasts, read Whitefield and Wesley, and even went so far as once to travel the distance of five-and-twenty miles to be present at a camp-meeting. This gave great offense to my cousin Christopher, and his good lady, who, as I have already mentioned, are rigidly orthodox, and had not my aunt Charity been of a most pacific disposition, her religious whimwham would have occasioned many a family altercation. She was, indeed, as good a soul as the Cockloft family ever boasted; a lady of unbounded loving-kindness, which extended to man, woman, and child; many of whom she almost killed with good-nature. Was any acquaintance sick? In vain did the wind whistle and the storm beat; my aunt would waddle through mud and mire, over the whole town, but what she would visit them. She would sit by them for hours together with the most persevering patience, and tell a thousand melancholy stories of human misery, to keep up their spirits. The whole catalogue of _yerb_ teas was at her fingers’ ends, from formidable wormwood down to gentle balm; and she would descant by the hour on the healing qualities of hoarhound, catnip, and pennyroyal. Woe be to the patient that came under the benevolent hand of my aunt Charity; he was sure, willy-nilly, to be drenched with a deluge of decoctions; and full many a time has my cousin Christopher borne a twinge of pain in silence, through fear of being condemned to suffer the martyrdom of her materia-medica. My good aunt had moreover, considerable skill in astronomy, for she could tell when the sun rose and set every day in the year; and no woman was able to pronounce with more certainty, at what precise minute the moon changed. She held the story of the moon’s being made of green cheese, as an abominable slander on her favorite planet; and she had made several valuable discoveries in solar eclipses, by means of a bit of burnt glass, which entitled her at least to an honorary admission in the American Philosophical Society. Hutching’s Improved was her favorite book; and I shrewdly suspect that it was from this valuable work she drew most of her sovereign remedies for colds, coughs, corns, and consumptions.
But the truth must be told. With all her good qualities my aunt Charity was afflicted with one fault, extremely rare among her gentle sex—it was curiosity. How she came by it, I am at a loss to imagine, but it played the very vengeance with her and destroyed the comfort of her life. Having an invincible desire to know everybody’s character, business, and mode of living, she was forever prying into the affairs of her neighbors; and got a great deal of ill-will from people toward whom she had the kindest disposition possible. If any family on the opposite side of the street gave a dinner, my aunt would mount her spectacles, and sit at the window until the company were all housed, merely that she might know who they were. If she heard a story about any of her acquaintances, she would forthwith set off full sail, and never rest until, to use her usual expression, she had got “to the bottom of it;” which meant nothing more than telling it to everybody she knew.
I remember one night my aunt Charity happened to hear a most precious story about one of her good friends, but unfortunately too late to give it immediate circulation. It made her absolutely miserable; and she hardly slept a wink all night, for fear her bosom friend, Mrs. Sipkins, should get the start of her in the morning and blow the whole affair. You must know there was always a contest between these two ladies, who should first give currency to the good-natured things said about everybody; and this unfortunate rivalship at length proved fatal to their long and ardent friendship. My aunt got up full two hours that morning before her usual time; put on her pompadour taffeta gown, and sallied forth to lament the misfortune of her dear friend. Would you believe it!—wherever she went, Mrs. Sipkins had anticipated her; and, instead of being listened to with uplifted hands and open-mouthed wonder, my unhappy aunt was obliged to sit down quietly and listen to the whole affair, with numerous additions, alterations, and amendments! Now, this was too bad; it would have almost provoked Patience Grizzle or a saint. It was too much for my aunt, who kept her bed for three days afterward, with a cold, as she pretended; but I have no doubt it was owing to this affair of Mrs. Sipkins, to whom she never would be reconciled.
But I pass over the rest of my aunt Charity’s life, checkered with the various calamities, and misfortunes, and mortifications, incident to those worthy old gentlewomen who have the domestic cares of the whole community upon their minds; and I hasten to relate the melancholy incident that hurried her out of existence in the full bloom of antiquated virginity.
