Part 1

CONTENTS PAGE

LET DAD AND SON BEWARE! 2

ADVENTS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS. 3

THE MAYOR AND CHARLEY. 6

LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH. 8

STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.

Let Dad and Son Beware!

Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann are old and sacred friends of George W. Matsell, who are more familiar with each other than they are with the Bible, or morning and evening prayers. Mayor Tiemann was elected with the express condition that Matsell should be restored to his old position, and Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann, and James W. Gerard, and Ambrose C. Kingsland are at work for their lives to effect the restoration of Matsell, and all impends on the election of a Commissioner in place of the noble Perrit. Matsell was in the city at the last Mayoralty election, conspiring against Wood, who saved him from the scaffold, after we convicted him of alienage and perjury, and the dastard and sacrilegious abjuration of his country. And at the late election, he stabbed his benefactor down in the dust, in the assassin’s darkness, and did not play Brutus for the public virtue, but to consummate his restoration to an office (he had always degraded) which was in the contract between himself and Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland, and other slavish friends. We know them all and the rendezvous of all their kindred Diavolos, whose names would fill the jaws of the _Alligator_. Matsell professed to enter the city from Iowa with flags and music on the day after Tiemann’s election, but he was in the city long before, and concealed in as dark a cavern as the odious Cataline, while conspiring to foil the patriotic Cicero, and consign the eternal city to a million thieves. And we now warn Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland to beware. For if they foist Matsell on the city through the purchase of Nye or Bowen with Mayoralty, Street Commissioner, or the pap of the Mayor’s Executive vassals, we will make disclosures that will make them stare like affrighted cats, (Gerard _a la_ he-cat, and the others _a la_ she-cats,) and rock the city to its carbonic entrails. Talmadge must remain, although he annoyed his nurse and mother when a brat, and so did we; and in boyhood and early manhood we both had worms, and raised Sancho Panza,

And we rambled around the town, And saw perhaps Miss Julia Brown,

as we may develop in the publication of our funny reminiscences; but we are both growing old, and told our experience at the recent revival, and asked admission as pious pilgrims, when the deacons said that we should both be put on five year’s trial, but we begged so hard they let us in. Talmadge joined the Presbyterians, and he looks pale and pensive, but we joined the noisy Methodists, and look mighty cheerful, and sing and dance, and scream like the devil in delirium tremens, and nervous neighbors murmur at our thundering methodistic demonstrations. Talmadge as Recorder was too kind and lenient, but he erred on the side of humanity, which is preferable to err on the side of a pale and icy and bloodless liver, though we should steer between the heart and liver, and consign the culprits to the pits and gulches of the navel, where the voracious worms could soon devour them. The valor of Talmadge conquered the ruffians of Astor Place, and he has a Roman and Spartan nature, and is as generous and magnanimous as Clay or Webster, whom he loved as his own big heart. No man ever had a more genial or sympathising bosom, than Frederick A. Talmadge. And William Curtis Noyes married his favorite daughter, and while, the spotless Noyes walks the velvet earth, and his father-in-law is Chief of Police, all will go well. Wm. Curtis Noyes is one of the ablest jurists of our country, and Washington himself had no purer, nor warmer, nor more patriotic heart. We selected Mr. Noyes as our counsel against little Georgy Matsell, when arraigned before the Police Commissioners, and to his ability and fidelity are New Yorkers profoundly indebted for the downfall of Matsell, and the worst and most formidable banditti that ever scourged the Western Continent. Beware, then, Cooper Tiemann, Gerard and Kingsland, and other trembling conspirators, or we will make you howl, and open the gates of Tartarus, and set a million dogs and devils at your heels, and when they bite, may God have mercy on your poor old bones. Beware, or we will harrow your superannuated souls into the realms of Pluto, where _Robert le Diable_ will grab and burn you in liquid brimstone, through exhaustless years. Beware of those forty pages yet behind. O, beware, we implore you, in the name of your wives and children, and your God! Beware of Matsell and his gang, as the big and little demons of these wicked times.

Advents and Public Plunderers.

