Doesticks: What He Says
by Q. K. Philander Doesticks · English · Gutenberg #39114 · 366,495 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Doesticks: What He Says
Author: Q. K. Philander Doesticks
Release date: March 12, 2012 [eBook #39114]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Doesticks and his Friends.]
Doesticks
What He Says
BY
Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B.
NEW YORK:
LIVERMORE & RUDD,
310 BROADWAY.
1856.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
EDWARD LIVERMORE,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of New York
THIS IS NEITHER
A HISTORY, ROMANCE, LIFE-DRAMA, BIOGRAPHY,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
NOR
POST MORTEM EXAMINATION,
BUT A SERIES OF
Unpremeditated Literary Extravaganzas,
WRITTEN WITHOUT MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
BY THE SINGLE HERO THEREOF,
PURELY FOR HIS OWN GLORIFICATION
AND PRINTED BY THE PUBLISHER
SOLELY FOR HIS OWN PROFIT.
Nothing.
In a literary point of view this book claims nothing:
This is the manufacturer's assertion.
In a literary point of view this book amounts to nothing.
This will be the reader's conclusion.
And if any skeptical person insists upon investigating the matter for
himself, he will eventually be compelled to acknowledge the verity of
this remark; and will, at the same time, bear a strong testimony to the
sagacity of the publisher, who has put his trust in nothing--_for he
will have bought the book_.
This work simply professes to be sketches of various persons, places,
and events--some of which have been published, and some hav'n't; some
are bad, and some are worse; but all have a claim to originality in
treatment, although the same things may have been better said by better
people.
Some of these bubbles have been, for some time, floating on the sea of
literature--the lightest froth of the restless wave; still there are
many of them which have never met the public eye, and which are here,
for the first time, set afloat.
And for their publication the writer makes no apology. Accident has
brought these "airy nothings" into notice; and although many of the
thoughts are not novel in themselves, but are merely whimsically put,
and not a few of the whims are borrowed unhesitatingly from others, they
are dressed up in a lingual garb so quaint, eccentric, fantastic, or
extravagant, that each lender would be sadly puzzled to know his own.
It is undoubtedly this trick of phrase, this affectation of a new-found
style, which has caused their widespread newspaper notoriety. And in the
hope that people will buy the book before the trick is stale, and not
suspect the secret of the joke until they read it on this page, the
writer has authorized the collection of these roving unsubstantial
ink-brats into their present shelter, and now presents the whole uncouth
family for inspection, trusting that the experiment will "put money in
the purse," not only of himself, but of his sanguine publisher.
This book, like Hodge's razors, was "made to sell;" and if the sometime
good-natured world will pay the price, and have its huge grim smile over
these unlicked fancies--although in a political, moral, or utilitarian
sense it will have gained nothing--it will, in a literal if not literary
view, lose nothing.
But if it is in a surly mood, and chooses to look with dignified
contempt upon this avowed and candid literary humbug, some one will be
disappointed to think he has miscalculated the fickle taste of the
aforesaid world and some one will be out of pocket by its sulky humor;
but _of_ these persons, their whereabouts, their circumstances, or their
names, the world can _say_ nothing; because it will know nothing; no,
nothing.
Q. K. PHILANDER DOESTICKS, P.B.
NEW YORK, _June_, 1855.
Table of Contents
I.
PAGE
How Doesticks came to think of it, 13
Hears a voice--Determined.
II.
Doesticks satisfies Philander, 18
Writing a book.
III.
Niagara, 25
IV.
Doesticks on a Bender, 26
Feels sublime--Laboring under difficulties.
V.
Seeking a Fortune--Railroad Felicities, 33
Leaves Home--Arrives in Gotham.
VI.
Seeing the Lions--Barnum's Museum, 40
Talks to Philander--Admires the Fountain--Visits Barnum's--Sees
a Free Fight.
VII.
Model Boarding Houses, 49
Finds a Boarding House--Has another home--Content.
VIII.
Potency of Croton Water, or an Aqueous Quality hitherto unknown, 57
Croton Water--Doesticks at Burton's--At Home.
IX.
Modern Witchcraft, 64
Doesticks Reflections--Visits a Fortune Teller.
X.
City Target Excursion, 73
Becomes a Military Man--Describes his Company--Attends the
drill--Wins the prize.
XI.
A New Patent Medicine Operation, 84
Patent Balsam--Receives Testimonials--Shows how it works--Sells
for cash.
XII.
Running with the "Masheen," 92
Goes to a Fire--Displays his Courage--Gets into a row--Makes
his will.
XIII.
Street Preaching--A Zealous Trio and a Religious Controversy, 102
In Rhode Island--Hears Gabriel--Shows what can be done.
XIV.
Disappointed Love, 110
Sees Calanthe Maria--Becomes Devoted--In Extacies--Learns his
Folly--Love dissipated.
XV.
Modern Patent Piety--Church-going in the City, 120
Goes to Church--Hears the organ--Looks about him--Conclusions.
XVI.
Benevolence run mad--Charitable Cheating, 130
Goes to a Ball--Attends a Fair--Solicited--Makes an
investment--Meditates.
XVII.
Millerite Jubilee--How they didn't go up, 140
Sees the Millerites--Cogitates--Offers a resolution.
XVIII.
The great "American Tragedian," 148
Visits the Theatre--Observations--Awe-stricken--Touched to
the heart.
XIX.
"Side Shows" of the City, 159
Descriptions--Suggestions--Sees Bowery Sights--Describes the
animals.
XX.
New Year's Day in New York, 169
Sleeping Friend--New Year's Calls--Observes the Callers--Hears
the music--Good Night.
XXI.
Amusement for the Million--A 2.40 Sleigh Ride, 180
With a fast nag--In a crowd--Enjoys the ride--Upsets--Speaks
of the girls.
XXII.
Cupid in Cold Weather--Valentine's Day, 193
Opinion of Valentines--Receives some.
XXIII.
The Kentucky Tavern, 200
In Kentucky--At Breakfast--Return to Michigan.
XXIV.
The River Darkies, 206
On a Steamboat--Negro Concert--Kentucky Pumpkins.
XXV.
The Thespian Wigwam, 215
Looks about him--The curtain goes up--An interesting pair.
XXVI.
Theatricals again--A Night at the Bowery, 228
Reads the Bill--Describes the Company--Satisfied.
XXVII.
Mysterious Secrets of the K. N.'s.--A Midnight Initiation--
Philander fooled, 241
Initiated--Instructed--Hoaxed.
XXVIII.
A Diabolical Conspiracy--A Shanghae Infernal Machine, 248
Doesticks' Shanghae--In Tribulation.
XXIX.
An Evening with the Spiritualists--Rampant Ghostology, 253
Doesticks and the Medium--Commune with the Spirit--Gets
information.
XXX.
Special Express from Dog Paradise--A Canine Ghost, 262
Doesticks' Dog Speaks to him--Hears his wrongs--Speaks of
his discourse.
XXXI.
'Lection Day--"Paddy" versus "Sam," 271
Investigates--Votes, and is challenged--Announces Hoggs'
Election.
XXXII.
Police Adventures--Mayor Wood Around, 283
Applies for office of M. P.--Accepted and takes his
station--Reprimanded--Discharged.
XXXIII.
Damphool defunct--Place of his Exile--Description thereof--and
Exit, 292
Dislikes Damphool's retreat--Rehearses his faults and
failings--admires his traits of character--Bids him
farewell.
XXXIV.
Keeping the Maine Law, 305
Notes the change in the times--Inspects the cellar--
Tries the vintages.
XXXV.
Theatricals once more--Shakspeare darkeyized--Macbeth in
high Colors, 313
Descriptions--Sees Macbeth--Describes the characters--Views
of the Death Scene.
XXXVI.
Young America in Long Dresses--Great Excitement in Babydom, 323
Visits the Baby Show--Describes the babies--Speaks of the
Prizes.
What He Says.
I.
How Doesticks came to think of it.
It is not pretended that this volume is a work of inspiration, or that
any portion of it has been revealed by accommodating "Spirits" through
the "Medium" of those crack-brained masculine women, or addle-headed
feminine men who profess to act as go-betweens from Earth to the Spirit
World.
No part of it has been "rapped" out by uneasy tables, or thumped out by
dancing chairs; Doctor Franklin didn't dictate it; Lord Byron didn't
write it; Napoleon wasn't consulted about it; Cardinal Richelieu didn't
have a finger in it; George the Third hadn't anything to do with it;
Shakspeare didn't suggest anything in it; and Benedict Arnold didn't
know anything about it.
That these worthies might have afforded much valuable information,
offered many important improvements, and enriched the book with a host
of wise opinions, had some sapient "Medium" asked their assistance, is
unquestionable. But as neither Andrew Jackson Davis, or any other
spiritual call boy was at the elbow of the writer to summon these
desirable but defunct individuals, they were probably left to pursue, in
unmolested peace, their favorite and dignified occupations of "tipping"
tables, knocking on partitions, drumming on floors, frightening old
women and little girls into hysterics, and upsetting the propriety of
whole parlors full of furniture, whole closets full of glass-ware, and
whole cup-boards full of pots, pans and other kitchen gear. For in such
intellectual and elevated employments are great men's ghosts engaged,
when they pass into a more refined state of existence, if we may credit
the assertions of the self-styled "_Spiritualists_."
But, unassisted, and alone, I, the writer, have undertaken this mighty
work, instigated only by the Spirits hereinafter referred to, and by the
representations of my publisher.
Although at present neither celebrated nor notorious, I have a
presentiment that I am speedily about to become one or the other.
Through an accidental rip in the curtain of futurity, I have caught a
glimpse of the Goddess of Fame. I have heard her sing out from her
rather elevated position for me to come up and take a "hasty plate" of
glory; and I have not the heart to refuse the request of such a
good-looking female, preferred in such elegant language. I am going to
shin up the slippery rope leading to her aerial temple (for accurate
dimensions and appearance, see engraving in the old Elementary Spelling
Book), for the purpose of taking a hand in the game of literary renown,
trusting that Nature has given me trumps enough to make the "game," and
that Fortune will deal me all "the honors."
For weeks I have been haunted perpetually by a voice--not a "still,
small voice"--but a large voice, a considerable voice; a voice
vociferous, unctuous, and ever-present, and withal insinuating, and not
wholly distasteful. It has been constant in my ear, suggesting pleasing
hopes and fanciful desires; and though its _notes_ were often varied,
yet ever was the _theme_ the same; and the constant burden of that
ceaseless song was, "Write a book! write a book!"
And in dreams, too, visions of good-looking ladies with wings, came into
my 7x9 chamber, and whispered in my ear, and they too said, "Write a
book! write a book!"--and one I thought, with versi-colored plumage,
with her finger on her lip, quoted the perpetually murdered Shakspeare
prophetically, and, no doubt, with an eye to the success of the volume
aforesaid, and said, suiting with a fairy-like gesture the action to the
word, "I could a tale unfold." And plucking a snowy quill, she gave it
to me, murmuring, as did all the rest, "Write a book! write a book!"
Awoke--put on my pantaloons and boots, and in my shirt sleeves sat down
to cogitate. Result is, that I shall use the lengthy quill--I shall
accept the pressing invitation of the Goddess of Fame; and in order most
effectually to _dis_-tinguish or _ex_-tinguish myself, hereby with
malice aforethought, and the penalty of a failure before my eyes, I sit
down to write a book.
But my physician informs me that I have got the "cacoethes scribendi,"
which he says is as bad as the small-pox, toothache, and yellow fever.
The disease, he says, must have its course--it may end in a malignant
biography--result in an infectious broadsword and blunderbuss, yellow
covered novel, or degenerate into a weak form of pseudo-sentimental
verse writing, in which latter case, on the appearance of the first
symptom he intends to order me a literary tombstone.
Having fully determined upon making this literary effort, it became
necessary to make up my mind as to what should be the contents of the
work. A mental cogitation ensued. Philander was puzzled to know what
Doesticks was going to write about--Philander asked Doesticks--whereupon
Doesticks, in order to satisfy Philander, replied as follows, upon
hearing which reply Philander was content.
II.
Doesticks satisfies Philander.
What it will be all about, time alone will show, for although I have
done a little of almost everything, it has in most instances been _so_
little, that a premeditated autobiography would probably lack incident,
and be deficient in interest. I have not as yet invented humbugs enough
to earn a _Prince_-ly title, and not having made a fortune by ingenious
trickery, metallic impudence and barefaced deception, cannot edify the
"darling public," by telling how the thing is done.
Never having made fierce love to a lady against her will, followed her
from place to place in the small-beer spirit of presumptuous puppyism,
been outwitted by her at last, and left to cool my amorous passion in a
prison, the story of my courtship and its consequence, would not prove
attractive.
As I have ever been on good terms with my family, I feel no desire,
under the guise of a fictitious narrative, to call any members of it
miserly and mean, purse-proud and haughty, or to say that others are
conceited, vain, selfish, silly, foppish, or weak-brained.
Novel writing is out of the question. I have tried that, but met with
serious difficulties. I couldn't keep my hero of the same nation--in the
first chapter I made him a Spaniard; two pages afterward he was an
English nobleman; in the fourth chapter an Oriental juggler, balancing a
bamboo ladder on his nose, and making a fig-tree grow out of the calf of
his leg--and so on, successively, an Italian image-seller, a Dutch
burgomaster, a South American Indian, and a Mississippi steamboat pilot.
I had as much difficulty in permanently locating the country of my
fictitious favorite, as the Know-Nothing party of New York in the late
election had, in determining the nativity of their candidate for
Governor, whose chances of election were fair while he was thought to be
an American, but who was finally defeated on the ground that he was a
Hindoo, and owned stock in the car of Juggernaut. Poetry has been
overdone; the gentle art has culminated in a recent "Spasmodic Tragedy,"
and in the sublime effusions of K. N. PEPPER, ESQ., whose matchless lays
have won for him undying fame, and the admiration of several; and who so
outruns competition that there is nothing left to be done in that
direction.
In the play-writing vein, I have also failed; not from any lack of merit
in my drama, as the manager solemnly assured me, but because he had not
the menagerie requisite to its proper representation. Improving upon the
hint offered by the managers of the "_Thespian Wigwam_," who have added
an elephant and a circus company to their company of "gifted artists," I
had introduced into my play a rhinoceros, a lioness, two hyenas, a team
of "two-forty" reindeers, a couple of ostriches, and a muley-cow,--and
even then there was but a slight obstacle--the manager might have
procured the animals, but he was afraid the cow would quarrel with the
rhinoceros, and so disturb the harmony of his establishment.
But this book, Philander, it will be impossible to class as strictly
either classic, scientific, historical, humorous, or descriptive.
Fantastic and extravagant it will be in many things; but we will do our
best to make it agreeable to the palate of the public. I promise
everything, like all book-makers, and I shall afterwards perform what is
convenient, following the same reliable precedent.
My book shall be full of love and poetry to suit the "fast" young
ladies, and shall be written in easy words of two syllables to meet the
necessities of the "fast" young men.
I shall praise, flatter, and commend everybody and everything, that
everyone may receive his meed of approbation; and I shall also censure,
find fault, and criticise in an equally universal manner, that no one
may escape his proper castigation.
I shall set forth a great multitude of fancies, theories, and
hypotheses, that those who are fond of innovation may not lack
gratification; and I shall immediately proceed to controvert and deny
them all, that the conservative portion of community be not offended.
I shall cry down education and instruction, for there are those who
consider all teaching an evil; and on the other hand, I shall advocate
learning and science, for there is a very respectable minority which
insist that the people may advantageously be taught something more.
I shall not stand up for love and charity, for it might induce people
to love the wrong persons, and to give their pennies to imposters; and
yet I shall not eulogize avarice and hate, for there are a few who think
benevolence and kindness preferable even to these.
I shall not throw my influence in the scale of Protestantism lest the
Catholics should take offence, nor yet shall strive to build up
Catholicism, lest thereby the dislike of the Orthodoxy be incurred. Nor
shall I show myself a partisan of religion of any kind, for the Atheist
says it is all a farce. Neither shall I endeavor to inculcate principles
of infidelity, for there is still an occasional prejudice in favor of
Christianity.
It will be "a work which no gentleman's library should be without." It
is considered necessary to the safety of the Union, that its democratic
principles be thoroughly disseminated, and it is indispensable to the
stability of the English throne that its monarchical doctrines be
thoroughly comprehended. Every man, woman, child, canal driver, billiard
marker, faro dealer, and member of Congress will be provided with a
copy, thereby preserving the Union, destroying our liberties, and
keeping unsullied the honor and dignity of "OUR FLAG."
I hope the public will be as well satisfied by this eloquent speech
as Philander was, that this book is one of immense utility, and will
consequently peruse the same with a huge degree of gratification.
[Illustration: Doesticks on a Bender.]
III.
Niagara.
I was never given to accepting the decisions of others as gospel in
any cases where it was possible for me to manufacture a home-made
opinion of my own; and I did not greatly wonder at myself when I
discovered that my emotions, when I first beheld that great aqueous
brag of universal Yankeedom, Niagara, were not of the stereotyped and
generally-considered-to-be-necessary--sort. The letter which follows,
and which is all the reminiscence of my visit extant, was published soon
after, and extensively copied, and was, in fact, the first article which
bore the name of Doesticks.
IV.
Doesticks on a Bender.
I have been to Niagara--you know Niagara Falls--big rocks, water, foam,
Table Rock, Indian curiosities, squaws, moccasins, stuffed snakes,
rapids, wolves, Clifton House, suspension bridge, place where the water
runs swift, the ladies faint, scream, and get the paint washed off their
faces; where the aristocratic Indian ladies sit on the dirt and make
little bags; where all the inhabitants swindle strangers; where the cars
go in a hurry, the waiters are impudent, and all the small boys swear.