In their frolicsome malice, the fates had ordained that a French boarding-house, or _Pension Française_, as it was called, should be established directly opposite my aunt’s residence. Cruel event! Unhappy Aunt Charity! It threw her into that alarming disorder denominated the fidgets; she did nothing but watch at the window day after day, but without becoming one whit the wiser at the end of a fortnight than she was at the beginning; she thought that neighbor Pension had a monstrous large family, and somehow or other they were all men! she could not imagine what business neighbor Pension followed to support so numerous a household; and wondered why there was always such a scraping of fiddles in the parlor, and such a smell of onions from neighbor Pension’s kitchen; in short, neighbor Pension was continually uppermost in her thoughts, and incessantly on the outer edge of her tongue. This was, I believe, the very first time she had ever failed “to get at the bottom of a thing;” and the disappointment cost her many a sleepless night, I warrant you. I have little doubt, however, that my aunt would have ferreted neighbor Pension out, could she have spoken or understood French; but in those times people in general could make themselves understood in plain English; and it was always a standing rule in the Cockloft family, which exists to this day, that not one of the females should learn French.
My aunt Charity had lived at her window for some time in vain; when one day, as she was keeping her usual look-out and suffering all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity, she beheld a little meagre, weazel faced Frenchman, of the most forlorn, diminutive, and pitiful proportions, arrive at neighbor Pension’s door. He was dressed in white, with a little pinched-up cocked hat; he seemed to shake in the wind, and every blast that went over him whistled through his bones and threatened instant annihilation. This embodied spirit of famine was followed by three carts, lumbered with crazy trunks, chests, bandboxes, bidets, medicine-chests, parrots, and monkeys; and at his heels ran a yelping pack of little black-nosed pug-dogs. This was the one thing wanting to fill up the measure of my aunt Charity’s afflictions; she could not conceive, for the soul of her, who this mysterious little apparition could be that made so great a display; what he could possibly do with so much baggage, and particularly with his parrots and monkeys; or how so small a carcass could have occasion for so many trunks of clothes. Honest soul! she had never had a peep into a Frenchman’s wardrobe—that _dépôt_ of old coats, hats, and breeches, of the growth of every fashion he has followed in his life.
From the time of this fatal arrival, my poor aunt was in a quandary;—all her inquiries were fruitless; no one could expound the history of this mysterious stranger: she never held up her head afterward—drooped daily, took to her bed in a fortnight, and in “one little month” I saw her quietly deposited in the family vault—being the seventh Cockloft that has died of a whimwham!
Take warning, my fair countrywomen! and you, O ye excellent ladies, whether married or single, who pry into other people’s affairs and neglect those of your own household—who are so busily employed in observing the faults of others that you have no time to correct your own—remember the fate of my dear aunt Charity, and eschew the evil spirit of curiosity.
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
I find, by perusal of our last number, that Will Wizard and Evergreen, taking advantage of my confinement, have been playing some of their gambols. I suspected these rogues of some malpractices, in consequence of their queer looks and knowing winks whenever I came down to dinner; and of their not showing their faces at old Cockloft’s for several days, after the appearance of their precious effusions. Whenever these two waggish fellows lay their heads together, there is always sure to be hatched some notable piece of mischief; which, if it tickles nobody else, is sure to make its authors merry. The public will take notice that, for the purpose of teaching these my associates better manners, and punishing them for their high misdemeanors, I have, by virtue of my authority, suspended them from all interference in Salmagundi, until they show a proper degree of repentance; or I get tired of supporting the burden of the work myself. I am sorry for Will, who is already sufficiently mortified in not daring to come to the old house, and tell his long stories and smoke his cigar; but Evergreen, being an old beau, may solace himself in his disgrace by trimming up all his old finery and making love to the little girls.
At present, my right-hand man is Cousin Pindar, whom I have taken into high favor. He came home the other night all in a blaze like a sky-rocket—whisked up to his room in a paroxysm of poetic inspiration, nor did we see anything of him until late the next morning, when he bounced upon us at breakfast,
“Fire in each eye—and paper in each hand.”
This is just the way with Pindar, he is like a volcano; will remain for a long time silent without emitting a single spark, and then, all at once, burst out in a tremendous explosion of rhyme and rhapsody.
