Part 5

The bare expectation of any such flouting, you will probably say, should keep me silent, if I was a man of only a moderate degree of prudence. But like many other obstinate people, my inclination to persist seems to augment inversely to my chances of success. Maugre then the danger and forlornness of my undertaking, I must go on. But before I come to the main purpose of the present letter, pray have patience with me, while I offer a few more remarks in anticipation of another still more serious charge, which I expect will be made against me. I must make them too, with the perfect recollection of the maxim, that "he who begins to plead before he is accused, knows himself to be guilty."--True, however, as this may be in general, _my case_, I hope, will be excepted, after you hear me. The charge to which I allude is,--the odious one of being _a Cynic_. With _you_, sir, I am very sure my bare denial would suffice; but you have many readers who know nothing of me. In deference to _them_ therefore, I feel bound to offer some stronger proof of my innocence; if that which is of a negative character (and it is all I can adduce,) will be accepted. Be it known then, to all whom it may concern, that I, Oliver Oldschool, have always denied, and do hereby deny, the truth of the most important, prominent and offensive of all the cynical dogmas, which is,--that "_men are nothing but monkeys without tails!_" and furthermore, that I hold myself bound and always ready to make battle in this behalf, "_pugnis et calcibus, unguibus et rostro_:" and all this too, notwithstanding the following most startling and humiliating resemblances which have been traced by the true Cynics between the two species. For instance--"Man" (say they) "is a biped"--so is a monkey; at least so nearly one, that his anterior legs serve him admirably well for arms, and accordingly it is still a mooted point, a much vexed question among naturalists which to call them, _arms_ or _legs_. Man generally walks erect, although sometimes, when _top-heavy_, he moves quadruped fashion. The monkey, at least the kind called the ourang outang only reverses the practice, by going more frequently on his two certain and his two quasi legs, than on the two first alone. Man has a facial angle by which those curious, prying fellows, called craniologists, measure the degree of his intelligence and infer the nature of his dispositions. Monkeys also have this angle, often so nearly the same, (mathematically speaking,) with that which we discern in many of our race, that few things are more common than to hear the exclamation "such a one has a monkey face." Lastly, man is most decidedly and conspicuously _an imitative animal_, so is a monkey, and in a degree so very striking, that there is scarcely an outward movement, action, or gesture of ours which his mimetic talents do not enable him to take off to the life. This is especially true of all those peculiar airs indicative of self-complacency and vanity which mark these two races of animals in contradistinction to all others,[1] and may be termed an idiosyncracy of intellect. The coxcomb's ineffable smile of fascination; the witling's pert and sudden smirk of self-conceit; the vain pedant's awkward cachination at his own ill-timed, out-of-place strokes of classic humor; the despicable miser's self-gratulating chuckle at inordinate gain; the _great man's_ gracious grin to his supposed inferiors, and the _little man's_ side-shaking, obstreperous laugh at the abortive joke of some superior from whom he is courting favors; all these and more, your true monkey can enact with such perfect verisimilitude, that if properly dressed for the occasion, he might pass off for the real man in each case, instead of his counterfeit, without the least danger of detection. _His mimickry_, in addition to its fidelity, has this other remarkable circumstance about it, that in applying it, he seems to have no particular choice of objects, but imitates all external actions alike, whether they be praiseworthy or the reverse. Man, on the contrary, in the exercise of _his_ imitative propensities, shows too often a stronger inclination for the bad than the good--for the faulty than the commendable--for the fantastical and the ridiculous rather than the becoming. In nothing is this more remarkable, than in the greedy, ever restless perseverance with which he seeks foreign fashions and customs, and the reckless pertinacity, under all possible discouragements, with which he strives to imitate and adopt them. Of this assertion I have already endeavored to furnish you with some proofs, which to _me at least_ appeared irrefutable. But I will now attempt to supply a few more. These also shall consist of remarks on certain foreign fashions, which may be said to be still under the process of naturalization, having proved so entirely uncongenial to our principles, habits and opinions, as not yet to be firmly established. They may, therefore, be considered as still within the reach of that exterminating power--public opinion.

[Footnote 1: Goldsmith is the only natural historian, I believe, who has urged the claim of the goose to a participation in this enviable human quality, vanity. In his "Animated Nature" he has the following remark in his natural history of the goose, of which I can give only the substance, not having the volume before me. Speaking of the action commonly called "the strutting of the gander," he says: that in _this situation_, there is probably no animal on the face of the earth more important in the eyes of another, than a gander in the eyes of a goose!! Verily, I think, (with due submission) he is mistaken; for a fully whiskered, well mustached beau, with all his bristly honors thick upon him, is to a belle, as far above the gander in the estimation of a goose, as imagination can possibly conceive.]