When I came in sight of the suspension bridge, I was vividly impressed
with the idea that it was "some" bridge; in fact, a considerable
curiosity, and a "considerable" bridge. Took a glass of beer and walked
up to the Falls; another glass of beer and walked under the Falls;
wanted another glass of beer, but couldn't get it; walked away from the
Falls, wet through, mad, triumphant, victorious; humbug! humbug! Sir,
all humbug! except the dampness of everything, which is a moist
certainty, and the cupidity of everybody, which is a diabolical fact,
and the Indians and niggers everywhere, which is a satanic truth.
Another glass of beer--'twas forthcoming--immediately--also another, all
of which I drank. I then proceeded to drink a glass of beer; went over
to the States, where I procured a glass of beer--went up-stairs, for
which I paid a sixpence; over to Goat Island, for which I disbursed
twenty-five cents; hired a guide, to whom I paid half a dollar--sneezed
four times, at nine cents a sneeze--went up on the tower for a quarter
of a dollar, and looked at the Falls--didn't feel sublime any; tried to,
but couldn't; took some beer, and tried again, but failed--drank a glass
of beer and began to feel better--thought the waters were sent for and
were on a journey to the----; thought the place below was one sea of
beer--was going to jump down and get some; guide held me; sent him over
to the hotel to get a glass of beer, while I tried to write some
poetry--result as follows:
Oh thou (spray in one eye) awful, (small lobster in one shoe,) sublime
(both feet wet) master-piece of (what a lie) the Almighty! terrible and
majestic art thou in thy tremendous might--awful (orful) to behold,
(cramp in my right shoulder,) gigantic, huge and nice! Oh, thou that
tumblest down and riseth up again in misty majesty to heaven--thou
glorious parent of a thousand rainbows--what a huge, grand, awful,
terrible, tremendous, infinite, old swindling humbug you are; what are
you doing there, you rapids, you--you know you've tumbled over there,
and can't get up again to save your puny existence; you make a great
fuss, don't you?
Man came back with the beer, drank it to the last drop, and wished
there had been a gallon more--walked out on a rock to the edge of the
fall, woman on the shore very much frightened--I told her not to get
excited if I fell over, as I would step right up again--it would not be
much of a fall anyhow--got a glass of beer of a man, another of a woman,
and another of two small boys with a pail--fifteen minutes elapsed, when
I purchased some more of an Indian woman, and imbibed it through a
straw; it wasn't good--had to get a glass of beer to take the taste out
of my mouth; legs began to tangle up, effects of the spray in my eyes,
got hungry and wanted something to eat--went into an eating-house,
called for a plate of beans, when the plate brought the waiter in his
hand. I took it, hung up my beef and beans on a nail, eat my hat, paid
the dollar a nigger, and sided out on the step-walk, bought a boy of a
glass of dog with a small beer and a neck on his tail, with a collar
with a spot on the end--felt funny, sick--got some soda-water in a
tin-cup, drank the cup and placed the soda on the counter, and paid for
the money full of pocket--very bad headache; rubbed it against the
lamp-post and then stumped along; station-house came along and said if I
did not go straight he'd take me to the watchman--tried to oblige the
station-house, very civil station-house, very--met a baby with an Irish
woman and a wheelbarrow in it; couldn't get out of the way; she wouldn't
walk on the sidewalk, but insisted on going on both sides of the street
at once; tried to walk between her; consequence collision, awful,
knocked out the wheelbarrow's nose, broke the Irish woman all to pieces,
baby loose, court-house handy, took me to the constable, jury sat on me,
and the jail said the magistrate must take me to the constable;
objected; the dungeon put me into the darkest constable in the city; got
out, and here I am, prepared to stick to my original opinion.
Niagara, non est excelsus (ego fui) humbug est! indignus admirationi!
V.
Seeking a Fortune--Rail Road Felicities.
Young men in the west, when they get too lazy to plough, drive oxen, and
dig potatoes, invariably either go to studying Law, Physic, or Divinity,
or emigrate to New York to make their fortunes. Hence the inundation of
two-and-sixpenny pettifoggers, the abundant crop of innocent-looking
juvenile M.D.'s, and the army of weak-eyed preachers, whose original
simplicity is too deeply rooted to be ever overgrown by the cares of
after life. The portion of our country known as "the West" sends forth
every year scores of these misguided innocents, who, had they stayed at
home, might have grown up into tolerable farmers, or even been
cultivated into respectable mechanics, but who, being once thrown into
the whirl of city life, degenerate into puny clerks with not half salary
enough to pay for their patent-leather boots.
It is a curious fact that two-thirds of the young men from the country,
their first year in the metropolis, do not receive as a remuneration for
their valuable services a sum sufficient to keep them in theatre
tickets.
If a committee of their employers should be detailed to investigate the
hidden pecuniary fountain whence these young men obtain the funds many
of them lavish so freely, the said committee would be considerably
astonished to find out how much more champagne and oysters the N. Y.
merchants pay for than the most knowing of them are aware of; and their
wives would be astounded to learn how many bracelets and diamond pins
had been presented to ladies of the theatre and ballet, and bought with
their husbands' money. And many a country mother would mourn to hear
that her darling had, in the first six months of his city life, learned
to practise more vices than she had ever heard of, and among his other
attainments, had acquired the elegant city accomplishment of spending
his employer's money as freely as if it was his own.
And in due course of time the writer of this paragraph, wearied of the
eternal sameness of a country village, the same unvarying prospect of
ox-teams, hay-scales, errant swine, and wandering disconsolate cows,
took the roving fever and resolved to visit Gotham, looking for a cure.
Packed up my traps in a red box, kissed all my friends who had clean
faces, and bade a long farewell to the aspiring village (which had long
since assumed the name of city, but had never grown large enough to fit
the appellation, and for this reason always reminded me of a boy with
his father's boots on,) where I had vegetated for several years; took a
last look at its town-pump, its grocery, and its court-house square
without any fence round it; feasted my eyes for the last time upon the
dusty charms of the seminary girls who are perpetually going to the
story-and-a-half post-office for letters which never come; rode to the
railroad for the last time in the four-wheeled smoke-house, which, from
early youth, had been impressed upon my ignorant simplicity as an
omnibus; and taking my seat in the cars, left without many tears the
town where I had treasured up such stores of classic knowledge under the
consistent inattention of teachers who had been paid to neglect my
education.
Paid the man with the brass door-plate on him, sixteen dollars and a
half for a dirty piece of pasteboard,--hung up my carpet-bag on a hook
which immediately broke down, and let the aforesaid bag drop on the
bonnet of a populous lady with a pair of twins, whom it completely
demolished for the time--settled myself in my seat for a comfortable
nap--was continually roused therefrom by the door-plate man, who seemed
to have a mania for inspecting the dirty pasteboard every fifteen
minutes--got my mouth full of dust and cinders, which I converted into a
mortar-bed in my stomach by drinking warm water from the spout of a
water-pot (brought round by the boy who expects you to buy his greasy
apples and ancient newspapers as a compensation for the temporary
dilution)--changed cars about twenty times, and had the satisfaction of
seeing my trunk pitched about by the vindictive baggagemen at every
step, as if they were under obligations to knock it to pieces in the
least possible space of time. (When it arrived at the end of my journey
the lock was broken, the hinges pulled off, and a large hole punched in
the end, so that I found my clean shirts full of gravel, and that a
piece of brick which had got in through the place where the lock had
been, had been rubbed against a daguerreotype of my lady-love, thereby
demolishing her left eye and scratching the top of her head off.) Rode
all night; every time I would get into an uncomfortable doze the train
would stop, more passengers come in, and I would have to vacate my seat
to accommodate some woman with three children and a multitude of bundles
(a woman in a railroad car always occupies four times as much room as
she pays for, generally turning over the back of the seat next to her,
and occupying one place for herself and the other three for her
provisions and bandboxes)--then finding another place, and getting into
an uneasy dream about earthquakes, wash-tubs, bass-drums, and
threshing-machines, and waking up with a sudden choke when some
unusually large cinder got into my mouth--coming to a sudden stop at
some side station and finding my anatomical constituents in a most
uncomfortable state of paralysis; my arms fast asleep and feeling like
frozen sausages; my other extremities ditto, and with no more feeling in
them than in a bass-wood log; having a dim consciousness that something
was wrong, and endeavoring to navigate by means of the benumbed members
before alluded to, and get out doors to see what the matter was, and in
the attempt falling over the stove and knocking my teeth out against the
coal-hod--being called at four o'clock in the morning to assist in the
dismal farce of breakfast, and sitting down (with my hat on and my hands
dirty in order to be in the fashion) at a long table where the crockery
looks as if it had not been washed in a month, and the only visible
viands are cold biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, and despairing mutton-chops
struggling inextricably in a tallowy ocean--where the half-awake waiters
bring you apple-pie in place of coffee, and pour the hot water down your
back, and spill the sugar in your hair--where, in the midst of your
second mouthful, you are called upon to suspend operations and pay half
a dollar to a man with uncombed hair who gives you wild-cat paper and
crossed quarters in exchange for your Yankee gold--and where, before the
third morsel reaches your expectant lips, the bell rings, the malicious
engine gives its vicious shriek, and you are hurried, swindled and
starving, into the cars again.
In this delectable manner for two days and nights I was hurried,
hustled, and tumbled towards my journey's end--reached my destination at
last, crossed the North River in one of those ferry-boats which run
either end first like a crab, and on my arrival was instantly attacked
by a crowd of runners, was forcibly thrust into a hack, the remains of
my trunk tossed at my feet, and in obedience to my panting request, I
was driven to that hotel, the cognomen whereof is simultaneously
suggestive of holy men and of the adversary.
VI.
Seeing the Lions--Barnum's Museum.
As soon as I had become comfortably established as a citizen of New
York, and had replaced the straw hat with a green ribbon, which
decorated my head at the time of my metropolitan advent, by a shining
beaver with white fur on the under side; had run in debt for a new suit
of clothes, and sold my trunk to buy a set of gold shirt-studs, I began
to assume that knowing air of superiority which ever distinguishes the
thorough-bred city man from his country cousins.
I made up my mind to devote the next six months of my valuable time, to
seeing the sights, and becoming acquainted with the celebrities of the
town. To this end I proposed to visit the various places of amusement,
to go on excursions, join volunteer companies, run to fires, in short,
to make myself ever present, wherever there was anything to be seen, to
which the verdant eyes of a backwoods Wolverine were unaccustomed.
I addressed myself a speech wherein I remarked, "Phil, you have now been
a resident of this city long enough to know something of the localities
thereto appertaining--know where the City Hall is--ditto Hospital. Also
where the Astor House is generally located--can tell the general
direction of Mercer and Bowery streets from the Crystal Palace--and can
at most times of day point out Trinity Church with a tolerable degree of
accuracy.
"But there are, nevertheless, sundry other points of interest, with
which you should become familiar, and divers other objects whose names
you should remember, that hereafter you may not mistake a Grand Street
stage for a perambulating Circus wagon; or again, point out the Wall
Street Ferry House to a friend and assure him it is the Hippodrome
building, but be able after this to give reliable and correct
information on these points to all who ask."
Accordingly, since that time, I have striven hard to acquire such a
knowledge of the city that I could find any of the theatres without a
Directory, and get home at any time of night without the escort of a
Policeman.
Have been to the Battery, for which I paid a shilling to the
dilapidated Hibernian who attends the iron portal--afterwards visited
(by particular desire,) the cocked-hat shaped Sahara known as the "City
Hall Square"--saw the splendid fountain with its symmetrical basin
filled with golden fishes (as I was credibly informed)--I could not
exactly perceive them myself--in the midst of its elegant miniature
forest (yet in its infancy)--gazed with admiration at the ancient
structure denominated the City Hall--said to have been built by the
ancient Greeks, of which I have not the slightest doubt, as all the
avenues leading thereto were thronged with _modern_ Greeks, whose
general costume was not so classically correct as I could have
wished--looked at the glorious fountain which adorns the centre of the
spacious lawn--admired the magnificent proportions of the vast forest
trees which rear their lofty forms therein--gazed long and earnestly at
the glittering jet (not quite so lofty as I had been led to suppose,) of
the magnificent fountain which embellishes the princely grounds--then
turned to look at a circular edifice, which, I confess, did not strike
me as being remarkable for architectural beauty, but which undoubtedly
is exceedingly useful--then turned to feast my wondering eyes upon the
diamond-glittering drops of a fountain near at hand; looked with much
approbation upon the wide and spacious avenues, and the clearly
gravelled walks, and also at a fountain near by, which I think I have
before mentioned; surveyed the other fine buildings near at hand, which
adorn and beautify that triangular piece of earth; and ever returned
with constantly increasing gratification to view a beautiful lake in the
centre thereof, from the midst of which burst forth in aqueous glory the
waters of a fountain; soon, convinced that I had seen my money's worth,
prepared to leave--casting one longing, lingering look behind (as my
friend L. E. G. Gray says,) at the glorious old classic ruin, the hall,
and the pluvial splendors of the fountain.
Went out, but looking back, perceived that in the splendid park I had
just left, there rose in "misty majesty" (vide somebody,) the jet of a
fountain. Resolved to return and have another look at the ivied and
crumbling ruins, and also to inspect minutely a fountain which I now
perceived hard by.
Wishing to be perfectly _posted_ up, I went to the _Post_ office (the
_Evening Post_ office), and obtained a paper containing the latest news
of the day, and also a list of entertainments for the evening. Desiring
to see the Museum, of which I had read, and also to behold Barnum, of
whom I had heard some mention, in connection, I think, with one Thomas
Thumb, and Joice Heth, an antiquated and venerable lady, colored (who
afterwards _died_), I determined instantly to visit that place of
delectation, "perfectly regardless of expense."
Arrived at the door, man demanded a quarter, but, like Byron's Dream, "I
had no further change," so was necessitated to get a bill broke; offered
him Washtenaw, but that was too effectually _broke_ to suit his purpose.
Got in somehow, after a lengthy delay, and some internal profanity.
Soon after my entrance, young man, attired in a dress-coat, a huge
standing collar, and a high hat, introduced himself as "A. Damphool,
Esq.," gentleman of leisure, and man about town. Having never before had
any experience of a class of individuals who compose, I am told, a large
proportion of the masculine population of the city, I eagerly embraced
the opportunity of making his acquaintance.
He also presented his friend "Mr. Bull Dogge," and we three then
proceeded to view the curiosities; we commenced with the double-barreled
nigger baby (which Bull Dogge says is an illegitimate devil),--went on
to the Rhinoceros (who is always provided with a horn, Barnum's
temperance talk to the contrary nevertheless)--the Happy Family--the
two-legged calf, (B. D. says it is not the only one in the city), a red
darkey--a green Yankee--a white Irishman (Damphool says that this latter
individual is an impossibility, and could only have originated with
Barnum)--wax-figure of a tall man in a blue coat, with a star on his
breast, (Damphool says it is a policeman, who was found when he was
wanted; but Bull Dogge says there was never any such person, and that
the whole story is a Gay fable,) found by the programme that it is
supposed to represent Louis Napoleon; never knew before that he had one
eye black, and one blue (Bull Dogge asserts that the usual custom is to
have one eye both black _and_ blue); wax model of the railroad man who
swindled the community (now living on his money, and president of the
Foreign Mission Society for the suppression of pilfering on the Foo-Foo
Islands); wax figure of the abandoned, dissolute, and totally depraved
woman, who filched half a loaf of bread to give her hungry children, and
who was very properly sent to Blackwell's Island for it--also of the
City Contractor who _did_ clean the streets--(Damphool states that he is
residing at Utica).
Saw a great multitude of monkeys, streaked face, white face, black
face, hairy face, bald face (Bull Dogge prefers the latter), with a
great assortment of tails, differing in length, and varying as to color,
long tails, short tails, stump tails, ring tails, wiry tails, curly
tails, tails interesting and insinuating, tails indignant and
uncompromising, big tails, little tails, bob tails, (Damphool suggests
Robert narratives), and no tails (Bull Dogge says that some effeminate
descendants of this latter class now promenade Broadway, and he swears
that they have greatly degenerated in intelligence); pictures, paddles,
pumpkins, carriages, corals, lava, boats, breeches, boa constrictors,
shells, oars, snakes, toads, butterflies, lizards, bears, reptiles,
reprobates, bugs, bulls, bells, bats, birds, petrifactions,
putrefactions, model railroads, model churns, model gridirons, model
artists, model babies, cockneys, cockades, cockroaches, cocktails,
scalps, Thomashawks, Noah's ark, Paganini's fiddle, Old Grimes's coat,
autocrats, autobiographies, autographs, chickens, cheeses, codfish,
Shanghais, mud-turtles, alligators, moose, mermaids, hay-scales, scale
armor, monsters, curiosities from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Beaverdam, Chow
Sing, Tchinsing, Linsing, Lansing, Sing Sing, cubebs, cart wheels,
mummies, heroes, poets, idiots, maniacs, benefactors, malefactors,
pumps, porcupines and pill machines, all mingled, mixed, and
conglomerated, like a Connecticut chowder, or the Jew soup of the
Witches in Macbeth.
Upstairs at last, and into an adolescent theatre, christened a Lecture
Room, (Damphool says it is known as the Deacon's Theatre, and that all
his pious namesakes attend). Saw the play, laughed, cried, and felt good
all over. Much pleased with a bit of fun originating in a jealous
fireman, and terminating in a free fight.
Fireman Mose saw Rose, his sweetheart, with Joe, the hackman; got
jealous, pitched into him--fun--thought of Tom Hood, and went off at
half-cock--thus--
Enter Rose with Joe--sees Mose--Mose beaus Rose; Rose knows those beaux
foes--Joe's bellicose--so's Mose--Mose blows Joe's nose--Joe's blows
pose Mose--Rose Oh's--Mose hoes Joe's rows--Joe's blows chose Mose's
nose--Mose shows Joe's nose blows--Joe's nose grows rose--Mose knows
Joe's nose shows those blows--Joe goes--Mose crows.
Joe being whipped, and moreover being the only innocent one in the whole
fight, was arrested by the vigilant and efficient police.