As the letters of my friend, Mustapha, seem to excite considerable curiosity, I have subjoined another. I do not vouch for the justice of his remarks, or the correctness of his conclusions; they are full of the blunders and errors in which strangers continually indulge, who pretend to give an account of this country before they well know the geography of the street in which they live. The copies of my friend’s papers being confused and without date, I cannot pretend to give them in systematic order; in fact, they seem now and then to treat of matters which have occurred since his departure: whether these are sly interpolations of the meddlesome wight Will Wizard, or whether honest Mustapha was gifted with the spirit of prophecy or second sight, I neither know, nor in fact, do I care. The following seems to have been written when the Tripolitan prisoners were so much annoyed by the ragged state of their wardrobe. Mustapha feelingly depicts the embarrassments of his situation, traveller-like; makes an easy transition from his breeches to the seat of government, and incontinently abuses the whole administration; like a sapient traveller I once knew, who damned the French nation in toto—because they eat sugar with green peas.
LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN, CAPTAIN OF A KETCH, TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF TRIPOLI.
Sweet, O Asem! is the memory of distant friends! like the mellow ray of a departing sun it falls tenderly yet sadly on the heart. Every hour of absence from my native land rolls heavily by, like the sandy wave of the desert; and the fair shores of my country rise blooming to my imagination, clothed in the soft illusive charms of distance. I sigh, yet no one listens to the sigh of the captive; I shed the bitter tear of recollection, but no one sympathizes in the tear of the turbaned stranger! Think not, however, thou brother of my soul, that I complain of the horrors of my situation; think not that my captivity is attended with the labors, the chains, the scourges, the insults, that render slavery, with us, more dreadful than the pangs of hesitating, lingering death. Light indeed are the restraints on the personal freedom of thy kinsman; but who can enter into the afflictions of the mind?—who can describe the agonies of the heart? They are mutable as the clouds of the air—they are countless as the waves that divide me from my native country.
I have, of late, my dear Asem, labored under an inconvenience singularly unfortunate, and am reduced to a dilemma most ridiculously embarrassing. Why should I hide it from the companion of my thoughts, the partner of my sorrows and my joys? Alas, Asem! thy friend Mustapha, the invincible captain of a ketch, is sadly in want of a pair of breeches! Thou wilt doubtless smile, O, most grave Mussulman, to hear me indulge in ardent lamentations about a circumstance so trivial, and a want apparently so easy to be satisfied; but little canst thou know of the mortifications attending my necessities, and the astonishing difficulty of supplying them. Honored by the smiles and attentions of the beautiful ladies of this city, who have fallen in love with my whiskers and my turban; courted by the bashaws and the great men, who delight to have me at their feasts; the honor of my company eagerly solicited by every fiddler who gives a concert; think of my chagrin at being obliged to decline the host of invitations that daily overwhelm me, merely for want of a pair of breeches! O, Allah! Allah! that thy disciples could come into the world all befeathered like a bantam, or with a pair of leather breeches like the wild deer of the forest! Surely, my friend, it is the destiny of man to be forever subjected to petty evils, which, however trifling in appearance, prey in silence on his little pittance of enjoyment, and poison those moments of sunshine, which might otherwise be consecrated to happiness.
The want of a garment, thou wilt say, is easily supplied; and thou mayest suppose need only be mentioned to be remedied at once by any tailor of the land; little canst thou conceive the impediments which stand in the way of my comfort; and still less art thou acquainted with the prodigious great scale on which everything is transacted in this country. The nation moves most majestically slow and clumsy in the most trivial affairs, like the unwieldy elephant which makes a formidable difficulty of picking up a straw! When I hinted my necessities to the officer who has charge of myself and my companions, I expected to have them forthwith relieved; but he made an amazing long face, told me that we were prisoners of state, that we must therefore be clothed at the expense of government; that as no provision had been made by Congress for any emergency of the kind, it was impossible to furnish me with a pair of breeches, until all the sages of the nation had been convened to talk over the matter, and debate upon the expediency of granting my request. Sword of the immortal Khaled, thought I, but this is great! this is truly sublime! All the sages of an immense logocracy assembled together to talk about my breeches! Vain mortal that I am! I cannot but own that I was somewhat reconciled to the delay, which must necessarily attend this method of clothing me, by the consideration that if they made the affair a national act, my “name must of course be embodied in history,” and myself and my breeches flourish to immortality in the annals of this mighty empire!