At the head of these fashions or customs, pre-eminent above the rest, we find the Conversation Party, the _Soiree_, and the Squeeze. The first is admitted to be an emigrè from Italy, although the term is here anglicised; the second is from France, and the third from ---- nobody knows where, unless from our mother country Great Britain; for Johnson gives both a Saxon and a Welsh etymology to it, both meaning _to press or crush between two bodies_; which meaning their American derivative (much to its honor,) has most faithfully preserved.

The conversation party would naturally be deemed by one not in the secret, a party particularly formed for the pleasures of conversation; for imparting and receiving agreeable thoughts; for blending amusement with oral instruction; in a word, for such a voluntary and talented reciprocation of ideas as would improve the taste, gratify the feelings, and heighten the mental enjoyment of all the parties concerned. _Is it this or any thing that bears the slightest resemblance to it?_ I ask an answer from any individual who has ever been to one of them, no matter with how much care it might have been selected. To these parties, such as they really are, I have no intention here to object. All I wish or aim at now, is, to have them called by their right names, as every thing ought to be, if we really desire to confine language to its proper use, which is, to make ourselves, at all times, clearly understood. But in styling these things _Conversation Parties_, before persons who had never been at them, we should practice the grossest deception. For instead of such an assemblage as the current meaning of the term would lead them to expect, and might induce them to seek, they would soon find themselves surrounded by a Babel-like confusion of tongues, where all sorts of odds and ends of unconnected exclamations and eliptical sentences are uttered simultaneously, and in the highest vocal key, by every member of the company--_the mules only_ excepted. Why _they_ should ever frequent such uncongenial spots, is more, I believe, than any one can tell. But certain it is that some of them will always be found there, although as much out of place as the Alumni of the Deaf and Dumb Asylums would be in Congress Hall, attempting to take a debating part in that _other_ Tower of Babel, as John Randolph, with his customary felicity of conception, used to call it.

Of the _Soirée_, I may truly assert that it is an exotic, still so uncongenial, so illy suited to our people, and even to their organs of speech, that not one in a thousand has learned so much as to pronounce its name correctly. Some, even of those who are so far Frenchified as to have been to France, and consequently to interlard their mother tongue with unintelligible French phrases, by way of authenticating the extent of their travels, call it "_Swar-ree_;" as if it were a place where all the attendants were to have oaths of some sort or other administered to them, so as to entitle them to be designated _Sware-rees_. Others again, in a more sportsmanlike manner, pronounce it _So-ree_, which (as Mr. Jefferson has told us,) is the true Indian appellative for the Rallus, or water-rail. Such orthoepists, we may suppose, if asked where they had been, on returning from a party of the kind, might well answer, in the Virginia sportsman's dialect, "we have been _so-russ-in_;" for this twistification of the term from its original meaning would be nothing comparable to many that have been made by etymologists of the highest reputation. For instance, all Virginia sportsmen, living near fresh water marshes, know well, that at _so-russ-in parties_, (as they universally call them,) the great object is _to kill and eat fat birds_. But a principal object of a _soirée_ party being _to catch and use_ what may well be figuratively called _fat birds_, the substitution of the term "_so-russ-in party_" for a "_soirée party_" is amply justified upon all etymological principles. I therefore take the liberty of strongly recommending it, unless our _soirée_-giving gentry would suspend their operations long enough, at least to learn from some native French teacher how to invite a French gentleman to their parties, in language that he himself would understand; since to ask him to a swàr-ree or sò-rée would be quite unintelligible.

To gratify the curious I have consulted a friend as to the literal meaning of the French word "_soirée_," (being no French scholar myself) and find that the term, like thousands of others in all languages, has been pressed from its original signification into its present service, by a sort of metonymy, as the rhetoricians call it; and instead of being applied to designate that portion of the twenty-four hours which we call _evening_, is now used to express the receiving of short evening visits on any named day, by one's friends and acquaintance. This, according to one of Leontine's letters, published in your February number, seems to be the French fashion. But we Southerners of these United States, either from ignorance or design, have so innovated upon the foreign practice, that it would puzzle a much more experienced man than myself in such matters, to explain what is to be understood, in Virginia parlance, by _swar-ree_ or _so-ree_, or whatever other barbarous pronunciation they choose to give the French word. I can only say, that I myself have seen a few thus variously called, each of which proved a kind of olla podrida or dish of all sorts; fish, flesh and fowl in _one_ place; a non-descript, desultory kind of dancing in _another_; all talking-and-no-listening politicians battling in a _third_; and card playing, drinking and uproarious mirth in a _fourth part_ of the general assemblage, wherein were gathered together, as many as could be, of all sizes and sorts of persons, "ring-streaked, speckled and spotted" to the full, as much as Laban's flocks themselves. Take notice, good Mr. Editor, that I am not now daring to _censure_, but only to _describe_, as well as I can, what my own eyes have beheld. I am not now "telling tales out of school;" for my school going days furnished me with no such secrets, however "the march of mind" may have since disclosed them to other tyroes in the pursuit of education.