Damphool says that Joe treated the Emerald conservators of the public
quiet, and is again at large.
Let Mose beware.
VII.
Model Boarding Houses.
Immediately upon my arrival in the city of Newsboys and Three-cent
Stages, I proceeded, as is hereinbefore mentioned, to the white-faced
Hotel which is surmounted by the bird called Shanghai, who seems from
the top of his lofty perch where he roosts in unreachable security, to
crow over neighboring boroughs, and exult in the great glory of the
Manhattan Island. It required, however, but a few days to weary of the
"constant noise and confusion" of this saintly mansion, and to become
sick of the eternal presence of men in white aprons who are everywhere
at the same time, and who are, mathematically speaking, a constant
quantity.
These waiters are certainly ubiquitous; at the table there is one at
each elbow, at night a stranger is escorted to bed by a grand
procession, and one pulls off his boots while another unbuttons his
shirt-collar, and a third lights the gas and turns down the bed-clothes;
a waiter meets you at the door, another takes away your overcoat and
gives it to a waiter who presents you with a brass check for it--there
are waiters in the bar, in the washroom, in the barber-shop, in the
cellar, in the reading-room; waiters running races through the halls all
night; there is always a snowy neckerchief and an outstretched palm when
you leave the premises, and on sunshiny days there is invariably a
distant glimpse of a white-jacket on the roof of the house.
As soon after my arrival as I could collect my senses, and knew enough
not to take every M. P. for a foreign ambassador, and pull off my hat to
the Star, I deemed it advisable to search for lodgings more quiet, and
not so expensive.
It took about a fortnight to restore my mind to its accustomed serenity,
and then having become, to a certain extent, a fixture in this high old
town, it became necessary to search out a fit habitation, wherein I
might eat, sleep, change my shirt (Damphool blushes), and attend to the
other comforts of the external _homo_, and the inner individual.
My friend Bull Dogge having deserted his late place of residence, (on
account of the perpetual reign of salt mackerel at the breakfast table),
we started together on a voyage of discovery. To describe all the
dilapidated gentlewomen, whose apartments we inspected--all the many
inducements which were used to persuade us to take up our quarters in
all sorts of musty smelling rooms, and to recount how many promises we
made to "call again," would take too much time.
Suffice it to say, that at six o'clock in the evening, wearied out and
desperate, we cast anchor in the domicile of an Irish lady with one eye.
She assured us that her boarders were all "rispictible, and found their
own tibaccy, and that there was divil a bug in the place."
We took adjoining rooms, and resignedly went down to tea.
I noticed that my cup had evidently sustained a compound comminuted
fracture, and been patched up with putty (which came off in my
tea)--that the bread was scant--the butter powerful--the tea, "on the
contrary, quite the reverse,"--however, although matters looked somewhat
discouraging--"hoping against hope"--we retired to our respective rooms.
Horror of horror!! O! most horrible!!! I was besieged--had I been
Sebastopol itself I could not have been attacked with more vigor, or by
more determined and bloodthirsty enemies.
For two hours I maintained a sanguinary combat with an odoriferous band
of determined cannibal insects--armed only with a fire-shovel, I
gallantly kept up the unequal conflict--but the treacherous implement
broke at the critical moment; I thought I should be compelled to
yield--despair filled all my senses--my heart failed me--my brain grew
dizzy with horror--hurried thoughts of enemies unpardoned--of duties
neglected--and of errors committed, rushed across my mind--a last
thought of cherished home and absent friends was in my heart, and with a
hasty prayer for mercy and forgiveness, was at the point of yielding,
when my frantic eye caught sight of my cast-iron boot-jack. With an
exclamation of pious gratitude to heaven, (Bull Dogge says it did not
sound so to him), I seized it, and with the desperate strength of a
dying man I renewed the battle, and eventually came off victorious and
triumphant. Weary with slaughter, I fell exhausted on the bed, and slept
till morning; Bull Dogge, who had been engaged in the same delightful
occupation, appeared at the breakfast table with one eye black, and his
face spotted like a he-tiger. We held a council of war, and resolved
instantly to quit the premises of the Emerald Islander, who had agreed
to "lodge and eat" us (the she-Cyclops), and who had so nearly fulfilled
the latter clause by proxy.
Another search and another home. Here for a week things went on
tolerably well; the steak was sometimes capable of mastication, the
coffee wasn't _always_ weak, nor the butter always strong; but one day
there appeared at breakfast a dish of beef, (Bull Dogge asserts that it
was the fossil remains of an omnibus horse)--it was not molested; at
dinner it made its appearance again, still it was not disturbed; at tea
fragments of it were visible, but it yet remained untouched; in the
morning a tempting looking stew made its appearance, but, alas! it was
only a weak invention of the enemy to conceal the ubiquitous beef; at
dinner a meat-pie enshrined a portion of the aforesaid beef; it went
away unharmed.
For a week, every day, at every meal, in every subtle form, in some
ingenious disguise, still was forced upon our notice this omnipresent
beef; it went through more changes than Harlequin in the Pantomime, and
like that nimble individual came always out uninjured.
At the end of the second day Bull Dogge grumbled to himself; the third
he spoke "out in meeting;" the fourth he growled audibly; the fifth he
had an hour's swear to himself in his own room; the sixth, seventh, and
eighth, he preserved a dignified silence; but his silence was ominous,
on the ninth day we both left.
Our next landlady had a gigantic mouth, but her nose was a magnificent
failure. We stayed with her a week, and left because she seemed to be
possessed of the idea that one sausage was enough for two men. For a
month longer we ran the gauntlet of all the model boarding-houses. We
were entrapped by all kinds of alluring promises, and perpetually
swindled without any regard to decency; we had a taste of Yankee,
French, Dutch, and, I have mentioned it before, (ye gods!), _Irish_; and
we lived four days in an establishment presided over by a red-eyed
darkey, with a wife the color of a new saddle.
At last one day in an agony of despair I exclaimed, "Where, O where can
humbugged humanity find a decent place to feed?" Echo answered, "In the
eating-houses." We resolved to try it, and the result is glorious. We
have achieved a victory, sir, an heroic, unexpected victory.
And now farewell, all scrawny landladies, ye snuffy beldames, with your
wooden smiles; farewell, ye viviparous bedsteads, ye emaciated feather
beds, and ye attenuated bolsters; a long good-bye to scant blankets and
mattresses stuffed with shavings; farewell to hirsute butter and to
ancient bread; good-bye (I say it with a tear,) ye immortal, everlasting
beef; farewell to sloppy coffee and to azure milk (Damphool says, not
yet); farewell ye antediluvian pies, and you lilliputian puddings;
farewell you two-inch napkins, and ye _holy_ table-cloths; farewell ye
empty grates and rusty coal-scuttles; farewell ye cracked mirrors which
make a man look like a drunken Satyr; farewell ye respectable chairs
with dislocated limbs; farewell ye fractured teacups, ye broken forks,
and knives with handsaw edges; farewell, in fact, all ye lodging houses,
where you _can't_ have a latch-key, and where you _can_ tell when they
get a new hired girl by the color of the hairs in the biscuit.
(I noticed this last remarkable fact a long time since.)
Give us joy, for we have found a place where things are done up right,
where we can choose our own viands, where the beef is positively tender,
where there are no little red ants in the sugar, where the potatoes are
not waxy, and where, if anything goes wrong, we can inflate the waiter.
In fact, we are suited; if anything runs short, "John gets particular
_fits_" and "nuthin' shorter;" where we can eat _when_ we please, and
call for _what_ we please; where charges are moderate, and it is
permitted to grumble at the waiter for nothing.
And here, in this Elysian spot, have Bull Dogge and I taken our daily
bread (beans and butter included) for the past month, "without fear and
without reproach."
As our poetical friend, Thomas Plus, has remarked,
"Joy, joy, forever, our task is done,
Our trials are past, and our Restaurant is _some_."
Damphool says my concluding quotation is not strictly correct, but what
does he know about it?
VIII.
The Potency of Croton Water, or an aqueous
quality hitherto unknown.
It has been a cherished superstition of our ancestors that water as a
beverage is innocuous; I myself was laboring under this infatuated
delusion when I left the shades of private life, and the sweet retiracy
of the swamps of Michigan, to become a denizen of the Island City.
Believing that my previous experience in the article justified me in
drinking freely of the treacherous liquid, I did not hesitate on my
arrival here to imbibe on various occasions as much of the undiluted
Croton as my thirsty body seemed to need.
How I was deceived in the potency of the fluid a single night's
experience will show; I am confident that on this particular occasion I
was bewitched by the mischievous God of the stream called the Croton,
and that, if I had given him any further opportunities to exercise his
craft, my name would positively have appeared in the Police Reports some
morning, and Doesticks would have been therein stigmatized as "_Drunk
and Disorderly_."
But the imputation would be slanderous,--I will lay before the public
the events of a single night, and its verdict shall be a triumphant
vindication of my character,--shall exculpate the Deity Bacchus (now
resident in Ohio,) from the grave charge of leading me astray,--and lay
the entire blame of the transaction upon the rascal River God.
Only once in my life have I been drunk. It was a youthful inebriation,
caused by partaking too freely of cider made from apples with worms in
them. At present I am sober. If, since my sojourn in this city, I have
been intoxicated, then the time has arrived when any person who wishes
to have a regular "drunk" need only apply to the nearest hydrant.
Heretofore I have supposed water to be a beverage innocent and harmless;
but now--well; no matter--I will not anticipate. Listen while I relate a
"plain, unvarnished tale."
I left my boarding-house in company with a friend, intending to witness
the Shakspearian revival at Burton's--the "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Before leaving the hotel, at his suggestion, we partook of a potable,
known, I think, as punch--_whiskey punch_. I watched attentively the
preparation of this agreeable beverage, and I am certain that there
entered into its composition a certain amount of water--Croton water, as
I have every reason to believe; and I am also sure that in that
treacherous draught I imbibed the first instalment of that villanous
liquid which produced the diabolical state of facts I am about to
describe; and also that the second and third of those ingenious
inventions (both of which we drank on the spot) were as guilty, in this
respect, as their "illustrious predecessor!"
And I furthermore conscientiously state that _my_ glass of brandy (one
of a couple we ordered soon afterwards), and which, according to my
invariable custom, should have been "_straight_," was also
surreptitiously diluted with the same detestable fluid by the malicious
bar-keeper, for I remember experiencing a slight confusion on going out,
and mistaking a topsail schooner for the Broadway theatre.
We immediately entered another saloon to procure the wherewith to
steady our nerves, when we partook of two gin cocktails and a brandy
smash individually, and I state, according to the best of my knowledge
and belief, that our principal ingredient in each and every one of these
compounds was water--Croton water--culpably introduced therein by some
evil-disposed persons without my knowledge or consent.
On leaving this saloon, I noticed that my friend, although a single man,
had by some mysterious process of multiplication become two. I kept fast
hold of both, and, after doubling, with a great deal of difficulty, a
great number and variety of corners, we reached Burton's. Tickets being
mysteriously procured, we entered, and eventually obtained seats.
Finding, after prolonged trial, that it was impracticable to put my hat
in my vest pocket, I placed it on the floor, and put both feet in it.
The theatre generally seemed to be somewhat mixed up. The parquette,
gallery, and dress circle were all one; and the stage was whirling round
at a rate which must have been extremely inconvenient to the revolving
actors.
At length, after a liberal allowance of overture, the curtain went up,
and I was enabled, by the most unremitting attention, to concentrate the
actors sufficiently to understand the performance. And many things which
I hitherto deemed dramatically incorrect were presented to my wondering
vision then and there.
"Hippolyta" was dressed in knee-breeches and brogans, and "Titania" did
not, to me, present a very fairy-like appearance in a fireman's red
shirt and a three-cocked hat. "Oberon" was not so objectionable (being a
gentleman,) in a talma and plaid pantaloons, though even he might have
blacked his boots and omitted the spurs. I fear I did not properly
appreciate the rest of the fairies, who had their heads decorated with
sunflowers and their hands full of onions.
At last the entertainment was concluded, and I remember consulting with
my duplicated friend as to the feasibility of a return to Brooklyn, to
our boarding-house. On our journey thither we witnessed many strange
things about which I desire information.
In the first place, is it the custom, as a general thing, for the City
Hall and Barnum's Museum to indulge in an animated contra-dance up and
down Broadway in the middle of the night, accompanied in their fantastic
movements, by the upper story of Stewart's and the Bible Society's
building? For they certainly did on that eventful evening, and I feel
called upon to enter my solemn protest against these nocturnal
architectural saltatory exhibitions, as unworthy the dignity of the
Empire City.
And I would, with all humility, suggest, that if the stony goddess of
Justice, whose appropriate place is on the top of the City Hall, will
desert her responsible post, she might choose a more becoming amusement
than sitting cross-legged on the top of a Houston street stage, playing
the jews-harp.
I am _now_ convinced that Bowling-Green fountain is not _permanently_
located on the top of Trinity Church cross; but that it _was_ on that
memorable night, my wondering eyes bore ample testimony.
I am sufficiently well acquainted with the city to know that the Astor
House should be found on the corner of Barclay street, but I am ready to
take my oath that on that particular occasion it plied as an opposition
ferry-boat between Whitehall street and Hamilton avenue. The last thing
I distinctly recollect is trying to pay the fare for three on this novel
craft, with a single piece of money (which I _now_ know to have been a
Bungtown copper), and demanding two-and-sixpence change, which I didn't
get.
In the morning I found myself in bed with my overcoat on, and
afterwards discovered my boots under the pillow--my hat in the grate,
with my pantaloons and hair-brush in it--my watch in the water-jug, and
my latch-key in the bird-cage. I presume I had tried to write a letter
to some one with my tooth-brush, as I found that article in my inkstand.
Now, if Croton water interferes with my susceptible system in this
unaccountable manner, what shall I drink? I would resort to milk, but I
fear our city edition of the lacteal contains sufficient of the aqueous
enemy to again upset my too delicate nerves. I exclaim, like Caesar, when
he, too, was afflicted with superfluity of water, "Help me, Cassius, or
I sink!"
What would be the effect of brandy and water without any water, and a
little lemon?
IX.
Modern Witchcraft.
It has been asserted, that no humbug can be invented which is so
improbable that it will find no believers. No theory is too ridiculous,
no folly too great to turn the stomach of the modern wonder-seeking
Public; it opens its staring eyes, perhaps, a little wider than usual at
some transcendent tomfoolery, but its sapient optics have as yet
discerned nothing in all the superfluous deceptions and jugglery of the
age, too hugely nonsensical to be swallowed without even a single qualm.
Hence, all the "pathies" and "isms" of medical Empiricism, all the
newly discovered charlatanry of the legal trade, and even the latest
form of religious quackery, that new device of bashful, half-grown,
bastard Infidelity, denominated Spiritualism, which would be impious if
it was not idiotic, have all received from the wise ones of the
nineteenth century belief and credence.
For at this time of triumphant and successful humbug--when
indiscriminate puffery is freely used to boost into notice all kinds of
sham, deception, and deceit, which thereupon grow fat and thrive--when
vermin exterminators, lucifer matches, and patent blacking employ such
high-flown language in commendation of their merits, that inventions of
real merit and importance must resort to the basest bombast to keep pace
with the foolery of their neighbors--when solid merit which _would_
succeed, must vie in euphuistic phrase with brainless emptiness which
_will_--when, in Literature, inane collections of stolen wit, diluted
humor, and feeble fiction are spawned in scores from weak-brained fops
and aspiring women, inflated by unsparing puffery into a transient
notoriety, and palmed upon the public as works of sterling merit--when
even these Doestick Letters are purchased and perused, it may easily be
imagined that no impudent humbug, if properly managed, will turn the
stomach of the enlightened Yankee Nation.
It is not astonishing, that, in a sort of gross imitation of the
clairvoyants and spirit-seers, other persons not quite so intellectual
perhaps, but fully as reliable should also profess to hold converse with
invisible beings.
The _fortune-tellers_ of the city are these, and they certainly deserve
praise for attempting to apply their pretended knowledge to some
practical use, instead of dealing entirely with abstractions. In New
York these people are numerous, and they pick up as many coppers in
quite as honest a way as their fellows in the art of table-tipping
notoriety.
Having read the advertisement of a Grand street fortune-teller, who
advertised herself the "seventh daughter of a seventh daughter," a
lineal descendant from some one of the Egyptian magicians who couldn't
kill the frogs--I straightway resolved to pay her a visit.
Since that memorable day my destiny is no longer a mystery. I know it
all. I know what kind of a woman I'm to marry, how many children we're
to have, how many will die of measles, and how many will be choked with
the croup, and can calculate to a quart how much castor oil I shall have
to lay in for family consumption. I've had my fortune told by a witch.
The witches of modern time do not frequent graves and gibbets at
midnight--they hold no nocturnal orgies with dancing skeletons and
corpses, brought by the black art back to temporary life--they
now-a-days take no pains to conceal their trade, but advertise it in the
daily papers.
Their believers are not now the great men and wise women of the earth
alone, but chamber-maids and servant girls who want love-powders to win
some noble swain--or some verdant countryman anxious to recover the
pilfered eelskin which contained his treasured pennies. They easily
satisfy these gullible customers, by promising the first no end of rich,
handsome princes, who are to appear some day and carry off their brides
in four-horse coaches; and the latter by an extemporaneous description
of the thief, and a wish that he may suffer pains in his head, heart,
liver, and all other important parts of his body, until the property is
restored.
Witchcraft is rife in our midst, and we do not hang or burn the hags and
beldames who practice it, or stick them full of needles, or duck them in
the horse-ponds, as in the good old days of Salem--more's the pity.
In this day of railroads and three-cent stages, they have no occasion
to perform their journeys upon broomsticks; and in our city, where cream
is only traditionary, they cannot bewitch their neighbors' churnings, or
throw their dire enchantments over the incipient cheese--so the
protective horse-shoe is of no avail.