“But pray,” said I, “how does it happen that a matter so insignificant should be erected into an object of such importance, as to employ the representative wisdom of the nation; and what is the cause of their talking so much about a trifle?” “O,” replied the officer, who acts as our slave-driver, “it all proceeds from economy. If the government did not spend ten times as much money in debating whether it was proper to supply you with breeches, as the breeches themselves would cost, the people who govern the bashaw and his divan would straightway begin to complain of their liberties being infringed; the national finances squandered! Not a hostile slang-whanger throughout the logocracy, but would burst forth like a barrel of combustion; and ten chances to one but the bashaw and the sages of his divan would all be turned out of office together. My good Mussulman,” continued he, “the administration have the good of the people too much at heart to trifle with their pockets; and they would sooner assemble and talk away ten thousand dollars, than expend fifty silently out of the treasury; such is the wonderful spirit of economy that pervades every branch of this government.” “But,” said I, “how is it possible they can spend money in talking? surely words cannot be the current coin of this country?” “Truly,” cried he, smiling, “your question is pertinent enough, for words indeed often supply the place of cash among us, and many an honest debt is paid in promises; but the fact is, the grand bashaw and the members of Congress, or grand talkers of the nation, either receive a yearly salary, or are paid by the day.” “By the nine hundred tongues of the great beast of Mahomet’s vision, but the murder is out—it is no wonder these honest men talk so much about nothing, when they are paid for talking, like day-laborers.” “You are mistaken,” said my driver; “it is nothing but economy!”
I remained silent for some minutes, for this inexplicable word, economy, always discomfits me; and when I flatter myself I have grasped it, it slips through my fingers like a jack-o’-lantern. I have not, nor perhaps ever shall acquire, sufficient of the philosophic policy of this government to draw a proper distinction between an individual and a nation. If a man was to throw away a pound in order to save a beggarly penny, and boast at the same time of his economy, I should think him on a par with the fool in the fable of Alfangi, who, in skinning a flint worth a farthing, spoiled a knife worth fifty times the sum, and thought he had acted wisely. The shrewd fellow would doubtless have valued himself much more highly on his economy, could he have known that his example would one day be followed by the bashaw of America and the sages of his divan.
This economic disposition, my friend, occasions much fighting of the spirit, and innumerable contests of the tongue in this talking assembly. Wouldst thou believe it? they were actually employed for a whole week in a most strenuous and eloquent debate about patching up a hole in the wall of the room appropriated to their meetings! A vast profusion of nervous argument and pompous declamation was expended on the occasion. Some of the orators, I am told, being rather waggishly inclined, were most stupidly jocular on the occasion; but their waggery gave great offense, and was highly reprobated by the more weighty part of the assembly, who held all wit and humor in abomination, and thought the business in hand much too solemn and serious to be treated lightly. It is supposed by some that affair would have occupied a whole winter, as it was a subject upon which several gentlemen spoke who had never been known to open their lips in that place, except to say yes and no. These silent members are, by way of distinction, denominated orator mums, and are highly valued in this country on account of their great talent for silence—a qualification extremely rare in a logocracy.
Fortunately for the public tranquillity, in the hottest part of the debate, when two rampant Virginians, brimful of logic and philosophy, were measuring tongues, and syllogistically edgeling each other out of their unreasonable notions, the president of the divan, a knowing old gentleman, one night slily sent a mason, with a hod of mortar, who, in the course of a few minutes, closed up the hole, and put a final end to the argument. Thus did this wise old gentleman, by hitting on a most simple expedient, in all probability, save his country as much money as would build a gunboat, or pay a hireling slang-whanger for a whole volume of words. As it happened, only a few thousand dollars were expended in paying these men, who are denominated, I suppose in derision, legislators.