Richard B. Connolly, the County Clerk, was born in Bandon, Ireland, and arrived in Philadelphia twenty-five years since, (as his glib, and slippery, and truthful tongue asseverates,) and thence immigrated to our metropolis. He became Simeon Draper’s Friday clerk, who taught him the politician’s creed of plunder, and has ever used him as a spy in the democratic legions. Draper got him in the Customs, and kept him there through several Administrations. Draper and Connolly long controlled the Ten Governors, and do now. Draper has been in all camps, and Connolly has figured in democratic conventions, primary and legal, of all stripes and checks, through which he acquired the immortal name of Slippery. Dick is an alien, and offered us between the pillars of Plunder Hall a lucrative position in the office of County Clerk, and also proposed to play Judas against Matsell, if we would not expose his perjured alienage. We had three interviews, when we assured him that we despised both treason and traitor. He then got Alderman John Kelly to read a letter in the Board of Aldermen, declaring that he was naturalized in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, whither we repaired, and got certificates from the clerks, declaring that he was never naturalized in Philadelphia, which we published in the _New York Daily Times_. In his Aldermanic letter, he declared that his document of naturalization was framed, which he regarded as his most valuable piece of furniture, and cordially invited his friends and the incredulous to call and behold its graceful decoration of his parlor. The gallant Alderman John H. Briggs, (the Putnam of the Americans, who braved and defied all the thieves, and murderers, and demons of hell in the Matsell campaign,) called to see Dick’s valuable gem of furniture, but he could not find it on the wall, nor elsewhere. We then called, and Dick’s wife told us it was locked in a trunk, and her husband had the key. Others called, with similar success. On his election as County Clerk, Dick and Draper got a law enacted at Albany, giving the County Clerk $50,000 fees, which was just so much stolen from the people, whom the Municipal, State and National robbers will not let live, but strive to rob them of their last crumb, and drive them into the winter air. Public plunder is devoted to greasing the political wheels, and burnishing, and twitching the mysterious wires, through which the honest laborer is burdened with taxes, that mangle his back like the last feather of the expiring camel. Connolly, Busteed, Doane, Wetmore, Nathan, Nelson, Draper, and Weed, got the Record Commissioners appointed, through which $550,000 have been squandered for printing the useless County Clerk and Register’s Records, which is the boldest robbery of modern times. We never could induce Greeley, Bryant, Webb’s Secretary, the Halls, and others, to breathe a word against this Dev-lin-ish plunder. And Flagg, himself, through his old printing friends, Bowne & Hasbrouck, and others, is involved in this record robbery up to his chin, who never uttered a syllable against it, until we goaded him through our crimson dissection in the _Daily Times_, and even then he only damned it with Iago praise. Since July last, Flagg has paid more than $300,000 for Record printing, for which, old as he is, he should be consigned to a sunless dungeon, and rot there, with spiders only for his nurses and mourners. Last summer Flagg told us there never was a more wicked band of robbers than the Record Commissioners, and yet he paid them from July to December the prodigious sum of over $300,000, and had paid them more than $200,000. And Flagg paid this enormous sum without a murmur, and has no possible facility to place the infamy on the scapegoat Smith, who seems to roam at large unmolested by Flagg, who yet fears Smith’s disclosures of his delinquency and superannuation. Flagg sputters a little in his reports, for show, against him, but he is not chasing Smith very hotly in the Courts, nor dare he, as we have good reason to believe. Through the Alms House, Navy Yard, County Clerks’ Office, Record Commissioners, metropolitan and suburban lots, and other plundering sources, Connolly has amassed a fortune of nearly a million of dollars, and now has the audacity to proclaim himself a candidate for Comptroller, at which the honorable citizens of New York should rise and paralyse his infamous effrontery. Not content with indolence all his days,—with robbing the laborer and mechanic, and merchant, and widow, and orphan, for whom he professes such boundless love, through his spurious and mercenary democracy,—with corrupting the ballot box, and packing juries, to imprison and hang us according to his caprice and public or private interest,—with the election of Mayors and other municipal and even State and National officers, through his fraudulent canvass of votes as County Clerk,—and with his awful perjury in connection with his alienage, he now appears with his stolen money bags, and proclaims himself a candidate for Comptroller, for which he should be lashed, and scourged, and probed to his marrow bones, through the streets of New York, beneath the glare of the meridian sun, and the gaze and withering scorn of every honorable and industrious citizen, whom he has robbed, through intolerable taxation. Connolly has not voted since we exposed his perjured alienage in 1855, when he strove to bribe us to shield him from the odium arising from his alienage. A public thief, and perjurer, and alien, this man or devil announces himself for Comptroller of this mighty metropolis, with a prospect of nomination and election, unless his throat is cut by George H. Purser, a deeper and more dangerous public villain than Connolly. Purser has robbed this city for a quarter of a century, and is also an unnaturalised alien, and we have positive evidence of the fact, and he knows it. His corrupt lobby operations in the Common Council and at Albany would make a large volume. And both Connolly and Purser are nauseous scabs of the Democratic party, and grossly pollute the glorious principles of Jefferson and Jackson. And now, where, in the name of God, are the people, or is there no spirit and integrity, and patriotism, and courage, to resist the infernal public thieves of this vandal age? Should the people slumber when a gang of robbers, and devils, and assassins, and fiends of rapine, are thundering at the gates of the commercial emporium, and even at the very doors and firesides of our sacred domestic castles, and daily and hourly rob our coffers, and ravish our daughters, and cut our throats, in open day, and through their hellish robbery, and taxation, drive the mechanic and laborer, and their dear little ones, to hunger, and rags, and madness, and crime, and to the dungeon, or scaffold, or suicide? Where is the concert of action of Boston and Providence, and throughout New England? And where are the pomatum villains of our aristocratic avenues, in this solemn hour? They are in league with your Greeleys, and Bryants, and Webbs, and Wetmores, and Drapers, and Connollys, and Pursers, and Devlins, and Smiths, and Erbens, devising schemes to plunder the people here, at Albany and Washington, for gilded means to support themselves in idleness and extravagance, and to carry the elections against the gallant Southrons, whose throats they would cut from ear to ear, and deluge this whole land with human blood, ere they would toil a solitary day like the honest laborer or mechanic, or surrender a farthing of their ungodly plunder, or breathe a syllable in favor of the eternal glory of the Union of Washington.

Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1858.

The Mayor and Charley.

_Charley_—That you have wronged me doth appear in this: You have condemned and noted the devil for taking bribes of the office holders and contractors, wherein my letters praying on his side, because I knew the man, were slighted off.

_Mayor_—You knew better than to pray for the devil.

_Charley_—I can get no fat meat nor oyster stews, if every devil is condemned.

_Mayor_—Let mo tell you, Charley, that you, yourself, should be condemned for itching to sell your offices and contracts for gold to a gang of devils.

_Charley_—I got the itch! You know that you are great Peter’s son, or, by golly, you would not say so twice.

_Mayor_—The name of Itch or Scratch honor this corruption, and by the Eternal, if Hickory dont hide his head at the Hermitage.

_Charley_—Hickory!

_Mayor_—Remember November,—the hides of November, O remember. Did not great Fernando bleed for me and Peter and Edward’s sake? Who touched his carcase, and did stab, and not for me and Peter and young Edward? What! Shall they who struck the foremost man of all this city, but for supporting robbers,—shall we now use our fingers, save to grab the Mayor’s and all the Executive Departments? By all the bellonas and doughnuts of the world, I’d rather be a hog and grow as fat as Matsell, than to be a cadaverous crow, and live on vultures, and the shadows of the moon.

_Charley_—Daniel: I’ll slap your chops. I’ll not stand it. You forget yourself to pen me in. I’m a contractor, I, older in practice, and sharper than yourself to make contracts.

_Mayor_—Go to: You are not, Charley.

_Charley_—Dam if I aint.

_Mayor_—I say you are not.

_Charley_—How dare you so excite my dander? Look out for your dimes. I had a father, and I was a baker.

_Mayor_—Away spare man.

_Charley_—Toads and frogs! Am I Charley, or am I not. Where’s the looking glass?

_Mayor_—Hear me, for I’m dam’d if I dont belch. Must my bowels yield to your cholera? Shall I be frightened because the diarrhœa looks knives and scorpions through the windows of your liver?

_Charley_—O, me. Must I stand this? O that I had a dough knife, to let out my honest blood.

_Mayor_—This? ay, and a dam lot more. Growl till your liver bursts. Go and tell your contractors and office-holders, how hard you have got the diarrhœa, and make them tremble, lest you kick the bucket, and they get fleeced. Must I gouge? Must I lick you. Or must I get between your duck legs? By all the mush and Graham bread in the coat and boots and belly of Horace, you shall digest all the grub and gin you have gulched to-day, though it do split your spleen and kidneys. And henceforth I’ll use you as a brush and ladder for Peter and Edward and myself, to sweep the streets, and scale the gilded heights of Record Hall, at whose prolific and teeming hive we will suck your honey like bumble bees.

_Charley_—O, where am I?

_Mayor_—In a dam tight place. You say you are a better contractor. Prove it. Make your braggadocio true, and I’ll not grumble. There may be better contractors than me, but dam if I believe you are, though.