They have robbed the trade of all its mystery and romance; we hear no
more of mighty magician, with hoary beard and flowing robe, with magic
wand and attendant spirits; no more "weird sisters," with talon fingers
and sunken eyes; not even romantic wandering gipsies--but ugly women,
with unwashed hands, who can't spell.
The calling has degenerated, and the necromantic trade has passed into
the hands of unworthy successors, who would steal their living, if
cheating wasn't easier. And the trade thrives, and the swindling
practisers thereof flaunt in silks, while honest virtue staves off
destitution by making "hickory" shirts at eight cents a piece.
Went up town, found the house, rung the bell, and was shown into a
shabby room by a stuttering girl, who informed me by instalments that
her mistress would see me presently. Examined the furniture--rickety
table, ditto chairs, bare floor with knot-holes in it, unctuous mirror,
two hair trunks, a clothes basket, and a hat-box.
Enter mistress--minus youth, beauty, hair-pins and clean stockings.
She wore no flowing robe figured with cabalistic signs, she bore no
sable wand of magic, but she was clad in a calico dress, and had a brass
candlestick in her hand--she drew no mystic circle, she performed no
inscrutable incantations, she spoke in no unknown tongue--but she put
the candlestick on the rickety table, sat down in a cane-bottomed chair,
and asked me what my name was, and what I wanted.
Told her I wanted to find out who I was going to marry, and wanted her
to tell me a lucky number in the lottery, which should draw a prize big
enough to support the family--also wanted a description of the man who
stole my jack-knife, and a knowledge of the place where I could find the
same.
Now she began to work--she did not consult the stars--she did not cast
my horoscope--she did not even ask me where I was born, or what my
father did for a living--she exhibited no strange paraphernalia of
sorcery and conjuration--no obscure language, suggestive of a divination
or enchantment, fell from her prophetic lips.
She only asked me if I had any moles on my person, and what I dreamed
about last night--then plunging her hand through a slit in the side of
her dress, she fished out from some unknown depth a pack of cards.
Greasy were they, and well worn--the knave of spades had his legs torn
off, the queen of diamonds had her face scratched with a thimble, two of
the aces were stuck together with beeswax, and the king of clubs had
evidently been used to skim flies out of the molasses.
After much shuffling of the royal and plebeian members of the pack, she
got them fixed to her satisfaction, and I proceeded to draw therefrom
nine cards, which she disposed in three symmetrical piles; then looked
them over--bit her lip--stamped her foot; then told me that my knife had
been stolen by a squint-eyed Irishman, who had disposed of it to his
uncle for a dozen cotton night-caps, sixty cigars and thirty cents ready
money, and that if I was anxious to reclaim it, I would find it at No. 1
Round the Corner.
Asked her if I was big enough to lick the Irishman, at which she waxed
indignant, and for a moment I half feared she would turn me into some
horrible monster; that, like Circe of old, she would exercise her magic
power, and qualify me to play a star engagement at the Metropolitan
Theatre by transforming me into an elephant, a she-wolf, or a Bengal
tiger.
But, as my mouth didn't get any larger, my toe nails grow any longer, or
my fingers change to claws; as I felt no growing appetite for blood, and
my nose didn't elongate into a trunk, I soon recovered my equanimity.
Then she went on to say that No. 67 would draw me a prize in the
lottery, and that I could get it of "Sam"--that I would marry a
red-haired woman, who would die and leave me with a nursing baby--that I
would then be "jilted" by a widow, and finally wed a lady whose
description corresponds exactly with my present washer-woman; our family
is to increase to seventeen; my second son is to be President, and my
eldest daughter is to run away with the Czar of all the Russias. She
wasn't exactly positive about the manner of my death, but from the looks
of the jack of clubs, she "judged I should break my neck coming home
from a clam-bake."
Gave her a dollar, and left. A month has passed--67 seems a promising
number--hav'n't got my knife yet, but live in hope--have seen my future
wife, hav'n't yet proposed, but have reason to suppose she would not
object.
She was in Catharine street, and had a basket on her head full of
shrimps.
[Illustration: City Target Excursion.]
X.
City Target Excursion.
In this City, which, even in cholera seasons, is most heroically
nasty, when the filth in Broadway gets so deep as to stop the stages and
throw the cars off the track, men are sent round by the City to expend
an infinity of labor in hoeing it into symmetrical heaps, like miniature
fortifications. In fact, if plenitude of mud could avail to protect a
town from invading foes, New York might bid the world defiance, for all
the allied powers of all the earth could no more reduce our (in that
case) impregnable City, than the late chivalrous Lord Forth could take
Sebastopol, by lying flat on his back, and calling for his ma to come
and take him home. As the City authorities content themselves with
_erecting_ these picturesque monuments, and do not trouble themselves to
remove the same, but leave them to adorn the landscape, of course the
first rain metamorphoses the fragrant mass from an embryo mountain to a
diminutive lake, almost disgusting enough to make a street contractor
sick. No lady attempts the perilous navigation of our streets, unless
she has been a couple of seasons at Newport or Rockaway, and learned to
swim like a mermaid. And any man who would black his boots in the
morning, would be taken to the Lunatic Asylum before night. A search for
a dry crossing would be a hopeless pilgrimage, and he who would find a
get-over-able-without-getting-your-shoes-full-of-mud street in this
metropolis, would wear his life out in a fruitless exploration, and be
prematurely planted in Greenwood, with his object unattained. In
ordinary times the ladies sweep the sidewalks tolerably clean with their
trailing skirts, but now they seem to have thrown up their contract.
Coming down town the other day in a stage, our reckless driver tried the
depth of one of the above mentioned municipal lakes--the wheels stuck
fast--the vehicle settled into the hopeless depth--one scream from the
ladies--one unanimous curse from the men--one frantic, furious,
ineffectual struggle of the horses, and in another instant we were
floating a hopeless wreck. Every one for himself. I saw one of the
ladies dragged safely out by the hair--men eventually reached the land
in safety, but I rejoiced to see a malignant baby, (which during our
journey had screamed and kicked one half the time, and the other half
persisted in calling me "Daddy," and soiling my shirt-front with its
sticky fingers,) go to the bottom amid a universal chorus of
thanksgiving from the company. Got ashore myself, with my coat spoiled,
my hat minus, my boots full of water, and my whole person "dripping from
the recent flood," like a he-Venus rising from an odoriferous ocean.
As a consequence of my involuntary bath, I have since been afflicted
with a severe toothache, pleading which comfortable and soothing ail, I
obtained leave of absence for a day from the popular establishment where
I have the honor to sell peanuts and pop-corn to the confiding public,
and I resolved to employ the unusual holiday in attending one of the
peculiar institutions of grown-up New York, denominated a "TARGET
SHOOT."
From the incongruous population of the village aforesaid, target
companies spring up with the rapidity and profusion of mushrooms in an
old pasture. In all other cities they are exotics, and never have a
vigorous and healthy existence--here only are they indigenous, and on
Manhattan Island do they flourish in native luxuriance.
The materials are varied--the ingredients sometimes curious--a company
being sometimes composed entirely of journeymen tailors, blacksmiths'
apprentices, master carpenters, clerks, porters, coalheavers,
stagedrivers, candy-peddlers, pop-corn men, or those persevering
individuals who roast perpetual chestnuts on the sidewalk in tin
pans--fire companies, express companies, policemen, gangs of men from
all kinds of mammoth shops--for wherever thirty or forty individuals
work in the same house, they form themselves into a military company,
and once or twice every year go to Hoboken and shoot for whiskey and
other prizes.
When they want to make a full turn-out, the places of any missing
members are filled by extemporaneous volunteers. It was in this capacity
that I proposed to go. In these companies there are always more officers
than men, more epaulettes than muskets--always a big band of music, and
two darkies to carry the target. As to their marching, no two ever step
together, and they always put a tall man by the side of a short one, so
as to have the average length of steps come right. They go forth in the
morning in high spirits, and return at night surly, dusty, discontented,
dilapidated, and drunk. As the target is always carried in triumph
through the streets, and afterward exhibited in the drill-room, the
darkey invariably carries an auger with him, with which explosive weapon
all the best shots are made. Every member has a whiskey-bottle in his
cartridge-box, or a brandy-flask in his knapsack.
As a general thing, they turn their toes in, and are bandy-legged--they
carry their guns over their shoulders at all conceivable angles, and so
little do they know about fire-arms, that probably, if called to load
their muskets in a hurry, two out of three would put their cartridges in
their breeches pockets, and stick their percussion caps on the ends of
their ramrods.
When they fire salute, and mean to all shoot together, the report is so
near simultaneous that a stranger would think they were firing minute
guns. They always select for judges of the shooting, the men who will
give the most whiskey, and make the shortest speeches.
As these excursions come off just before election, the candidates for
office generally pay for the prizes, and bear the expenses of a reporter
for the press to puff the company. The judges carry out the rewards in
the morning tied up in brown paper, and the soldiers wear them back at
night, around their necks. Six or eight men, called pioneers, march in
front, with muffs on their heads, leather aprons tied around their
waists, and theoretical axes in their hands, which could never, by any
possibility, be made to cut anything. The officers walk between the
platoons, flourishing their dandy swords--their attention being pretty
equally divided between keeping the men in the line, keeping the little
boys out of the line, keeping their unaccustomed white cotton gloves on,
and trying to keep step with the music. In single file the men march
like a flock of geese on their winding way to the mill-pond, and six or
eight abreast, they go with the regularity of a crowd of school-boys,
effecting a masterly but hurried retreat from somebody's melon-patch. In
order to make them form a straight line, it is necessary to back them up
against a brick block, or make them stand between the tracks of a
railroad.
Such was the company of which I became a member for a brief eventful
time. Its cognomen was "The Lager-Bier American Volunteers, and Native
Empire City Shillelagh Guards," being composed of Irish, Dutch,
Spaniards, and Sandwich Islanders--the only Americans in the company
being the colored target-bearers, and the undersigned.
Convened in the drill-room at 8 A. M. As I was a new member, and had
borrowed my uniform, I had some difficulty in putting it on--buckled my
crossbelt round my neck, got my cap on wrong side before, stuck my
bayonet through my coat-tail--put my cartridge-box between my shoulders,
and my priming-wire where my "pompon" should have been.
Ready at length to start--crossed the ferry--disembarked--proceeded to
the ground and prepared to drill.
The captain finding it impossible to get into a straight line in the
usual manner, at length ingeniously overcame this geometrical difficulty
by ranging us against a board fence--he then proceeded to put us through
the exercise: "Shoulder arms!" Got my gun on the wrong shoulder. "Order
arms!" Brought it down on the toes of my neighbor. "Shoulder arms!"
again. Got it on the right shoulder this time, but in so doing knocked
off the cap of the man next to me, &c. Got through the rest of the drill
without any serious mishap, except that in attempting to charge my
piece, I bit off the wrong end of the cartridge, and swallowed the
ball--spilled the powder on the ground, and loaded the musket with the
paper only.
Now came the shooting. Nigger set the target at twenty paces--four
volleys and not a ball in it--moved it up to fifteen--no better
luck--moved it again, one ball put in it this time by a clumsy Dutchman,
who shut his eyes when he fired, and hit by mistake. Finding that
shooting was no use, captain adopted the usual plan--set the target at
ten paces, blindfolded the men, and each one charged on it with the
auger; where the point happened to hit, he bored a hole, and the one
nearest the bull's eye took the prize. I could see a little through a
hole in the cloth--consequence: hit the centre and took the first prize,
(a plated cake-basket with a pewter handle, bought for silver by the
sagacious Committee).
As the brandy had circulated pretty freely, some of the shots were
rather wild--several missed the target entirely and knocked their heads
against the trees; one bored a deep hole in a sand bank, and the first
lieutenant was put under arrest for attempting to tap the captain.
The man who took the second prize did not come so near the mark by an
inch and a half as another man, but he had a pretty sister whom one of
the judges was in love with, so he took "the spoons." Ready to go
home--Muggins, one of the judges, missing. After a long search found him
wrapped up in the colors, fast asleep with his head in a
hog-trough--stirred him up with a musket, when he called me "Mrs.
Muggins," and swore at me for pulling all the sheet over to my side.
Marched home in as good order as circumstances would allow--the darkey
bearing in proud triumph the perforated target, which had so many hits
near the centre, as to excite the admiration of the deluded public,
which, as a general rule, in such cases, can't tell a bullet mark from
an auger-hole.
XI.
A new Patent Medicine Operation.
As I too desire to have a mansion on the Fifth Avenue, like the Medical
Worthy of Sarsaprilla memory, and wished like him to be able to build a
patent medicine palace, with a private chapel under the back-stairs, and
a conservatory down-cellar, I cast about me for some means whereby the
requisite cash might be reputably accumulated.
I feared that the Panacea and Cure-Everything trick had been played too
often, but I determined to make one big try, and I think that at last my
fortune is made.
Congratulate me--I am immortalized, and I've done it myself. My name
will be handed down to posterity as that of a universal benefactor. The
hand which hereafter writes upon the record of Fame, the names of Ayer,
Sands, Townsend, Moffat, Morrison, and Brandreth, must also inscribe,
side by side with these distinguished appellations, the no less
brilliant cognomen of the undying Doesticks.
Emulous of the deathly notoriety which has been acquired by the
medicinal worthies just mentioned, _I_ also resolved to achieve a name
and a fortune in the same reputable and honest manner.
Bought a gallon of tar, a cake of beeswax, and a firkin of lard, and in
twenty-one hours I presented to the world the first batch of
"_Doesticks' Patent, Self-Acting, Four-Horse Power Balsam_," designed to
cure all diseases of mind, body, or estate, to give strength to the
weak, money to the poor, bread and butter to the hungry, boots to the
barefoot, decency to blackguards, and common sense to the Know-Nothings.
It acts physically, morally, mentally, psychologically, physiologically,
and geologically, and it is intended to make our sublunary sphere a
blissful paradise, to which Heaven itself shall be but a side-show.
I have not yet brought it to absolute perfection, but even now it acts
with immense force, as you will perceive by the accompanying
testimonials and records of my own individual experience. You will
observe that I have not resorted to the usual manner of preparing
certificates: which is, to be certain that all those intended for
Eastern circulation shall seem to come from some formerly unheard-of
place in the West, while those sent to the West shall be dated at some
place forty miles east of sun-rise. But I send to _you_, as representing
the western country, a certificate from an Oregon farmer.
"DEAR SIR: The land composing my farm has hitherto been so poor that
a Scotchman couldn't get his living off it; and so stony that we had
to slice our potatoes and plant them edgeways; but, hearing of your
balsam, I put some on the corner of a ten-acre lot, surrounded by a
rail-fence, and in the morning I found the rocks had entirely
disappeared--a neat stone wall encircled the field, and the rails
were split into ovenwood and piled up symmetrically in my back yard.
Put half an ounce into the middle of a huckleberry swamp--in two
days it was cleared off, planted with corn and pumpkins, and had a
row of peach trees in full bloom through the middle.
As an evidence of its tremendous strength, I would state that it
drew a striking likeness of my eldest daughter--drew my youngest boy
out of the mill-pond--drew a blister all over his stomach--drew a
load of potatoes four miles to market, and eventually drew a prize
of ninety-seven dollars in the State Lottery.
And the effect upon the inhabitants hereabout has been so wonderful,
that they have opened their eyes to the good of the country, and are
determined to vote for a Governor who is opposed to frosts in the
middle of June, and who will make a positive law against freshets,
hail-storms, and the seventeen-year locusts."
There, isn't that _some_?
But I give one more from a member of the senior class in a western
college, who, although misguided, neglected, and ignorant, is,
undoubtedly, as honest and sincere as his Prussianized education will
admit of.
I have corrected the orthography, and revised some grammatical
inaccuracies; but, besides attending to these trifles, inserting marks
of punctuation, and putting the capitals in the right places, I assure
you I have made no alteration.
"SALL HARBOR, June 31, 1854.
MY DEAR DOCTOR. [You know I attended medical lectures half a winter,
and once assisted in getting a crooked needle out of a baby's leg;
so I understand perfectly well the theory and practice of medicine,
and the _Doctor_ is perfectly legitimate under the Prussian system.]
By the incessant study required in this establishment, I had become
worn down so thin that I was obliged to put on an overcoat to cast a
shadow--but accidentally hearing of your Balsam, I obtained a
quantity, and, in obedience to the Hom[oe]opathic principles of this
Institution, took an_infinitesimal_ dose only; in four days I
measured one hundred and eighty-two inches round the waist; could
chop eleven cords of hickory wood in two hours and a half; and, on a
bet, carried a yoke of oxen two miles and a quarter in my left hand,
my right being tied behind me, and if any one doubts the fact, the
oxen are still to be seen.
About two weeks after this, I had the pleasure of participating
in a gunpowder explosion, on which occasion my arms and legs were
scattered over the village, and my mangled remains pretty equally
distributed throughout the entire county.
Under these circumstances my life was despaired of, and my
classmates had bought a pine coffin, and borrowed whole shirts to
attend the funeral in; when the invincible power of your four
horse-power balsam (which I happened to have in my vest pocket)
suddenly brought together the scattered pieces of my body--collected
my limbs from the rural districts--put new life into my shattered
frame, and I was restored, uninjured to my friends, with a new set
of double teeth.
I have preserved the label which enveloped the bottle, and have
sewed it into the seat of my pantaloons, and I now bid grim death
defiance, for I feel that I am henceforth unkillable, and in fact I
am even now generally designated the '_Great Western Achilles_.'
Yours entirely
SKI HY."
I feel that after this, I need give you no more reports of third
persons, but will detail some of my own personal experience of the
article.
I caused some to be applied to the Washtenaw Bank after its failure, and
while the Balsam lasted the Bank redeemed its notes with specie.
The cork of one of the bottles dropped upon the head of a childless
widow, and in six weeks she had a young and blooming husband.
Administered some to a hack-driver in a glass of gin and sugar, and
that day he swindled but seven people, and only gave two of them bad
money in change.