Another instance of their economy, I relate with pleasure, for I really begin to feel a regard for these poor barbarians. They talked away the best part of a whole winter before they could determine not to expend a few dollars in purchasing a sword to bestow on an illustrious warrior; yes, Asem, on that very hero who frightened all our poor old women and young children at Derne,[59] and fully proved himself a greater man than the mother that bore him. Thus, my friend, is the whole collective wisdom of this mighty logocracy employed in somniferous debates about the most trivial affairs; like I have sometimes seen a herculean mountebank exerting all his energies in balancing a straw upon his nose. Their sages behold the minutest object with the microscopic eyes of a pismire; mole-hills swell into mountains, and a grain of mustard seed will set the whole ant-hill in a hubbub. Whether this indicates a capacious vision or a diminutive mind, I leave thee to decide; for my part, I consider it as another proof of the great scale on which everything is transacted in this country.
I have before told thee that nothing can be done without consulting the sages of the nation, who compose the assembly called the Congress. This prolific body may not improperly be termed the “mother of inventions;” and a most fruitful mother it is, let me tell thee, though its children are generally abortions. It has lately labored with what was deemed the conception of a mighty navy. All the old women and the good wives that assist the bashaw in his emergencies, hurried to head-quarters to be busy, like midwives, at the delivery. All was anxiety, fidgeting, and consultation; when, after a deal of groaning and struggling, instead of formidable first-rates and gallant frigates, out crept a litter of sorry little gun-boats! These are most pitiful little vessels, partaking vastly of the character of the grand bashaw, who has the credit of begetting them—being flat, shallow vessels that can only sail before the wind—must always keep in with the land—are continually foundering or running ashore—and, in short, are only fit for smooth water. Though intended for the defense of the maritime cities, yet the cities are obliged to defend them; and they require as much nursing as so many rickety little bantlings. They are, however, the darling pets of the grand bashaw, being the children of his dotage, and, perhaps, from their diminutive size and palpable weakness, are called the “infant navy of America.” The act that brought them into existence was almost deified by the majority of the people as a grand stroke of economy. By the beard of Mahomet, but this word is truly inexplicable.
To this economic body, therefore, was I advised to address my petition, and humbly to pray that the august assembly of sages would, in the plentitude of their wisdom and the magnitude of their powers, munificently bestow on an unfortunate captive, a pair of cotton breeches! “Head of the immortal Amrou,” cried I, “but this would be presumptuous to a degree; what! after these worthies have thought proper to leave their country naked and defenseless, and exposed to all the political storms that rattle without, can I expect that they will lend a helping hand to comfort the extremities of a solitary captive?” My exclamation was only answered by a smile, and I was consoled by the assurance that, so far from being neglected, it was every way probable my breeches might occupy a whole session of the divan, and set several of the longest heads together by the ears. Flattering as was the idea of a whole nation being agitated about my breeches, yet I own I was somewhat dismayed at the idea of remaining _in querpo_, until all the national gray-beards should have made a speech on the occasion, and given their consent to the measure. The embarrassment and distress of mind which I experienced was visible in my countenance, and my guard, who is a man of infinite good-nature, immediately suggested, as a more expeditious plan of supplying my wants, a benefit at the theatre. Though profoundly ignorant of his meaning, I agreed to his proposition, the result of which I shall disclose to thee in another letter.
Fare thee well, dear Asem; in thy pious prayers to our great prophet, never forget to solicit thy friend’s return; and when thou numberest up the many blessings bestowed on thee by all-bountiful Allah, pour forth thy gratitude that he has cast thy nativity in a land where there is no assembly of legislative chatterers; no great bashaw, who bestrides a gunboat for a hobby-horse; where the word economy is unknown, and where an unfortunate captive is not obliged to call upon the whole nation to cut him out a pair of breeches.
Ever thine, MUSTAPHA.
FROM THE MILL OF PINDAR COCKLOFT, ESQ.