The _Squeeze_ I shall endeavor more particularly to describe; since my reminiscences, although "few and far between," are still so vivid, that I can venture to delineate them without fear of their suffering, at least from forgetfulness. It is true that I cannot say, as Æneas did to queen Dido, of _his_ sufferings at and after the siege of Troy--"quorum pars _magna_ fui;" as one or two experiments quite sufficed for me; but I can truly apply the same line to myself, could I only substitute the word _patiens_ for "_magna_," without too much offence against the measure of the poetry, and I could then give in my experience, as the Trojan hero did, in perfect sincerity and good faith.

Know then, sir, that in the year and month ----, and on a certain night, I was seduced by curiosity--that fell destroyer of our race--to go, for the first time, to a party called a Squeeze, in the city of Washington, denominated by some "the Grand City of O," after the capital in Cunningham's amusing fiction of "_The World without Souls_." Being accompanied by one of the initiated, my debut was readily made as others made theirs. Without material obstruction we were ushered through the passage by the escorting valet; but when we reached the door of the principal pressing and crushing room, _hic labor, hoc opus est!_ here commenced that series of efforts and struggles which was not soon to end, as I afterwards found, to the no small detriment of various parts of my body and limbs. Through this door also, my entrance was at last effected; for what obstacle may not perseverance overcome? A strong effort of my own in the van, and the unsolicited aid in the rear of those who, like myself, wished to see all that was to be seen, very soon protruded me "_in medias res_," which I beg leave to render in idiomatic English--"up to the hub" in the business. Not many minutes however elapsed, before the pressing and crushing became so intense as to excite an earnest desire for a change both of place and posture. Accordingly I bent my course towards another room, having understood there were several prepared for _the accommodation!_ (strange misnomer, thought I,) of the company. This joint removal of body and limbs, which I had a particular fancy should not be disunited, having kept company with each other from my birth, I found toilsome and oppressive in no ordinary degree. For the instant I began to move I was met by a strong counter-current composed of a compact mass of my co-squeezers and squeezees--many of whom were of such "breadth and heft" as would verily have done great honor to a Massachusett's cattle show of the highest grade, had the subjects only been quadrupeds instead of bipeds, and in equal condition for market.

A forcible entry having been made into another room, I found myself standing within a few inches of a strange but very lovely young lady. She also was standing, apparently to execute _her_ part of a cotillion, within a circle which the united pushing and shoving of the eight operatives required for the dance, had not been vigorous enough to enlarge beyond a diameter of some six or seven feet. Being compelled to stand immediately behind her, my eyes naturally fell upon her shoulders, which the dominant fashion then required to be literally half naked. With equal pain and wonderment I observed, that by some invisible machinery, the circulation of the blood was so checked on the visible side of the shoulder strap, as to give a livid appearance to the contiguous skin; while the opposite edges of the _scapulæ_ (I would not for the world, in such a case, say _shoulder-blades_,) were forced as near touching as they could be without dislocation. _This_, thought I to myself, must surely be a fashion invented by some bright etherial genius, regardless of bodily suffering, for a squeeze; since its adaptation to _that_ object could not admit of a doubt--an adaptation, by the way, more complete, beyond comparison, than the present much admired, although evidently incompatible fashion of the bishop sleeves.[2] True, there seemed to be no small loss in shoulder comfort; but the manifest gain in bodily compression, that grand desideratum in a squeeze, to which all else must be sacrificed, appeared far to overbalance it, since according to the best off-hand calculation I could make, ten bodies with their appendant limbs thus prepared, could readily be wedged into a space which before would suffice only for nine, dressed after any previous fashion. But what is there too arduous, too great, for the matchless genius of our fair countrywomen, when stimulated by an adequate cause, and exercised upon a suitable subject!!

[Footnote 2: Most, if not all of our fair countrywomen, have vainly supposed _this_ to be quite a modern fashion; but that it is nothing more than an old one revived, and as ancient as the days of the Prophet Ezekiel, when it was all the rage, is indisputably proved by the 18th verse of his 13th chapter. There, the good old man, in all the bitterness of his heart, exclaims--"Wo! to _the women that sew pillows to all arm holes_, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every structure, to hunt souls!!"]