Gave a few drops gratis to a poor woman who was earning a precarious
subsistence by making calico shirts with a one-eyed needle, and the next
day she was discovered to be heir to a large fortune.
Gave some to an up-town actor, and that night he said "damned" only
twenty-one times.
One of the daily papers got the next dose, and in the next edition but
one there were but four editorial falsehoods, seven indecent
advertisements, and two columns and a half of home-made "Foreign
Correspondence."
Caused fifteen drops to be given to the low comedian of a Broadway
Theatre, and that night he was positively dressed more like a man than a
monkey, actually spoke some lines of the author, made only three inane
attempts at puerile witticisms--only twice went out of his way to
introduce some grossly indelicate line into his part, and for a wonder,
lost so much of his self-conceit that for a full half-hour he did not
believe himself the greatest comedian in the world.
Gave some to a news-boy, and he manufactured but three fires, a couple
of murders, and one horrible rail-road accident in the next thirty
minutes.
Put some on the outside of the Crystal Palace and the same day the stock
went from 22 up to 44.
Our whole Empire City is entirely changed by the miraculous power of
"Doesticks' Patent Self-Acting Four Horse Power Balsam." The gas is
lighted on the dark nights, instead of on the moonlight evenings--there
are no more highway robberies in the streets, or, if there are, the
offenders, when arrested, are instantly discharged by the police
magistrate. No more building materials on the sidewalks; no more
midnight murders; no more Sunday rows; no more dirty streets; no more
duels in Hoboken, and no more lies in the newspapers.
Broadway is swept and garnished: the M. P.'s are civil, and the boys
don't steal any more dogs. In fact, so well content are we now with our
City, that we feel, as the Hibernian poet so beautifully says:
"O, if there be an Elysium on earth,
It is this--it is this."
Orders for my Balsam, _accompanied by the money_, will be immediately
attended to; otherwise not, for my partner and I have resolved to sell
for cash only feeling as did Dr. Young, who appropriately and feelingly
remarks--
"We take no notes on Time."
Bull Dogge says I have piled it up too strong, and that no one will
believe what he calls "that humbug about the newspapers, and the
preposterous nonsense concerning the Broadway Actor." I am aware that in
these instances my medicine has performed a modern miracle, but the
facts remain "no less true than strange."
If I fail to accumulate a "pile" in this speculation, I shall start a
Know-Nothing Newspaper, run it a month, and then fail and swindle the
subscribers; get an overgrown woman or a whiskered lady, and exhibit her
for twenty-five cents a head, or get up a Grand Gift Enterprise, with
$20,000 prizes.
XII.
Running with the "Masheen."
Since the "_Grate old Squwirt_" made to go by steam, and imported from
Cincinnati to put to the blush Metropolitan Redshirtdom, and which
couldn't raise steam enough to throw water to the top of the City Hall,
has proved such a signal failure, the good old-fashioned
"fire-annihilators" (not Barnum's) have been more popular than ever.
The "boys" say they will take the oldest and most primitive engine in
the city, man it with fourteen small-sized news-boys on a side, and,
with this apparatus, will throw more water, throw it higher farther, and
to more purpose than any or all the clumsy steam humbugs yet invented in
Porkopolis.
Ninety-seven's boys say they can run to a fire, get their water on,
extinguish the conflagration, "take-up", get home, bunk in, and snooze
half an hour before the "Squwirt" could get her kindling-wood ready.
[Illustration: Doesticks Running with the "Masheen."]
Now I am not known by the cognomen of "Mose," nor do I answer to the
name of "Syskey"--neither as a general thing do I promenade the middle
of Broadway with my pantaloons tucked into my boots. Still, by way of a
new excitement, I lately joined the Fire Department, and connected
myself with the company of Engine 97.
Bought my uniform, treated the company, took up my quarters in the
bunkroom, where I slept by night in a bed occupied in the day-time by a
big yellow dog. First night, went to bed with my boots on, ready for an
alarm. At last it came--seized the rope with the rest of the boys;
started on a run; tugged and toiled till we got her into the 11th
district, four miles and a half from home; found the alarm had been
caused by a barrel of shavings, and the conflagration had extinguished
itself; had to drag her clear back; tired most to death; it wasn't funny
at all.
Turned in; half an hour, new alarm; started again--hose 80 laid in the
same alley, got our apparatus jammed on the corner; fight; 97
victorious; got our machine out, and carried off the forewheel of 80's
carriage on our tongue; reached the fire; big nigger standing on the
hydrant; elected myself appraiser and auctioneer; knocked him down
without any bidder; took water; got our stream on the fire; fun; worked
till my arms ached; let go to rest; foreman hit me over the head with a
trumpet, and told me to go ahead; children in the garret; horrible
situation; gallant fireman made a rush up the ladder; battled his way
through the smoke--reappeared with a child in each arm, and his pocket
full of teaspoons.
Old gentleman from the country; much excited; wanted to help, but
didn't exactly know how; he rushed into a fourth-story bedroom; threw
the mirror out of the window; frantically endeavored to hurl the
dressing-table after it; seized the coal-scuttle; hurriedly put in the
poker, bootjack, and a pair of worn out slippers, carried them down
stairs, and deposited them in a place of safety four blocks away; came
back on a run, into the parlor; took up the door-mat, wrapped up an
empty decanter in it, and transported it safely into the barn of the
nearest neighbor; he kept at work; by dint of heroic exertions, he at
various times deposited, by piece, the entire kitchen cooking-stove in
the next street, uninjured; and at last, after knocking the piano to
pieces with an axe, in order to save the lock, and filling his pocket
with the sofa castors, he was seen to make his final exit from the
back-yard, with a length of stovepipe in each hand, the toasting fork
tucked behind his ear, and two dozen muffin rings in his hat which was
surmounted by a large-sized frying-pan.
During the next week there were several alarms--fire in a big block full
of paupers--first man in the building; carried down stairs in my arms
two helpless undressed children, thereby saving their valuable lives; on
giving them to their mother, she, amid a whirlwind of thanks, imparted
the gratifying intelligence that one was afflicted with the measles, and
the other had the Michigan itch.
Another fire; foreman took the lead, and ran down the street, yelling
like an independent devil, with a tin trumpet. Company made a grand
stampede, and followed in the rear, dragging old 97 in a spasmodic
gallop. Found the fire in a boarding school; dashed up a ladder; tumbled
through a window; entered a bed-room; smoke so thick I couldn't see;
caught up in my arms a feminine specimen in a long night-gown; got back
to the window; tried to go down; ladder broke under me; stuck adhesively
to the young lady; and, after unexampled exertions, deposited her safely
in the next house, where I discovered that I had rescued from the
devouring element the only child of _the black cook_!
Fire in a storehouse--went on the roof; explosion; found myself in
somebody's cellar, with one leg in a soap barrel, and my hair full of
fractured hen's eggs; discovered that I had been blown over a church,
and had the weathercock still remaining in the rear of my demolished
pantaloons.
Fire in a liquor-store--hose burst; brandy "lying round loose;" gin
"convaynient," and old Monongahela absolutely begging to be protected
from further dilution; Croton water too much for my delicate
constitution; carried home on a shutter.
Fire in a church--Catholic--little marble images all round the room in
niches; wall began to totter; statues began to fall; St. Andrew knocked
my fire hat over my eyes; St. Peter threw his whole weight on my big
toe; St. Jerome hit me a clip over the head, which laid me sprawling,
when a picture of the Holy Family fell and covered me up like a bed
quilt.
Fire in a big clothing store--next day our foreman sported a new silk
velvet vest, seven of the men exhibited twelve dollar doeskin pants, and
the black boy who sweeps out the bunk room, and scours the engine, had a
new hat, and a flaming red cravat, presented, as I heard, by the
proprietor of the stock of goods, as an evidence of his appreciation of
their endeavors to save his property.
_I_ didn't get any new breeches; on the contrary, lost my new overcoat,
and got damaged myself. Something like this--fire out, order came, "take
up, 97;" took off the hose; turned her round; got the boys together, and
started for home; corner of the street hook and ladder 100 (Dutch),
engine 73 (Irish), hose 88 (Yankee), and our own company, came in
contact; machines got jammed; polyglot swearing by the strength of the
companies; got all mixed up; fight; one of 88's men hit foreman of hook
and ladder 100 over the head with a spanner; extemporaneous and
impartial distribution of brickbats; 97's engineer clipped one of 73's
men with a trumpet; 73 retaliated with a paving stone; men of all the
companies went in; resolved to "go in" myself; went in; went out again
as fast as I could, with a black eye, three teeth (indigestible, I have
reason to believe) in my stomach, intermingled with my supper, my red
shirt in carpet rags, and my knuckles skinned, as if they had been
pawned to a Chatham street Jew.
Got on a hydrant, and watched the fun; 88's boys whipped everything;
73's best man was doubled up like a jack-knife, by a dig in the place
where Jonah was; four of 97's fellows were lying under the machine, with
their eyes in mourning; hook and ladder took home two-thirds of their
company on the truck, and the last I saw of their foreman he was lying
in the middle of the street, with his trumpet smashed flat, his boots
under his head, his pockets inside out, a brick in his mouth, a hundred
and twenty-five feet of hose on the back of his neck, and the hind
wheels of 20's engine resting on his left leg.
Four policemen, on the opposite corner, saw the whole row. On the first
indication of a fight, they pulled their hats down over their eyes,
covered up their stars, and slunk down the nearest alley. Got home,
resigned my commission, made my will, left the company my red shirt and
fire cap. Seen enough of fire service; don't regret my experience, but
do grieve for my lost teeth and my new overcoat.
P. S.--Have just met the foreman of 73--he had on my late lamented
overcoat; ain't big enough to lick him--magnanimously concluded to let
him alone.
XIII.
Street Preaching--A Zealous Trio, and a Religious Controversy.
During the first part of my sojourn in the metropolis I made the
acquaintance of a portly personage from the "Providence Plantations,"
who invited me to visit his home, and take a look at little "Rhody." As
I had been hustled round pretty constantly for several weeks, I had
become fairly tired of New York, although it is a town of considerable
consequence. Wanted to see the world; so started for the seven-by-nine
State of Rhode Island. In the course of a thorough exploration of that
delightful though diminutive state, which occupied me about five hours,
I discovered that they shingle the houses all over outside and in, and
put the windows in the roof; they make their rail fences out of cobble
stones; the ducks roost on the fence, and hatch their young ones in the
tops of the cherry trees; the men look so much alike, their wives often
kiss the wrong individual, (Damphool says it's a way women have the
world over).
Went to the city of Providence, where all the men make jewelry, and all
the women believe in spirit rappings; where they've got a bridge wider
than it is long, and Macadamized on both sides; where all the plaster
busts of great men have grey wigs on; where they light the gas in the
middle of the afternoon; where they drive five horses tandem; where the
apples grow as big as washtubs, and the oysters obtain the enormous size
of three-cent pieces.
Went into the woods after chestnuts; couldn't find any, but discovered a
magnificent tree in the distance--rejoiced exceedingly thereat--started
for it--three quarters of a mile away; went ahead over stones, ditches,
fences, snakes, briers, and stone walls, until at last I reached it, and
found it was an elm, no chestnuts on it--got very mad; walked round the
state a couple of times, and took the first train for home.
Glad to see the old place again, and also pleased to perceive that
something of unusual importance seemed to occupy the attention of the
usually-hard-at-work-but-on-Sunday-loafing-about-the-streets-waiting-for
-a-fire-or-a-row-to-turn-up population of the city.
Saw a big crowd in the Park--inquired about it, and was told the usual
Street Screeching was going on--wanted to see the fun--got a good place
on a fat Irishman's toes.
Enter Gabriel--tin horn--hole in his pantaloons--(Bull Dogge says that
if Angels have wings they are also provided with tails--hence this
last item); thought it extremely probable. Gabriel mounted one end
of the City Hall steps, and after a preliminary overture on his horn,
and a slight skirmish among the faithful, resulting in four black
eyes, a damaged nose, and a broken leg, the religious services
commenced--(Damphool was entirely carried away by his sympathies for
this last martyr, but soon discovered that the fractured member was
"purely vegetable," as the patent medicine men say, and the injury was
speedily repaired by means of a few shingle nails and a piece of
clapboard).
Gabriel went in to win, but, spite of the sanctity of his name and the
holiness of his aforesaid breeches, he was not permitted a clear field.
A female, with bosom undressed in the latest fashion; petticoats
(Damphool says skirticoats) not immaculate; stockings, through the
texture of which her delicate ancles were plainly visible to the naked
eye; whose hair resembled molasses candy; with a nose symmetrical as an
overgrown sweet potatoe, and in hue not unlike the martyred lobster; and
whose teeth reminded me forcibly of the "crags and peaks" mentioned by
the man in the play, took up her station on the other end of the steps.
She, like Gabe, went in for giving the church of Rome "Jesse," but
otherwise did not agree with him. Did not seem willing to go to heaven
by his conveyance, but claimed to have discovered some kind of a
northwest passage--some exclusive path "cross lots;" and she advocated
her right of way with all her woman's power of tongue--in fact, they
agreed only tolerably--"Arcades ambo"--both celestials, but of a
different breed--(B. D. says that some time since they joined issue on
the devil's head, one asserting that he has horns, and the other
maintaining that his brimstone friend is a muley)--but they both pitched
into the Pope, abused all foreigners, denounced the church of Rome,
walked into the affections of the Catholics generally--talked learnedly
of priests, inquisitions, dungeons, thumbscrews, martyrs, convents,
nunneries, and other luxuries, as being the only legitimate offspring of
the mother of abominations, the scarlet woman; and, in fact, seemed to
be having the field entirely to themselves, when lo! a change came o'er
the spirit of the gospel show, for in the midst of the crowd suddenly
appeared a third combatant--his classic dress and intellectual face gave
unmistakable evidence that he was from the "gim of the ocean." With the
dignified and majestic bearing peculiar to his countrymen, he slowly
mounted the steps, and took a position directly between the two, and in
a voice strongly tinctured with the "sweet brogue," announced himself as
a champion of that much slandered gentleman, the Pope of Rome.
At this astounding impudence, the woman for a single instant held her
peace. Gabe was so taken aback that he seemed about to collapse, but
rallied, played an "ad libitum" interlude on the tin horn, and all hands
"pitched in."
Gabriel commenced the onset by asserting that the Pope is not strictly
a bachelor, but has seven white wives in his parlor, thirteen ditto
bound in law calf in the library, a hundred and forty-one golden-haired
damsels in his private apartments, and a perfect harem of jetty beauties
in the coal-hole.
Petticoats followed, by saying that he breakfasts on Protestant babies;
drinks whiskey punch out of a Protestant clergyman's skull; has an
abducted Protestant virgin to black his boots; fifty-seven Protestant
widows to dig his potatoes and hoe corn; and that he rolls ten-pins
every afternoon with the heads of Protestant orphan children.
Irishman indignantly denied all--said the country is going to the old
Knick, and some fine morning we shall wake up, and find that the Pope,
unable longer to endure our perverseness, has sunk us all forty miles
deeper than ancient Sodom; said that his Holiness can send us all to
perdition by one wink of his left eye; that he is the head of the Church
on Earth; has all power to save or otherwise; could get us all out of
Purgatory, and send us all "kitin' into Heaven," by wagging his little
finger; that he could, like a Joshua No. 2, make the sun and moon stand
still; make the planets dance an astronomical rigadoon; cause the hills
and mountains to execute a mighty geological jig, while old ocean should
beat the time against the blue vault of Heaven and applauding Angels
encore the huge saltations.
Gabe said he didn't believe the yarn. Petticoats remarked something
about the Star Spangled Banner being always right side up.
Irishman proceeded to describe the future home of the happy in another
world, as a place where there shall be plenty of potatoes, no end of
shillelahs, oceans of genuine whiskey; and where no Know-Nothing Yankee
shall be allowed to come and kick up a plug muss.
At the word Know-Nothing, there was a great sensation. Symptoms of a
free fight rapidly developed into an uncivil war. Petticoats got mixed
up with the crowd, and presently emerged rather the worse for wear,
barefooted, bareheaded, hair down, nose injured by collision, eye in
mourning, mouth bloody, and her whole appearance reminding me of "a
goose or goslin--stuffed." (I forgot who penned this apposite quotation,
and asked Bull Dogge, who, being excited by the fray, angrily asserted
that it is by "Nero or some other old fogy"--is it?)
Irishman was taken away by seven policemen, on his national carriage,
a wheelbarrow. Gabriel came out unhurt, save that his elegant features
were somewhat marred by the finger nails of Petticoats. Perceiving that
the fun was over, I turned to go, leaving the self-elected Angel
Gabriel, straddle of a hydrant, edifying the passers-by, by alternately
sounding notes of victory upon his horn, and crowing like an overgrown
Shanghae.
XIV.
Disappointed Love.
Although in the course of my western peregrinations I had frequently met
with attractive-looking damsels, there was always some blemish on their
personal beauty, which though perhaps slight in many cases, made their
charms fall short of that exalted standard desirable in the fairer part
of mankind. Being unusually fastidious in my taste it is not to be
wondered at, that previous to last Wednesday night, I had never been in
love.
Save an occasional fit of cholera-morbus, I had never experienced
anything even remotely approaching the tender passion. But on the
evening of the eventful Wednesday, Sandie Goatie invited me to go with
him and see his sister.
Now my friend Sandie is not a scholarly person, and has never received
that questionable blessing, a college education. He always says
"cod-fish" instead of "bona fide," and calls "tempus fugit" "pork and
beans;" the only "Jupiter" he knows is a sable gentleman, and his only
idea of "Venus," is a colored washerwoman, who in early life got up his
hebdomadal linen.
But his sister is eminently classic; she stoops fashionably, with the
"Grecian bend"--has a Roman nose, and her name is Calanthe Maria.
I went to see that sister--I _saw_ that sister--I surrendered.