Though entered on that sober age, When men withdraw from fashion’s stage, And leave the follies of the day, To shape their course a graver way; Still those gay scenes I loiter round, In which my youth sweet transport found: And though I feel their joys decay, And languish every hour away— Yet like an exile doom’d to part From the dear country of his heart, From the fair spot in which he sprung, Where his first notes of love were sung, Will often turn to wave the hand, And sigh his blessings on the land; Just so my lingering watch I keep— Thus oft I take my farewell peep. And, like that pilgrim, who retreats, Thus lagging from his parent seats, When the sad thought pervades his mind, That the fair land he leaves behind Is ravaged by a foreign foe, Its cities waste, its temples low, And ruined all those haunts of joy That gave him rapture when a boy; Turns from it with averted eye, And while he heaves the anguish’d sigh, Scarce feels regret that the loved shore Shall beam upon his sight no more; Just so it grieves my soul to view, While breathing forth a fond adieu, The innovations pride has made, The fustian, frippery, and parade, That now usurp with mawkish grace Pure tranquil pleasure’s wonted place! ’Twas joy we looked for in my prime, That idol of the olden time; When all our pastimes had the art To please and not mislead the heart. Style curs’d us not—that modern flash, That love of racket and of trash, Which scares at once all feeling joys, And drowns delight in empty noise; Which barters friendship, mirth, and truth. The artless air, the bloom of youth, And all those gentle sweets that swarm Round nature in her simplest form, For cold display, for hollow state, The trappings of the would-be great. O! once again those days recall, When heart met heart in fashion’s hall, When every honest guest would flock To add his pleasure to the stock, More fond his transports to express, Than show the tinsel of his dress!— These were the times that clasp’d the soul In gentle friendship’s soft control; Our fair ones, unprofan’d by art, Content to gain one honest heart, No train of sighing swains desired, Sought to be loved and not admired. But now ’tis form, not love unites; ’Tis show, not pleasure that invites. Each seeks the ball to play the queen, To flirt, to conquer, to be seen: Each grasps at universal sway, And reigns the idol of the day; Exults amid a thousand sighs, And triumphs when a lover dies. Each belle a rival belle surveys, Like deadly foe, with hostile gaze; Nor can her “dearest friend” caress, Till she has slily scann’d her dress; Ten conquests in one year will make, And six eternal friendships break! How oft I breathe the inward sigh, And feel the dew-drop in my eye, When I behold some beauteous frame, Divine in everything but name, Just venturing, in the tender age, On fashion’s late newfangled stage! Where soon the guiltless heart shall cease To beat in artlessness and peace; Where all the flowers of gay delight With which youth decks its prospects bright Shall wither ‘mid the cares, the strife, The cold realities of life! Thus lately, in my careless mood, As I the world of fashion view’d, While celebrating, great and small, That great solemnity—a ball, My roving vision chanced to light On two sweet forms divinely bright; Two sister nymphs, alike in face, In mien, in loveliness, and grace; Twin rosebuds, bursting into bloom, In all their brilliance and perfume: Like those fair forms that often beam Upon the eastern poet’s dream! For Eden had each lovely maid In native innocence arrayed— And heaven itself had almost shed Its sacred halo round each head! They seem’d just entering, hand-in-hand, To cautious tread this fairy land: To take a timid, hasty view, Enchanted with a scene so new. The modest blush, untaught by art, Bespoke their purity of heart; And every timorous act unfurl’d Two souls unspotted by the world. O, how these strangers joy’d my sight, And thrilled my bosom with delight! They brought the visions of my youth Back to my soul in all their truth; Recall’d fair spirits into day, That time’s rough hand had swept away! Thus the bright natives from above, Who come on messages of love, Will bless, at rare and distant whiles, Our sinful dwelling by their smiles! O! my romance of youth is past, Dear airy dreams, too bright to last! Yet when such forms as these appear, I feel your soft remembrance here; For, ah! the simple poet’s heart, On which fond love once play’d its part, Still feels the soft pulsations beat, As loath to quit their former seat. Just like the harp’s melodious wire, Swept by a bard with heavenly fire, Though ceased the loudly-swelling strain, Yet sweet vibrations long remain. Full soon I found the lovely pair Had sprung beneath a mother’s care, Hard by a neighboring streamlet’s side, At once its ornament and pride. The beauteous parent’s tender heart Had well