_Charley_—O gingerbread! You gouge me every second, Daniel. I said an older contractor, not a better. I know you can make better contracts than me, in paint and oil and glass and putty, but I’m some on ginger-nuts and doughnuts, and affy-davy’s, and street openings. Did I say better?

_Mayor_—I dont care a dam if you did.

_Charley_—If the devil were here, you would not dare talk thus.

_Mayor_—The devil is hard by, and you fear his claws, and dare not oppose his will.

_Charley_—Dare not?

_Mayor_—No.

_Charley_—What! dare not oppose the devil?

_Mayor_—What I have said, I have said.

_Charley_—If you trifle too much with my liver, dam me if I don’t kick you, and give you a black eye.

_Mayor_—I dare you to try it. I scout your threats, Charley, for I’m fortified so strongly through my supposed integrity, that they pass by me like incarcerated wind, which I can resist with a penny fan, or potato popgun. I did send to you for the legitimate keys of the Street Commissioner, which you refused me, for I despise false keys. By Juno, I would sell all the paint, and oil, and glass, and putty in my factory to the city, at a good price, before I would use false keys, or bamboozle the dear people, who think me so honest, and love me so intensely. I sent to you for the keys of Peter and Edward, which you denied me. Did not Charley err in that? Would I have treated Charley so? When Daniel is so mean as to refuse the keys of Blackwell’s Island to his Charley, be ready, Branch, with all your bombs, and dash out his honest and tender brains.

_Charley_—I denied you not. It’s a dam lie.

_Mayor_—I swear you did.

_Charley_—I did not. I gave the keys to the Turn-key, and told him to bring them to you. O! Daniel hath rent my liver, who should overlook my trivial faults, and not magnify them so hugely.

_Mayor_—I do, until you exaggerate my little peccadillos.

_Charley_—Daniel hates me.

_Mayor_—I dislike your didos.

_Charley_—None but an owl could discern my tricks.

_Mayor_—An alligator would not, unless he were hungry, and Charley was in a tree.

_Charley_—Come, Whiting, and young Conover, come, and revenge yourselves on Charley, who is weary of this wicked world. Hooted by the people, and braved by a Mayor, and checked like a forger, and all his thefts detected, and found in a note-book, and recited and sung by rote, and thrown into my very jaws—O! I could cry like a crocodile, until my eyes were balls of blood and fire. There’s my keys, and razor, and scissors, and here’s my yearning belly. Within, a liver, and bladder, and frogs, and kidneys, and tripe, and sausages, tenderer than my heart, itself, which nought but worms can ever conquer. If thou are not a bogus Mayor, or cunning spoilsman, apply thy scissors, and pluck them out, and appease thy insatiate palate. I, that denied thee keys, will yield my entrails. Strike, as thou didst at poor Branch’s claim, for I do know, that when thou didst hate him worst, thou lov’dst him better than ever thou didst Charley.

_Mayor_—Sheathe your scissors. Be waspish when you please,—you shall have sea-room. Be tricky when you will,—I’ll call it fun. O Charley! You are like Father Peter, who carries lightning as a withered limb bears fire,—who, tightly squeezed, shows a hasty flash, and straight is coal again.

_Charley_—Hath Charley toiled, and sweat, and groaned, and grunted all his days, to be the scoff and derision of his Daniel, when clouds and sorrows fret him?

_Mayor_—When I derided the honest Charley, I had the dyspepsia most horribly, with a touch of Peter’s chronic piles.

_Charley_—O ginger-snaps! Do you acknowledge so much corn? Give me your fist.

_Mayor_—Take it, with its nails and knuckles.

_Charley_—O, Daniel!

_Mayor_—What’s the matter, Charley?

_Charley_—I hear the echo clank of a culprit’s chains, and I almost feel the hangman’s halter round my neck. And have you not gizzard enough to forgive me, when that rash humor which the people gave me, makes me savage and forgetful?

_Mayor_—Yes, Charley, and henceforth, when you are over-savage with your Daniel, and refuse the keys to gilded treasure, and strive to rob his brother Edward, and Father Peter of a million spoils, he’ll say that only

Horace can deride, And black people chide, And he’ll let you slide Down the rapid tide Into the grassy dell, Near the borders of—— Where the first sinners fell, And where contractors dwell, And all who truth do sell, So, Charley, fare thee well.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by STEPHEN H. BRANCH, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Life of Stephen H. Branch.