That seraphic sister--to attempt a description of her beauty, would be
insanity itself. I will only mention her hair, and when I have said that
this was sublime and divine, I wish it distinctly understood that I use
these feeble terms, because the poverty of our language does not afford
adjectives of adequate force.
The instant I saw her, my presence of mind deserted me. I felt
bashful--I was conscious that I looked like a fool in the face, and my
apparel, (on which I had prided myself), seemed as unworthy to be seen
in her presence, as if it had been bought second-hand in Chatham street.
Beneath the glance of her brilliant eyes, my feet seemed to grow too
short, and my legs too long--my coat too big, and my collar limpsy, and
I discovered a grease spot on my vest. Never had I been so shamefaced in
the feminine presence before, and my bashfulness only temporarily
deserted me, when, after much tribulation, I achieved a seat on a clumsy
looking foot-stool, which I understood was called an "Ottoman." Whether
or not it had any connection with Turks, turkeys, and Thanksgiving, I
failed to discover.
Left alone a short time, I had leisure to recover myself, and to note
the individual charms of my fair enslaver. A partial inventory of her
visible apparel is ineffaceably stamped upon my mind.
A silk dress, of a pattern which seemed to have been designed for a
gigantic checker-board, made with a train to do scavenger duty, and
short sleeves, with lace curtains underneath--her neck and shoulders
hidden from view by a thin veil of transparent lace, of a pattern
designedly made to attract attention--but particulars are omitted.
Suffice it to say, that she was dressed as the prevailing fashion seems
to demand.
I essayed to speak to her, but my timidity returned upon me with double
force. Mustered courage at length and asked her to sing, and stepped on
her toes while turning over her music--praised everything in the wrong
place--when she sung a false note, I exclaimed "delicious." She made a
two-handed discord, which I pronounced "enchanting," and when at last,
from excess of agitation, she broke flat down, I enthusiastically
declared that I was "never more delighted in the whole course of my
life."
Asked her to play a waltz, and handed her a choir-book--opened at
"Corinth" and "Silver street"--found I was wrong, and turned over the
leaf to "Sinners turn, why will ye die?"--discovered that all was not
right yet, and then requested her to play some sacred music, and in my
anxiety to get the right notes this time, placed before her the "Jenny
Lind Polka," which she at once began to play--I attempting to sing the
words of "Old Hundred," which didn't seem to jibe.
We tried to dance, but my confusion still continued. I "chassezed"
myself across a table, and into a music rack--"promenaded" my partner
over the stove--"balanced" her into a side-board, and eventually
attempted to seat her in a mirror, where I saw a sofa.
Then I essayed conversation, and I am confident I talked the most
absurd nonsense for the rest of my call--distinctly remember speaking of
Noah Webster's beautiful play of "Evangeline"--eulogising Shakspeare's
"Robinson Crusoe"--Thackeray's generalship at Waterloo--attempting to
explain the difficulties which attended Henry Ward Beecher's attempts to
get his Opera of "Bohemian Girl" before the public--telling who had the
blackest eye when President Pierce and Joan of Arc fought their
celebrated prize fight in the Crystal Palace in New York in 1793--and at
last, breaking down in trying to explain why Admiral Elihu Burritt, and
his right hand man Xerxes the Great, did not succeed in taking
Sebastopol in a month, according to contract.
When I bid her "good night," she took my hand and set me crazy by the
touch of her fairy, taper fingers.
I dreamed all night about Calanthe--got up in the morning, called the
waiter "Calanthe," and said "my darling" to him as he handed me my
coffee--gave my tailor an order for a new coat and two pairs of
pantaloons, and told him to charge them to "Calanthe"--got a box of
cigars and a demijohn of Scotch whiskey, and signed the drayman's
receipt "Calanthe"--all the signs read "Calanthe"--every street was
"Calanthe" street--all the stages belonged to the "Calanthe" line, and
were going to "Calanthe" ferry--the ship "Calanthe" had arrived, the
steamboat "Calanthe" had burst her boiler, and the brig "Calanthe" been
seen bottom upward with her rudder gone. I saw, heard, read, dreamed,
thought, and talked nothing but "Calanthe," and cannibal that I am, I
verily believe I ate nothing but "Calanthe" for a month.
The day after I saw her first I felt so exceedingly amiable that I
bought something of every pedler who came into the store--laid in a
stock of matches, pencils, shoe-brushes, suspenders, bootjacks, and
blacking, which will last me a short lifetime--bought so much candy that
the office-boy had the colic every afternoon for a week--called the
applewoman "my own sweet love," and said "thank you, darling," when she
gave me pewter dimes in change.
Wrote spasmodic poetry about Calanthe's hair--lines to her raven
tresses--stanzas to her locks of jet--odes to her ebon ringlets--verses
to her sable curls--rhymes to her coal-black hair, and commenced a poem
in 17 cantos, to her ebony-topped head, but on reflection I was led to
doubt the propriety of the comparison.
Called to see her every evening--substantial victuals didn't agree with
me--a kind word from her was a good breakfast--a tender glance has
served me for a dinner many a time, and once when she pressed my hand I
couldn't eat anything for a fortnight but oranges, cream-candy, and
vanilla-beans.
We went to the theatre, endured the negro minstrels, and braved the
horrors of a second-rate Italian Opera Company--in fact, everywhere,
where there was anything to be seen or heard, there were Calanthe Maria,
and her devoted Philander.
For a month I forgot my debts, neglected business, ignored entirely this
mundane sphere, and lived in a rainbow-colored aerial castle, of the
most elegant finish--surrounded by roses, attended by cupids, and just
big enough for Calanthe Maria and the subscriber.
In that happy place there were no duns, no tailors' bills, no trouble,
no debts, no getting up early cold mornings, no tight boots, no bad
cigars: nothing but love, luxury, and Calanthe Maria.
Came down occasionally out of my airy mansion, to speak a few words of
compassion to my companions in the office, who hadn't got any Calanthe,
but I went right back again as quick as I could to that rose-colored
dream-land where love and Calanthe were "boss and all hands."
At last, one fatal evening I was undeceived.
We were waltzing, and through some clumsiness on my part, her hair
caught in a gas-fixture--some mysterious string broke, and those glossy
ringlets, the object of my adoration, _came off_, leaving her head bald
as a brickbat. Relating this scrape of the locks to a friend, he
informed me that the rest of her charms would not bear minute
inspection, for she wore false teeth, and bought her complexion at
Phalon's; that her graceful form was the result of a skilful combination
of cotton and whalebone.
This was too much. While I thought Calanthe a woman, I loved her, but
the discovery of the _fishy_ element excited a prejudice--as a _female_,
she had my affection, and I contemplated matrimony--as a land mermaid, I
had no desire to swindle Barnum and become her proprietor.
Coming as I did, from a section of the country where they have _human_
women, and where they don't attempt to deceive masculine mankind with
French millinery strategy, I was unprepared for counterfeits, and had
been easily deluded by a spurious article. But I find that in New York,
perambulating bundles of dry goods not unfrequently pass current as
women--and the milliners now put their eccentric inventions upon these
locomotive shams, to the great neglect of those revolving waxen ladies
who used to perform their perpetual gyrations in the show-windows.
As an advertising medium, they possess facilities for publicity beyond
any of the newspapers, having a city circulation, which is unattainable
by anything dumb and unpetticoated.
The great staple of the south has not only "made" some of our first men,
but has been discovered to enter largely into the composition of many of
our first ladies.
My madness was now over--the intoxication of love was dissipated, and I
was once more able to get about my business without having a feminine
name constantly present to my eyes. The stages, the dry-goods' boxes,
the streets and signs, were once more lettered in sensible characters. I
was guilty of no more poetry, went to no more operas--in short,
exhibited no longer any of the signs of insanity, but relapsed at once
into my former unpoetical condition--the spell was broken--the blind
fiend was exorcised--reason got back to her old bunk, and "Richard was
himself again."
The difference in my mental condition occasioned my landlady
considerable alarm; while I had lived on love, and paid five dollars a
week for the privilege of sitting down at table only, she had considered
me a profitable boarder; but the disappearance of beef and substantials
generally, consequent upon my returning appetite, sensibly diminish her
esteem for me. I fancy I can perceive a change in her treatment, for she
sets the bread and butter as far away from me as possible.
P. S.--She has raised my board to eight dollars a week, and with a
consciousness that I deserve it, I submit.
XV.
Modern Patent Piety--Church-Going in the City
Persons from the rural districts--who are visiting the city for the
first time, and who have all their lives been accustomed to no more
pretentious religious edifices than the old fashioned country
meeting-house, with a "steeple," either of the extinguisher or
pepper-castor pattern; with great square hot-house windows, built
expressly to concentrate and reflect upon the innocent congregation the
hottest rays of the sun, as if religion was a green-house plant, and
would only bloom beneath a forced and artificial heat--usually expend no
small portion of their simple wonder upon the magnificent temples of the
town, which aspiring congregations erect ostensibly for the worship of
the manger-cradled Saviour.
It usually too requires some considerable time for such a
behind-the-times person to lay aside all his antiquated notions of
religion, in which love, charity, and good will to men were essential
elements, but which primitive idea of Christianity has, in the more
enlightened city precincts, been long since exploded, and adopt the more
convenient and showy piety which fashionable city people wear on
Sundays--the constituent parts of which are too often only ostentation
and vanity, veneered with a thin shell of decency and decorum. Such
church-going people are remarkably easy on the Bible--most of the
doctrines therein inculcated having been long since explained away by
their three-thousand-dollar clergyman, who measures his people for their
religion, and fits them with as much nicety as their tailors or
dressmakers do in the case of more visible wardrobe. One or two Sundays
after my first appearance in this town of patent Christianity, I
attended service for the first time.
Having seen the opera with detestation, the theatres with approbation,
George Christy with cachinnation, and No. 2 Dey street with affiliation;
having visited Castle Garden, the model artists, and the American
Museum; in fact, knowing something of almost all the other places of
amusement in the city, I resolved to complete and crown my knowledge by
going to church, and I hope I may receive due credit for my pursuit of
amusement under difficulties. I made known my heroic determination to my
new-found friends, and they instantly resolved to bear me company--Bull
Dogge by way of variety, and Damphool from force of habit--(Bull Dogge
seldom goes to church, and Damphool _always_ does).
Sunday morning came, and the aforesaid individuals presented
themselves--B. D. looked pugnacious and pugilistic, and Damphool
perfectly marvellous--in fact, majestic as this latter-named person had
ever borne himself, and importantly huge as he had ever appeared, his
coat tails were now so wonderfully short, his collar so enviably large,
and so independently upright, and his hat so unusually and magnificently
lofty, that he certainly looked a bigger Damphool than ever before.
Walked up Broadway through a crowd of people of all sorts, sizes,
colors, and complexions; countrymen running over every third man they
met; New Yorkers threading their way through apparently
un-get-thro'-a-ble crowds without ruffling their tempers or their shirt
collars--(By the way, I have discovered that no one but a genuine New
Yorker, born and bred, can cross Broadway upon a dignified walk;)
firemen in red shirts, and their coats over their arms; newsboys with a
very scanty allowance of shirt, and no coats at all; Dutch emigrants,
with dirty faces, nasty breeches, and long loppy looking pipes; Irish
emigrants, with dirtier faces, nastier breeches, and short, stubbier
pipes; spruce-looking darkies, and wenches arrayed in rainbow-colored
habiliments--and at last reached the door of the church.
For about a quarter of a mile on either side of the entrance there
extended a row of carriages, lined with satin, with velvet cushions; and
on every carriage there were a couple of men with white gloves on, gold
bands round their hats, a black rosette on the side, and a short cloak
over their shoulders, with cloth enough in the multitudinous capes of
each to make a full suit of clothes for a common-sized man, and three or
four half grown boys. Bull Dogge informed me that these were the
liveried flunkies of our republican aristocracy, and that it was made
their business to sit outside the church and watch the lazy over-fed
horses, while their owners were inside saying American "amens" to
democratic prayers that liberty and equality may be established over all
the earth.
The coachman spends his Sabbath hours in the pious occupation of
cracking his whip at the little boys who are playing marbles on the
side-walk, reading the Sunday papers, and saying hard words at the flies
which make his horses shake their nettings off--while the genteel
footman goes to sleep in the carriage, with his boots out of the window,
and only arouses from his slumber in time to open the door for my lady,
as she comes from her courtly devotions.
We passed the scrutiny of these gentlemen without exciting any audible
impertinence, and reached the door of the church. Everything looked so
grandly gingerbready that I hesitated about going in. Little boy in the
corner (barefooted, with a letter in the post-office) told us to "go
_in_," and called us "_lemons_." Did not perceive the force of his
pomological remark, but "_went in_" nevertheless. Man in a white cravat
showed us to a pew; floor covered with carpet, and seat covered with
damask, with little stools to kneel down upon. Bull Dogge says that at
one time the prevailing style of pantaloons nearly caused a division in
the church, which was however compromised by an alteration in the
litany, and allowing the gentlemen to stand during the performance of
certain prayers instead of kneeling down, which latter feat was
difficult of accomplishment, on account of the _tightness of their
straps_. Some of the congregation were however so much offended that
they stayed away, and used home-made prayers, instead of coming to
church and dealing in the orthodox ready-made article.
Got inside; crowd of people; minister fenced up in a kind of back
closet, in a pulpit trimmed with red velvet and gilt-edged prayer-books.
Pretty soon, music--organ--sometimes grand and solemn, but generally
fast and lively enough for a contra-dance. (B. D. said the player got a
big salary to show off the organ, and draw a big house.)
He commenced to play Old Hundred (Damphool suggests Ancient Century).
At first, majestic as it should be, but soon his left hand began to get
unruly among the bass notes, then the right cut up a few monkey shines
in the treble; left threw in a large assortment of quavers, right led
off with a grand flourish and a few dozen variations; left struggled
manfully to keep up, but soon gave out, dead beat, and after that went
back to first principles, and hammered away religiously at Old Hundred,
in spite of the antics of its fellow; right struck up a march, marched
into a quick step, quickened into a gallop; left still kept at Old
Hundred; right put in all sorts of fantastic extras, to entice the left
from its sense of propriety; left still unmoved; right put in a few bars
of a popular waltz; left wavers a little; right strikes up a favorite
polka; left evidently yielding; right dashes into a jig; left now fairly
deserts its colors and goes over to the enemy, and both commence an
animated hornpipe, leaving poor Old Hundred to take care of itself.
Then with a crash, a squeak, a rush, a roar, a rumble, and an expiring
groan, the overture concluded and service began.
First, a prayer; then a response; prayer; response; by the priest and
people alternately, like the layers of bread and butter, and ham and
mustard in a sandwich; then a little sing, then a little preach, then
more petitions and more responses.
Damphool read the entire service, Minister's cues included, and sung
all the hymns. I noticed that Bull Dogge gave all the responses with a
great deal of energy and vigor. He said he always liked to come to this
kind of Church, because when they jawed religion at him, he could jaw
back.
Kept as cool as I could, but could not help looking round now and then
to see the show.
Elderly lady on my right, very devout, gilt edged prayer-book,
gold-covered fan, feathers in her bonnet, rings on her fingers, and for
all I know, "bells on her toes."
Antiquated gentleman in same slip, well preserved but somewhat wrinkled,
smells of Wall street, gold spectacles, gold-headed cane, put three
cents in the plate.
Fashionable little girl on the left--two flounces on her pantalettes,
and a diamond ring _over_ her glove.
Young America looking boy, four years old, patent leather boots,
standing collar, gloves, cane, and cigar case in his pocket.
Foppish young man with adolescent moustache, pumps, legs _a la_
spermaceti candles, shirt front embroidered _a la_ 2.40 race horse,
cravat _a la_ Julien, vest _a la_ pumpkin pie, hair _a la_ soft soap,
coat-tails _a la_ boot-jack, which when parted discovered a view of the
Crystal Palace by gas-light on the rear of his pantaloons, wristbands
_a la_ stove pipe, hat _a la_ wild Irishman, cane to correspond; total
effect _a la_ Shanghae.
Artificial young lady, extreme of fashion; can't properly describe her,
but here goes: whalebone, cotton, paint and whitewash; slippers _a la_
Ellsler, feet _a la_ Japanese, dress _a la_ Paris, shawl _a la_ eleven
hundred dollars, parasol _a la_ mushroom, ringlets _a la_ corkscrew,
arms _a la_ broomstick, bonnet _a la_ Bowery gal (Bull Dogge says the
boy with buttons on him, brought it in, in a teaspoon, fifteen minutes
after she entered the house), neck _a la_ scrag of mutton, complexion
_a la_ mother of pearl, appearance generally _a la_ humbug. (Bull Dogge
offers to bet his hat, she don't know a cabbage from a new cheese, and
can't tell whether a sirloin steak is beef, chicken, or fresh fish.)
At length, with another variette upon the organ, and all the
concentrated praise and thanksgiving of the congregation, sung by four
people up stairs, the service concluded. I thought from the manner of
this last performance, each member of the choir imagined the songs of
praise would never get to Heaven if he didn't give them a personal
boost, in the shape of an extra yell.
Left the Church with a confused idea that the only way to attain eternal
bliss, is to go to Church every Sunday, and to give liberally to the
Foreign Missionary cause.
Bull Dogge tried to convince me, that one half the people present,
thought that Fifth avenue runs straight into Heaven, and that their
through tickets are insured, their front seats reserved, and that when
they are obliged to leave this world, they will find a coach and four,
and two servants in livery, ready to take them right through to the
other side of Jordan.
XVI.
Benevolence Run Mad--Charitable Cheating.
I was so much affected by the services of the Church, had my feelings so
much excited, and all my benevolent and charitable nature so thoroughly
aroused by the sermon, that I felt an irresistible desire to rush out
and give somebody something.
For I know that I am charitable; I feel it in my bones, like rheumatism.
I always give money to the begwoman, who has such a large family at
home; and to the whiny boy, with a club-foot, who asks charity on behalf
of his sick mother.