fulfilled its pious part; And, like the holy man of old, As we’re by sacred writings told, Who, when he from his pupil sped, Pour’d two-fold blessings on his head— So this fond mother had imprest Her early virtues in each breast, And as she found her stock enlarge, Had stampt new graces on her charge. The fair resign’d the calm retreat, Where first their souls in concert beat, And flew on expectation’s wing, To sip the joys of life’s gay spring; To sport in fashion’s splendid maze, Where friendship fades, and love decays So two sweet wild flowers, near the side Of some fair river’s silver tide, Pure as the gentle stream that laves The green banks with its lucid waves, Bloom beauteous in their native ground, Diffusing heavenly fragrance round. But should a venturous hand transfer These blossoms to the gay parterre, Where, spite of artificial aid, The fairest plants of nature fade, Though they may shine supreme awhile, ’Mid pale ones of the stranger soil, The tender beauties soon decay, And their sweet fragrance dies away. Blest spirits! who, enthroned in air, Watch o’er the virtues of the fair, And with angelic ken survey Their windings through life’s checker’d way; Who hover round them as they glide Down fashion’s smooth, deceitful tide, And guide them o’er that stormy deep Where dissipation’s tempests sweep: O make this inexperienced pair The objects of your tenderest care. Preserve them from the languid eye, The faded cheek, the long-drawn sigh; And let it be your constant aim To keep the fair ones still the same: Two sister hearts, unsullied, bright As the first beam of lucid light, That sparkles from the youthful sun, When first his jocund race begun. So when these hearts shall burst their shrine, To wing their flight to realms divine, They may to radiant mansions rise, Pure as when first they left the skies.
NO. X.—SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1807.
FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.
The long interval which has elapsed since the publication of our last number, like many other remarkable events, has given rise to much conjecture and excited considerable solicitude. It is but a day or two since I heard a knowing young gentleman observe, that he suspected Salmagundi would be a nine days wonder, and had even prophesied that the ninth would be our last effort. But the age of prophecy, as well as that of chivalry, is past; and no reasonable man should now venture to foretell aught but what he is determined to bring about himself. He may then, if he please, monopolize prediction, and be honored as a prophet even in his own country.
Though I hold whether we write, or not write, to be none of the public’s business, yet as I have just heard of the loss of three thousand votes at least to the Clintonians, I feel in a remarkably dulcet humor thereupon, and will give some account of the reasons which induced us to resume our useful labors, or rather our amusement; for if writing cost either of us a moment’s labor, there is not a man but what would hang up his pen, to the great detriment of the world at large, and of our publisher in particular; who has actually bought himself a pair of trunk breeches, with the profits of our writings!!
He informs me that several persons having called last Saturday for No. X, took the disappointment so much to heart that he really apprehended some terrible catastrophe; and one good-looking man, in particular, declared his intention of quitting the country if the work was not continued. Add to this, the town has grown quite melancholy in the last fortnight; and several young ladies have declared, in my hearing, that if another number did not make its appearance soon, they would be obliged to amuse themselves with teasing their beaux and making them miserable. Now I assure my readers there was no flattery in this, for they no more suspected me of being Launcelot Langstaff than they suspected me of being the emperor of China, or the man in the moon.
I have also received several letters complaining of our indolent procrastination; and one of my correspondents assures me, that a number of young gentlemen, who had not read a book through since they left school, but who have taken a wonderful liking to our paper, will certainly relapse into their old habits unless we go on.
For the sake, therefore, of all these good people, and most especially for the satisfaction of the ladies, every one of whom we would love, if we possibly could, I have again wielded my pen with a most hearty determination to set the whole world to rights; to make cherubims and seraphs of all the fair ones of this enchanting town, and raise the spirits of the poor Federalists, who, in truth, seem to be in a sad taking, ever since the American-Ticket met with the accident of being so unhappily thrown out.
TO LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.