Although I felt much for the poor girls thus trussed, thus cross-hobbled, I resolved to wait a few moments to witness the "_modus operandi_" of this exhilarating dance, which, judging by all the methods that I had ever seen, required for its performance a circle at least three times as large as the one then before me. I knew too, enough of the prevalent fashion of dancing cotillions to be aware, that its most stylish mode then consisted in a kind of alert vigorous movement, which was most truly but somewhat coarsely called, "kicking out." This, it was manifest, could not _there_ be executed according to the law "in that case made and provided," without imminent danger to the anterior tibiæ of the legs--in vulgar parlance, the "shin-bones" of the parties concerned. It was therefore with much apprehension of the danger, at least to "the woman kind," that I awaited the incipient gesticulations of this cotillion party. My fears were soon relieved, by perceiving that the _operatives_ had substituted, with admirable ingenuity, a kind of lackadaisical slipping, sliding, flat-footed motion, which completely guarded them from the danger I had most ignorantly and unnecessarily anticipated. To be sure it no more resembled the lively animating exercise, called _dancing_ in my boyish days, than the dreamy motions of the somnambulist do the elastic springs of the wide awake tight rope dancer. But it possessed the rare merit of perfectly adapted means to ends, and I could ask no more; for Harlequin himself could hardly have done better under similar duresse. By the way, Mr. Editor, I have been told that this somnambulizing motion has now become the very "tip-top" of the mode in all kinds of dancing,--the waltz and the horse-galloping dances only excepted. In this change the arbiters and reformers of our fashions seem to have displayed much more wisdom than we usually find exerted in matters of the kind, since it is the all levelling political principle carried out into our social amusements; for it places the active and the clumsy on a footing (if you will pardon a pun,) of perfect equality, the smooth and even tenor of which is never disturbed; unless when some credulous sexagenarian is over-persuaded to perpetrate the folly of turning out to dance among a party of girls and boys. _They_ make a laughing stock of him, while _he_, in the sincerity of his heart, and with all the fast perishing vigor of his limbs, _caricatures_ (for he can do nothing more,) the athletic cuts and shuffles of the by-gone century, to which nothing could possibly do anything like justice but an uncommon degree both of youthful vigor and activity. That you, sir, who are quite too young to have any personal knowledge of these important matters, may be sure that I do not exaggerate in making this last assertion, it will suffice to inform you, that the most celebrated steps of that time,--steps, which if perfectly executed, always stampt the performers as first rate dancers--were styled, in the metaphorical language of those merry making days, "forked lightning" and "chicken flutter" for the gentlemen, and "heel and toe" and "cross-shuffle" for the ladies. The first I confess, was rather "a far-fetched metaphor," to say the least of it; but the other three appellations were as perfectly appropriate as could well be conceived. It might also be truly affirmed of all, that there was nothing in any of them, in the slightest degree indecorous, as in the waltz and gallopade; for it seemed not then to have been imagined that _dancing_ could be perverted to any such purpose as the excitation of highly culpable sentiments.

If you will pardon this digression, sir, in consideration that old men will be garrulous and prosing, I will now squeeze you back from the dancing-room to the one first entered, and with somewhat less difficulty, I hope, than I myself encountered.

There I was immediately attracted by a conspicuous gathering of _heads_; of bodies I could see none, except those in juxtaposition. It was drawn together, as I conjectured, by something rather beyond the common spectacles of the night. Being determined to have my share of the sight, I forced my way near enough to behold, in the midst of a circle not much larger than a hogshead hoop, a tall young lady, elegantly dressed, (that is as far as perfect conformity to the fashion could make her so) and quite a good figure, but too much "drawn" (as the racers say) in the waist. And what, think you, was her employment? Why--attitudinizing and thumping away most theatrically upon a tambourine! This was the finishing stroke--the finale of my squeeze-going days, or rather _nights_; and I hastened to squeeze myself _out_, with much more alacrity than I had squeezed myself _in_--marvelling all the way as I rode home with my equally surfeited companion, at the frequency with which we call actual and severe toils, _pleasures_; and at the innumerable contrivances to which the devotees of the latter resort intentionally, as we must presume, to gain, but in reality to mar, their object. Of these contrivances I had just swallowed my first and last dose, as I then designed it to be, of the one called _a Squeeze_; a contrivance which seemed to me altogether matchless in its unsuitability of means to ends; that is, if it was really designed for _a party of pleasure!_ for after one or two hours most diligent search, I had utterly failed in finding a single spot, where even one individual could either _sit_, _stand_ or _walk_, with the slightest degree of convenience or comfort!!

To give you a still better idea of the supreme folly justly attributable to such plain country folks as myself, for venturing into places so entirely unsuitable to us, I will conclude this long epistle by relating a real incident once told to me by a gentleman who had it from the sufferer himself.