True, I have seen the old lady when she was evidently inebriated, and
apparently disposed to harangue the crowd in high Dutch--but then she
was in excellent company; noble-looking men, with stars on their
bosoms--and I have discovered that the club-footed boy changes all his
money into cents, and gambles it away, playing "pitchpenny" in
Theatre-alley; still, I keep on giving.
But it is also a fact that I am not always able to comply with the
demands upon my purse. Twice have I been invited to "calico" parties,
and at the bottom of each note was a modest request that I would make my
appearance arrayed in such apparel only, as I would be willing to donate
next day to the Five-Points Mission.
Could have done like the others--bought a ready-made coat and vest and
given _them_ with the greatest pleasure--but the hint in the invitation
seemed to include the entire wardrobe brought into requisition on the
occasion, and when I thought of a Five-Points darkey in my ruffled shirt
and gold studs, I was "suddenly indisposed," and sent my "regrets."
But I did go to a ball for the benefit of the poor--a two-dollar
commingling of "upper-tendom" with "lower-twentydom"--an avalanche of
exclusiveness, in a torrent of mobocracy--where the crowd was so great
that faces lost their identity, and I was only conscious of a hustling
mass of dressed up humanity--a forest of broadcloth wrecked in an ocean
of calico. I barely escaped with life, and reached home in a state of
collapse.
Afterward, went to a concert in behalf of the poor--where I sat all the
evening in a hard seat with a number on the back to see a woman make
faces at a well-dressed audience, and sing music which I could not
understand--the people all applauded when she screamed, and threw
bouquets at her when she made a noise like a swamp-blackbird.
But after listening to the stirring address before alluded to, I felt
that I had not done enough; so, obedient to the promptings of my
impulsive nature, I determined to give something more, and being so far
_cityfied_ in my habits that I desired to combine amusement with
charity, and only give my money to the needy after I had received its
worth in dancing, got its full value in foreign music at a high price,
or eaten its equivalent in oysters and ice-cream at some kind of a
pseudo-charitable gathering, I looked about me for some fitting
opportunity to bestow my charity on the deserving poor, after making it
previously pay for some delectation for myself.
It did not take me long to find out that there was soon to be a ladies'
fair, in aid of the poor, given by the benevolent ladies of the Church
of the Holy Poker.
Damphool (who can't give up city associations, and who wouldn't read his
Bible if it wasn't printed in New York) had sent to me from his rural
solitude to procure him a dressing-gown, a pair of slippers, and a
crocheted worsted comforter.
Thought I couldn't have a better opportunity to purchase these, and so I
went to the fair.
Got to the hall, paid my twenty-five cents at the door, went in--saw
plenty of long tables, with ladies behind them playing "keep
store"--tables covered with mysterious articles of baby linen, and
complicated pieces of female harness, designed for uses to me unknown,
and also all sorts of impracticable unnecessaries intended for
gentlemen.
Slippers that you couldn't get on; smoking caps that could never, by
any possibility, fit anybody (shaped like a Chinese pagoda, and full of
tinsel and spangles to make them prickly); cigar cases, that you
couldn't get a cigar into without breaking both ends off (perhaps they
expect us to smoke "stubs," like the newsboys); pin-cushions, stuffed so
hard they would turn the point of a marlin-spike; watch cases, just big
enough to hold a three cent piece; pen wipers, that fill the point of a
pen full of wool--and divers other nonsensical inconveniences fabricated
by speculating females, the patterns being always very short, and the
stitches very long (I suppose they think we don't know the difference),
to palm off upon victimized gentlemen; and these latter resignedly
submit to a price so exorbitant, that if a Chatham-street Israelite had
the impudence to ask it they'd straighten out his fish-hook nose like a
darning needle.
The prettiest looking girls are always placed where the least
attractive-looking merchandise is displayed, and they ask the biggest
kind of prices, trusting to the gallantry of the gentlemen "not to beat
them down," flattering themselves, I suppose, that their pretty looks
are "value received" for the exchange.
One consequence of this arrangement is, that every buyer spends all the
money he has in his purse, taking in exchange therefor a lot of stuff so
utterly useless, and so ridiculously absurd, that after having it on his
table for a week or so to laugh at, he is fain to get rid of the
rubbish, by giving the whole to his chamber-maid.
Sometimes your purchases will hold together till you leave the room, and
sometimes not; you must show yourself a man, and "equal to either
fortune."
There was a post-office; pretty girl called me; had a letter for me;
bought it; paid ten cents; nothing in it--blank.
Solicitous young lady very anxious to have me give her twenty-five cents
to tell me how much I weighed; paid her the money, and she told me
within fifty-one pounds and a half.
Young woman wanted me to invest in the "grab bag;" gave half a dollar,
and fished in; got, in three times trying, a tin whistle, half a stick
of candy, and a peanut done up in tissue paper.
Went on to the auction table, where, after much competition with a
ringleted miss (who was put there to make Peter Funk bids against
probable purchasers), succeeded in bidding in a China vase, which I soon
discovered had a hole in the bottom, and wouldn't hold water any more
than it would bake pork. If I had bought it anywhere else should have
thought I had been swindled, and have demanded my money back, but here I
supposed it was an exemplification of some newly discovered principle of
fair dealing with which I was not yet acquainted.
Was much amused with the way they disposed of the unsold goods--certain
number of articles, (things left at the tables tended by the homely
girls) and for each article twenty tickets were put into a hat, whence
they were drawn out singly, and the last tickets drawn were to have the
prizes--should have thought it was just the same as a lottery, if I had
not been acquainted with the ladies, and known they wouldn't do anything
so naughty.
Came to a place where an old lady, with steel spectacles, was cutting up
a loaf of cake into particularly small pieces--asked what it meant--was
told there was a gold ring somewhere in the cake, and they proposed to
sell each piece for a quarter of a dollar, and give the ring to the
lucky buyer--wondered if it wasn't another lottery on a small scale, but
supposed it couldn't be--went to the supper-room.
It is a curious metropolitan fact, that at parties, balls, or wherever a
refreshment-table is spread, every man seems to regard it as his duty to
fill himself to the very lips with all the "delicacies of the season,"
and to accomplish it in the least time possible--as if he was a gun, and
anxious to ascertain his calibre, and find out how quickly he could be
loaded in case of necessity.
And the ladies are not far behind; this evening I learned how much a
female _can_ eat in a charitable cause.
A pale-faced ball-room belle is a modern Sphinx--a gastronomic problem,
whose solution will probably never be satisfactorily expounded.
Under the impression that she would not eat more than I had money to pay
for, I invited a lady to take some refreshments, and I certainly think
that, like the countryman, she imagined she was bound to eat all the
bill-of-fare called for.
She ate stewed oysters--fried oysters--boiled turkey with oyster sauce,
celery--oysters on the shell--ice cream, sponge cake, and Charlotte
russe--Roman punch, two water-ices, coffee, sandwiches, cold sausage,
lobster salad, oysters broiled, also stewed again, and six on the
shell--orange jelly, grape ditto, cake; she then hinted again at
oysters, but as the supply had run out, she was obliged to go
hungry--paid the bill with a certified check on the Merchants' Bank,
which luckily covered the amount, and greatly relieved my mind; for I
feared there would be a balance which I would have to give my note for.
Having previously procured the articles required for my friend, I
immediately left--go home--got there, and proceeded to examine my
purchases--found that the slippers--having been pasted together without
the slightest regard to permanency, had come apart in my pocket, my
comforter had ravelled out, so that I had about six inches comforter,
and a wad of yarn big enough to make a horse blanket--my dressing-gown
had been made of a moth-eaten remnant, and where there _was_ any sewing,
every stitch was as long as a railroad, but the sleeves had, I verily
believe, been put in with court plaster, and the long seams closed with
carpenter's glue.
Made up my mind that the objects of that feminine institution, a Ladies'
Fair, are somewhat as follows:
Firstly, to give the ladies an opportunity to show their new clothes,
and to talk with a multitude of unknown gentlemen, without any
preliminary introduction.
Secondly, to beg as much money as possible from the gentlemen aforesaid,
under the transparent formality of bargain and sale--which sale includes
the buyer, who is really the only article fairly "sold" in the whole
collection.
Thirdly, to give some money to the ostentatiously poor, if there is any
left after paying expenses, and the Committee don't spend it in
carriage-hire.
In New York, by a refinement in Benevolence, engendered by the hardness
of the times, and the necessity of making the money go as far as it
will, charity money answers a double purpose; procuring pleasure for the
rich, and soup for the poor.
Thus if you pay three dollars for a ticket to the Opera or Ball, you
can enjoy your Aria, or Schottische, with a double relish; and can eat
oysters and turkey, and gulp down creams and ices till your stomach
"strikes," in the labor of love, with the happy consciousness, that it
is all for "sweet charity"--and if the three dollars, before it reach
the needy, in whose behalf you gave it, dwindles to three dimes and a
tip, you can, knowing you have done _your_ duty, poetically exclaim,
with the noble Thane, "Thou can'st not say _I_ did it."
XVII.
Millerite Jubilee--How they didn't go up.
In company with many others of the same genus and who may be classed
under the same general cognomen, my friend Damphool lately became
convinced that according to the comfortable prediction of Mr. Miller,
the "end of Earth" would become speedily visible to the naked eye, as
that amiable gentleman had advertised the world to burn on the
nineteenth day of May, 1855. According to the programme, the
entertainment was to commence with a trumpet solo by Gabriel (not the
one of City Hall celebrity), to be followed by a general "gittin' up
stairs," and grand mass meeting of the illustrious defunct--after which
"the elect" were to start for Paradise in special conveyances provided
for their accommodation--the whole to conclude with a splendid display
of fireworks in the evening.
Damphool had done nothing but sing psalms for a week. Bull Dogge, who
was also a convert, had packed up his wardrobe in a hat-box, and left
the city; saying that he owned forty shares in a Kentucky coal mine, and
was going to take possession of his property; and he offered to bet us
the drinks that if he stood on a vein of _that_ coal, he would be the
last man scorched.
Damphool squared up his board bill, and paid his washerwoman, which left
him dead broke; sold his watch to a "blaspheming Jew" to raise money
with which to procure an ascension robe; in order to do honor to the
occasion, he got one made of linen cambric; it was a trifle too long,
and cut him malignantly under the arms, but he bore it like a martyr; he
got shaved, took a bath, put on his robe, bid me farewell, and got ready
to go up.
I discovered the place from which they were to start, and went up myself
to see the operation--in a vacant lot, where there were no trees to
catch their skirts in their anticipated flight--large crowd on the
ground.
One maiden lady in a long white gown, had also dressed her lap-dog in a
similar manner.
Man with a family Bible in his hand, had forgotten his robe, and come
in his shirt-sleeves.
Ancient wench in a white night-gown, with red shoes, and a yellow
handkerchief round her head, knelt down in a small puddle of rain water,
and prayed to take her up easy, and not hurt her sore ancle.
Lady from East Broadway, came in a robe cut low in the neck, and trimmed
with five flounces.
Red-haired woman made her appearance with a crying baby, to the
consternation of the company, who expected to go to Heaven, and had no
relish for a preliminary taste of the other place.
Careful old lady, brought her overshoes in a work-basket, to wear home
in case the performance should be postponed.
Little girl, had her doll, and her three year old brother had a hoop, a
tin whistle, and a painted kite.
Poor washerwoman came, but as she had only a cotton robe, and a scant
pattern at that, the more aristocratic ladies moved farther away, and
smelt their cologne, while the poor woman knelt down in the corner, with
her face to the fence.
Sixth Avenue lady came in a white satin robe; had a boy to hold up her
train, and she had her own hands full of visiting cards.
An African brunette carried a cushion for her mistress to kneel upon,
and a man followed behind with a basket containing her certificate of
church membership, a gilt-edged prayer-book, two mince-pies and some ham
sandwiches.
Old cripple hobbled up, and as he was devoutly saying his prayers, a bad
boy (who had not made any preparation for aerial travelling) stole his
crutch to make a ball club.
Crowd began to separate into knots, according to their different creeds
and beliefs; Unitarians, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists,
clustering round their respective preachers.
I noticed that one old lady, evidently believing in the perfect sanctity
of her darling minister, and desiring to insure her own passage, had
tied herself to his left leg with a fish line.
Baptist man was preaching close communion.
Presbyterian man was descanting on the accountability of infants, and
asserting that a child three years old can commit sufficient sin to doom
it to the lowest hell.
Sunrise--all knelt down to pray; east wind blew, and it began to rain. I
noticed that Damphool had found a dry place on the lee side of a cider
barrel.
Methodist man took off his coat, and made a stump prayer, while all his
congregation yelled "_Glory_."
Baptist man inserted a special clause in his supplication, that he and
his crowd might go up in a separate boat.
Ministers all prayed _at_ each other, and _for_ nobody.
Know-Nothing clergyman addressed a long-winded political prayer to the
Almighty, detailing the latest election returns, deploring the choice of
the opposition candidate, imploring his blessing on the next governor
(if the world _should_ stand), insinuated that he expected the
nomination himself, and concluded by advising Him to exclude from heaven
all foreigners, or they would refuse to live up to the regulations, and
would certainly kick up another row among the celestials.
Down-town man, on hand, ready to go up; tried to pray, but from want of
practice, could only utter some disjointed sentences about "uncurrent
funds," "money market," "Erie down to 36;" (Damphool whispered that if
_that_ man ever got to heaven he would melt down the golden harp into
coin, and let it out at two per cent. a month.)
Began to rain harder; wind decidedly chilly; their teeth chattered with
cold, and they began to wish for the conflagration to commence. Naughty
boys on the fence began to throw stones--promiscuous praying on every
side. Anxious man stopped in the midst of a long, touching supplication
to cuff the ears of a little boy who hit him with a brick; hours slipped
away, began to think the entertainment was "postponed on account of the
weather."
Noon came; folks were not half so scared as they were in the morning;
ministers had got too hoarse to talk, and were passing the time kissing
the sisters.
Damphool looked so chilly that I got him a glass of hot whiskey punch;
he looked at me with holy horror, and went on with his prayer, but
before he got to "amen," the punch had disappeared.
Husband of red-haired woman came and ordered her to go home and wash the
breakfast dishes and then mend his Sunday pantaloons.
One o'clock, zeal began to cool off; at two the enthusiasm was below
par; at three the rain poured so that I thought an alteration in the
Litany would be necessary to make it read, "Have mercy upon us miserable
_swimmers_." Small boy threw a handful of gravel at long man, which hit
him in the face, and made him look like a mulatto with the small-pox.
Long man punched small boy with a fence rail.
Four o'clock; Gabriel hadn't come yet. Damphool, much disappointed,
muttered something about being "sold;" people evidently getting hungry;
no loaves or fishes on the ground; woman with two children said she was
going home to put them in the trundle-bed; long man looked round to see
that no one was looking, then tucked his robe under his arm, got over
the fence, and started for home on a dog trot.
Dark; no signs of fireworks yet; pyrotechnic exhibition not likely to
commence for some time. Crowd impatient. (I here missed Damphool, and
found him an hour afterwards, paying his devotions to an eighteen-penny
oyster stew and a mug of ale.)
Stayed an hour longer, when the crowd began to disperse, with their
ascension robes so sadly draggled, that if they HAD received a second
summons to go, it would have taken an extra quantity of soap-suds to
make them presentable among decent angels.
Appointed myself a committee of five to inquire into the matter; offered
the following resolution, which I unanimously adopted:--
_Resolved_, That putting on a clean shirt to go to heaven in, don't
always result in getting there, even though the tails be of extra
length, and that the creed which teaches such a mode of procedure is a
farcical theology, fully worthy to be ranked among the many other
excellent "sells" of that veteran joker of world-wide celebrity--_Jo
Miller_.
XVIII.
The Great "American Tragedian."
The only dramatic performances known in the wild region where I passed
some of my early years, are given by companies of strolling players who
usually give their classic entertainments in a barn, have a piece of
carpet for a drop curtain, four tallow candles for footlights, and who
generally go out of town in the night without paying their Tavern bills.
Almost every Drama performed by them, requires more people to represent
it than are contained in the entire troupe; the services of a crowd of
aspiring country boys are secured for soldiers, citizens, robbers, and
other personages who don't have to say anything; but there is still a
large gap which can only be filled by the "doubling" of several parts by
one performer. Hence it is by no means unusual in the "tragedy of
Richard III." to see King Henry, after being deliberately despatched
by Gloster in the first act, reappear in the second as the Duke of
Buckingham, and then, after his supposed decapitation in obedience to
the ferocious order of Richard, "Off with his head," come back in the
final scenes, equipped in a full suit of mail, as the Earl of Richmond,
and avenging his double murder by killing the "crook-backed tyrant" with
a broadsword after a prolonged struggle.
[Illustration: The Great "American Tragedian."]
And in Macbeth, King Duncan, after being carved up by his treacherous
kinsman with two white handled butcher-knives, returns as Hecate in the
witch scenes, and afterwards as court physician to Lady M., besides
which he generally blows the flourishes on the trumpet for the entrances
of the King, beats the bass drum, and attends to the sheet-iron thunder.
I have always had a passion for theatricals, and was at one time of my
variegated existence much more intimately connected with the stage than
at present--and on reaching this city I felt, of course, a great desire
to behold again the theatre, with all its brilliant fascinations--the
light, the music, the varied scenery comprising gardens, chambers,
cottages, mountains, "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,"
bar-rooms, churches, huts and hovels--to look again upon the glass
jewels, the tinselled robes of mimic royalty, the pasteboard banquets
and molasses wine, and all the glory, "pride, pomp and circumstance" and
humbug which I once "knew so well," "_et quorum magna pars fui_."
So, with my trusty friends, Damphool and Bull Dogge, I wended my way to
the Metropolitan Theatre No. 1, to see and hear the distinguished Mr.
Rantanrave Hellitisplit, the notorious American tragedian, in his great,
original, unapproachable, inconceivable, inexplicable, incomprehensible
part of "What a bore O, the last of the Vollypogs."