Sir:—I felt myself hurt and offended by Mr. Evergreen’s terrible philippic against modern music, in No. II. of your work, and was under serious apprehension that his strictures might bring the art, which I have the honor to profess, into contempt. The opinion of yourself and fraternity appears indeed to have a wonderful effect upon the town. I am told the ladies are all employed in reading Bunyan and “Pamela,” and the waltz has been entirely forsaken ever since the winter balls have closed. Under these apprehensions I should have addressed you before, had I not been sedulously employed, while the theatre continued open, in supporting the astonishing variety of the orchestra, and in composing a new chime of Bob-Major for Trinity Church, to be rung during the summer, beginning with ding-dong di-do, instead of di-do ding-dong. The citizens, especially those who live in the neighborhood of that harmonious quarter, will, no doubt, be infinitely delighted with this novelty.
But to the object of this communication. So far, sir, from agreeing with Mr. Evergreen in thinking that all modern music is but the mere dregs and drainings of the ancient, I trust, before this letter is concluded, I shall convince you and him that some of the late professors of this enchanting art have completely distanced the paltry efforts of the ancients; and that I, in particular, have at length brought it almost to absolute perfection.
The Greeks, simple souls! were astonished at the powers of Orpheus, who made the woods and rocks dance to his lyre;—of Amphion, who converted crotchets into bricks, and quavers into mortar; and of Arion, who won upon the compassion of the fishes. In the fervency of admiration, their poets fabled that Apollo had lent them his lyre, and inspired them with his own spirit of harmony. What then would they have said had they witnessed the wonderful effects of my skill? had they heard me in the compass of a single piece, describe in glowing notes one of the most sublime operations of nature; and not only make inanimate objects dance, but even speak; and not only speak, but speak in strains of exquisite harmony?
Let me not, however, be understood to say that I am the sole author of this extraordinary improvement in the art, for I confess I took the hint of many of my discoveries from some of those meritorious productions that have lately come abroad and made so much noise under the title of overtures. From some of these, as, for instance, Lodoiska, and the battle of Marengo, a gentleman, or a captain in the city militia, or an amazonian young lady may indeed acquire a tolerable idea of military tactics, and become very well experienced in the firing of musketry, the roaring of cannon, the rattling of drums, the whistling of fifes, braying of trumpets, groans of the dying, the trampling of cavalry, without ever going to the wars; but it is more especially in the art of imitating inimitable things, and giving the language of every passion and sentiment of the human mind, so as entirely to do away the necessity of speech, that I particularly excel the most celebrated musicians of ancient and modern times.
I think, sir, I may venture to say there is not a sound in the whole compass of nature which I cannot imitate, and even improve upon—nay, what I consider the perfection of my art, I have discovered a method of expressing, in the most striking manner, that undefinable, indescribable silence which accompanies the falling of snow.
In order to prove to you that I do not arrogate to myself what I am unable to perform, I will detail to you the different movements of a grand piece, which I pride myself upon exceedingly, called the “Breaking up of the Ice in the North River.”
The piece opens with a gentle _andante affetuoso_, which ushers you into the Assembly-room in the State House at Albany, where the speaker addresses the farewell speech, informing the members that the ice is about breaking up, and thanking them for their great services and good behavior in a manner so pathetic as to bring tears into their eyes.—Flourish of Jack-a-donkeys.—Ice cracks; Albany in a hubbub—air, “Three children sliding on the ice, all on a summer’s day.”—Citizens quarreling in Dutch;—chorus of a tin trumpet, a cracked fiddle, and a handsaw!—_allegro moderato_.—Hard frost—this, if given with proper spirit, has a charming effect, and sets everybody’s teeth chattering.—Symptoms of snow—consultation of old women who complain of pains in the bones and _rheumatics_;—air, “There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket,” etc.—_allegro staccato_; wagon breaks into the ice—people all run to see what is the matter; air, _siciliano_—“Can you row the boat ashore, Billy boy, Billy boy?”—_andante_—frost fish froze up in the ice—air, “Ho, why dost thou shiver and shake, Gaffer Gray, and why does thy nose look so blue?”—Flourish of twopenny trumpets and rattles—consultation of the North River Society—determine to set the North River on fire, as soon as it will burn—air, “O, what a fine kettle of fish.”