I had heard so much of this great actor in this particular part, that I
expected to behold nothing less than the "Eighth wonder of the world."
Opera glasses were continually levelled at us by people who, impelled
by a laudable curiosity, were anxious to see all that could _be_ seen.
(Damphool says, that when you see a _woman_ with one of these
implements, you may be sure she wants to be looked at--and called my
attention to the confirmatory fact, that all the ladies with the finest
busts, and the best developed forms, wore their dresses the lowest in
the neck, and sported the biggest opera glasses). (Bull Dogge asserts
that they were invented by the author of "Staring made Easy," and "A
Treatise on the Use of Globes.")
After a season of tramping by the intelligent audience, which seemed, by
its measured regularity, to intimate that they had learned the motion in
the treadmill, the bell jingled and the members of the orchestra
entered, one by one.
The audience endured the prolonged tuning of the instruments, conducted
in a masterly manner by the leader of the band, the music got "good
ready" for a fair start, and at the word "go" they went.
Could not critically analyse the uproar, but it seemed to be composed of
these elements: a predominance of drum and cymbals--a liberal allowance
of flute and horn--a spasmodic sprinkling of trombone--a small quantity
of oboe, and a great deal of fiddle. The tumult was directed by the
leader, who waved the fiddle over his head, jumped up and down upon his
seat, kicked up his heels, disarranged his shirt collar, threw his arms
wildly about, stamped, made faces, and conducted himself as if he was
dancing a frantic hornpipe for the gratification of the crazy whims of
an audience of Bedlamites.
At length the curtain went up--two men came on and said something, then
two others came on and did something--then the scene changed, and some
others came on and listened to a shabby-looking general, who seemed to
be their "magnus Apollo" and who certainly was very long-winded.
Nothing decisive, however, came to pass until the long-expected entrance
of the great Hellitisplit himself eventuated.
I must confess that I was awed by the terrific yet serene majesty of his
appearance. When I saw the tragic, codfishy expression of his eyes, I
was surprised; when I observed the flexibility of his capacious mouth,
opening and shutting, like a dying mud sucker, I was amazed. When my eye
turned to his fingers, which worked and clutched, as if feeling for
coppers in a dark closet, I was wonder-stricken--but when my attention
was called to the magnitude of his legs, I was fairly electrified with
admiration, and could not forbear asking Bull Dogge if those calves were
capable of locomotion.
What-a-bore-O, is supposed to be an Indian Chief, and although it is the
prevailing impression that Indians are beardless, the face of this
celebrated performer proved this opinion to be a physiological fallacy.
For upon his chin he wore a tuft of hair, a round black hirsute knob,
neither useful nor ornamental, but which looked as if somebody had hit
him in the face with a blacking-brush, and a piece had stuck to his
lower jaw.
The admiring audience, who had kicked up perfect young earthquake when
he came on, only ceased when he squared himself, put out his arm and
prepared to speak.
That voice! Ye Gods! that voice! It went through gradations that human
voice never before attempted, imitating by turns the horn of the City
Hall Gabriel, the shriek of the locomotive, the soft and gentle tones of
a forty-horse-power steam sawmill, the loving accents of the
scissor-grinder's wheel, the amorous tones of the charcoal-man, the
rumble of the omnibus, the cry of the driver appertaining
thereto--rising from the entrancing notes of the infuriated house-dog to
the terrific cry of the oyster vender--causing the "supes" to tremble in
their boots, making the fiddlers look around for some place of safety,
and moving the assembled multitude to echo back the roar, feebly, it is
true, but still with all their puny strength.
(Bull Dogge says he got that awful voice by eating pebble-stone
lunches, like the man in the book.)
Several times during the piece I was much affected--when he wound his
arms round his wife, stuck his head over her shoulder, and kissed the
back of her neck--when he made a grand exit, with three stamps, a hop, a
run, and two long straddles--when he talked grand about the thunder,
shook his fist at the man in the flies--when he killed the soldiers in
the council room, shouted for them to "come one and all," and then ran
away for fear they would--when he swore at the man who did not give him
his cue--when he knelt down and said grace over his dead boy, and then
got up and stuck his wife with the butcher-knife; but at no part of the
whole piece was I so impressed with his pathetic power, his transcendent
genius, as when he laid his hand solemnly on his stomach, and said "What
a bore O, cannot lie!" (Damphool asked, in a whisper, if Othello's
occupation was gone).
And at the death scene, when he was shot, I was again touched to the
heart; first he wabbled about like a top-heavy liberty pole in a high
wind; then he stuck out one leg, and wiggled it, after the manner of a
galvanic bull-frog; then sat down on the floor, opened his eyes and
looked around; then grappled an Indian on one side, clutched a soldier
on the other, struggled to his feet, staggered about like a drunken
Dutchman, made a rush forwards, then a leap sideways, stiffened out like
a frozen pig, collapsed like a wet dish-cloth, exerted himself till his
face was the color of an underdone beefsteak, then sank back into the
arms of the Indians, whispered to let him down easy, rolled up the
whites of his eyes, settled himself to die--concluded to have a parting
curse at the surrounding people, took a long swear, laid down, and with
a noise in his throat like castanets, a couple of vigorous kicks and a
feeble groan, gave up the ghost.
Bull Dogge asserted that he would resuscitate, brush the dust off his
legs (take some gin and sugar, and come out and make a speech), all of
which he did; the butcher boys in the gallery (Damphool says
Hellitisplit commenced life as a respectable butcher-boy, but has
degenerated into the man he is,) gave three cheers, Hellitisplit opened
his mouth four times, shut it thrice (he went off with it wide open),
and backed off with a grace which we may suppose would be exhibited by a
mudturtle on the tight-rope.
Damphool was in ecstacies--Bull Dogge asked me how I liked the "great
American," &c. I replied that I knew not which most to admire, his
euphonious voice, or his tremendous straddle, but that (notwithstanding
the late appropriation of the name by a rival show-shop), I was ready to
maintain with the butcher boys that there was but one Metropolitan
Theatre, and Hellitisplit is its profit.
XIX.
"Side Shows" of the City.
We are all aware that Chatham Street and the Bowery are the legitimate
abiding places of those benevolent Hebrews, whose zeal for the public
welfare, and pity for ragged humanity, lead them to continually offer
their valuable and undoubtedly durable articles of wearing apparel to
the needy public "below cost;" and the enviable philosophy with which
they bear the "alarming sacrifices" which must daily deplete their ample
fortunes, has often been the subject of wondering remark.
The question, what becomes of these philanthropic tradesmen after their
ultimate impoverishment, which of course must speedily supervene, is a
fruitful subject for the investigation of some inquisitive mind. The
charitable supposition is, that as soon as their pecuniary ruin is
effectually accomplished, they retire to the shades of private life,
happy in the consciousness of having done their little utmost to benefit
the human race; seeing in each well dressed man, a perambulating
monument of their beneficence, and in each ragged urchin, cause of
regret that their altered circumstances cannot afford him a better pair
of breeches.
But these Israelitish avenues before mentioned, are not only the
headquarters of these philanthropic gentlemen, but are the depot for
many other imitations of humanity, and curious specimens of human skill
unknown to the unobserving.
Here abound those impassive wooden Indians of some tribe extinct, save
in these civilized localities, who stand in the doors of seven by nine
tobacco-factories, offering in persevering silence perpetual bunches of
basswood cigars to the passer-by.
Here are plentifully sprinkled multitudes of three-cornered shops where
patient and eager women, so sharp and shrewd at a bargain, that he who
buys must have all his wits about him, offer for sale the most
incongruous assortment of second-hand property; from a last year's
newspaper to a complete library, from a pint-cup to a seventy ton yacht,
from a brass night-key to a steam-engine.
Here too, almost every other doorway is ornamented with daguerreotypes
of distinguished personages--negro-dancers duly equipped with banjo,
tamborine and clappers--militia officers rigged out in all the glory of
feathers and tinsel--supreme rulers of Know-Nothing Lodges, resplendent
in the full regalia of that astute and sapient order--and whole dozens
of pictures of the beauteous model artists who exercise their modest
calling in that vicinage; whose names are fanciful enough, but whose
physical embellishments are not always the ones commonly attributed to
the mythical characters they represent.
"Kitty Clover" with splay-feet and dirty silk tights as "Venus Rising
from the Sea," "Lilly Dale" cross-eyed and knock-kneed, as the "Greek
Slave"--"Kate Kearney," with eyes rolled up, mock-pearls in her hair, in
an attitude which must be exceedingly trying, as "Morning Prayer," or a
trio of clumsy squaw-like damsels with smirking faces and stumpy limbs,
as the "Three Graces."
Not only are all these works of art exhibited gratis by the
public-spirited habiters of Chatham Street and the Bowery, but they have
an infinity of other exhibitions, which cannot be classified as either
gratuitous, theatrical or amphitheatrical, to see which a fee is
demanded, moderate but peremptory, trifling but inevitable.
These consist principally of ferocious beasts captured by heroic men,
and brought from their native fastnesses to astonish the city people--of
deformed and monstrous beings which should be human, but whom nature has
sent into the world destitute of arms or legs, or vital organs, the lack
of which makes these curtailed individuals objects of wonder, of
mystery, and of three-cent speculation--and of various animals, human
and otherwise, trained to perform unheard of feats of strength, agility,
or juggling sleight.
The whereabouts of these interesting prodigies is made known by huge
paintings on nobody-knows-how-many square yards of canvass; and
generally by a decrepit hurdy-gurdy played in a masterly manner by the
enterprising proprietor, who occasionally varies his performance by
reciting at the top of his voice the leading attractions of his
exhibitions, and extending to the bystanders a general invitation to
walk in, and get their money's worth.
Reader, whose dainty musical and dramatic tastes, our theatrical and
operatic managers fail to gratify; who have laughed your fill at
Burton, and at Forrester; who have tired of Vestvali, Steffanone,
D'Ormy, and the rest; who have grown sick of Badiali, impatient of
Brignoli, and tired of both; who have ceased to interest yourself in the
"Happy Family" either at the Academy of Music or at Barnam's; whose
sickened ear is fatigued with the burnt-cork lyrics of Christy, Buckley,
and their sooty accomplices in questionable harmonies; you, who know
every inch in the circle of fashionable amusement, and long for some
novelty to break the monotony of the tedious track; pray discard the
Shanghae coat, don a more sensible and less noticeable garb, step from
the Broadway sphere to the Bowery precincts, and there look upon wonders
hitherto unknown, and which will heartily astonish your bewildered
optics.
Let us begin with the Anacondas, and the "only living Rhinoceros;" let
me speak, and you hold your breath, and marvel.
Pause ere you enter the apartment containing these prodigies of Natural
History--these dread-inspiring denizens of the mighty rivers and
impenetrable morasses of the tropics, examine carefully the gorgeous
painting which decks the outside of the building. How majestic in
design! how masterly in the execution! Criticism is silent, and we can
only speak to commend.
Observe the brilliancy of the coloring; the vivid red and yellow spots
upon the serpents, which wind their powerful folds about that noble
charger--(you thought it was a windmill? No, Sir! I have inspected it
carefully, and I am positive it is intended for a horse.)
See with what an air of stolid placidity, and sleepy complacency, his
rider, the gallant Indian Chief (you took him for the "Fat Boy"?--the
mistake is perhaps excusable, but it is _not_ the "Fat Boy,") draws his
arrow to the head to pierce the slimy monster; (arrow? you imagined it a
fish pole? wrong, my friend, palpably wrong, the instrument may suggest
fish-pole, but it is undoubtedly meant for arrow;) whose tail, the
artist, with a noble disregard of the principles of perspective which
stamps him as an original genius, has caused to rest upon a mountain
twenty miles in the distance.
Notice how the other monstrous reptile has twined himself in the
branches of the palm-tree--(it looks like a hickory-broom. No, sir! "it
is no such thing"--it is most emphatically a tree--) and with his fiery
tongue thrust from his gaping jaws, (of course it's a tongue, and you
need not assert that it resembles a barber's pole with the end split up,
for it doesn't,) is about to make a frightful descent upon the other
steed. (_Another_ horse? Yes, sir! another horse, although you assert it
to be meant for a cider barrel on a three-legged stool.)
Admire the elegant yet terrible proportions of the mighty Rhinoceros, as
he stalks majestically through the tall jungle-grass (you thought that
was a terrier dog looking for rats in a barn-yard, did you? Well, my
friend, the resemblance certainly is striking, but do not disparage the
artist, who is undoubtedly much more familiar with terrier dogs than
with the other brutes, and don't find fault with the Rhinoceros because
he isn't bigger than a dog, for you perceive that if he had been
represented the proper size he would have covered up the snakes, hidden
the Indian from our sight, and rendered the landscape invisible.)
We pay our money and go inside. What, though, upon seeking the
realization of this promise of novelty, instead of the living rhinoceros
we see only the dried and shrivelled skin of what was probably once a
hog? and the ferocious reptiles of fabulous size shrink into a couple
of exaggerated angleworms?
Let us not find fault with the showman who is only carrying on a popular
business on too small a scale to be honest. He should increase his stock
of curious swindles, tell bigger stories and more of them, humbug a
hundred people where now he swindles one, and so make his business
honest and respectable.
Our attention is next claimed by the man without any arms, who is
advertised to possess tremendous strength, and can do more things with
his feet than most people can with their hands; who can draw, paint,
load a gun, play the piano, violin, and accordeon, cut likenesses, put
on a clean collar, shave himself, tell fortunes, set type, and saw wood.
Do not grumble if, instead of an admirable Crichton, whose
accomplishments are to provoke your envy, you see only a miserable
cripple, necessitated by poverty and inability to work, to make an
exhibition of his deformity, and the poor devices to which he is driven,
to supply, in some slight degree, the absence of his limbs.
Don't forget to see the "Living Skeleton," who has seen two score years,
only weighs twenty ounces, and is so thin that when he is undressed he
is invisible to the naked eye.
Visit also the dancing bears, the performing dogs, the wax figures, the
mineralogical, geological, and conchological collections; see the female
minstrels; the alligators, who have devoured in their native country an
army of men, a multitude of women, and a myriad of nigger pickaninnies;
see the magician who turns chickens into mugs of ale, and transmutes
iron soup kettles into purest gold; the girl who dances a hornpipe on a
drum-head, amongst a dozen eggs and never breaks any; the man who
swallows a sword for his dinner, and lunches daily on jack-knives and
gimlets; the boy who can tie his legs in a bow-knot on the back of his
neck.
Go to see the individual who balances a ladder on the end of his nose,
and his canine friend, who courageously ascends to the top thereof, and
barks defiance to the world,--the juggler who tosses the balls and
butcher knives,--the Chinaman who throws flip flaps by the dozen, and
makes a human cart-wheel of himself in the air, between heaven and
earth, like Mahomet's coffin;--the learned Canary-birds which draw
water, fire off guns, ring bells, and cut up all sorts of unnatural
antics to earn their daily cuttlefish bone and loaf sugar; take a
regular round of Bowery three cent amusements, glut your taste for
novelty, take the edge off your curiosity, laugh at the bombastic
humbugs enough to last you for a month; and then when the conglomeration
of unaccustomed sights and sounds has tired out your aristocratic
senses, go back to the Fifth Avenue world again, convinced that all the
fun of the city is not located in Broadway or Chambers Street, or all
the humbug concentrated between the City Hall Square and Maiden Lane.
XX.
New Year's Day in New York.
The last New Year's day previous to the one herein spoken of, was passed
by the subscriber on board a Mississippi steamboat--said boat being fast
aground on a sand-bar--provisions all gone--the captain, steward, and
one of the bar-keepers being occupied playing "poker" with the
passengers at one end of the boat, while the more piously disposed were
listening to the drawling tones of a nautical preacher, who was
discoursing second-hand sanctimony at the other--crew all on a "bender"
in the engine room, firemen all drunk on the boiler deck, and every body
generally enjoying themselves.
Made no calls, myself, except at the bar, where I wished myself so many
happy New Years, and so many compliments of the season, that I slept
that night on a pile of cotton-wood, and when I attained my state-room,
next day, I found each berth occupied by a colored fireman, both with
their boots on; one with my Sunday coat under his head for a pillow, his
hair decorated with sundry lumps of stone-coal, and his red flannel
shirt ornamented with the contents of a tar-bucket, and the carpenter's
glue-pot.
Since that eventful time, I have become a sojourner in town, and on the
approach of New Year's, had felicitated myself on the prospect of seeing
how New Yorkers celebrate this universal holiday.
Intended to call on my friends, and hoped, as the number of my feminine
acquaintances in this immediate vicinity is small, to get through in
time to spend the afternoon at my new boarding-house, where Mrs. Griggs,
my landlady, and her two daughters were to receive calls, and who had
invited me to be present and see "the elephant" as far as the
proceedings of the day should disclose to an unsophisticated eye, his
mighty and magnificent proportions.
Early in the morning, dyed my incipient but dilatory moustache into
visibility, dressed myself as fashionably as the resources of my limited
wardrobe would permit, and, attended by my fast friend Sandie, started
on my journey, intending to "fetch up" eventually at my boarding-house,
"stopping at all the intermediate posts by the way."
A word about my friend Sandie. I have become much attached to him, from
his strong resemblance in habits to the "fat boy" of the Pickwick
papers.
_He sleeps every where._
In the omnibus, on the ferry-boat, in the store, at the Post-Office, in
church, at the theatre, and even while walking along Broadway.
I have known him stop twenty-one stages in the course of an afternoon's
walk by nodding at the drivers while he was enjoying a peripatetic nap.
The first time I saw him I was the humble instrument of preserving his
valuable existence. He had started to go to the Post-Office to mail an
important letter, but had fallen asleep in Nassau street, and the
bill-stickers had nearly overlaid him with show-bills, announcing that
at the Bowery Theatre would be played the drama of the "Seven Sleepers,"
to be followed by the song "We're all a Nodding," the whole to conclude
with the farce "Rip Van Winkle."
In fact, he sleeps every where, except at table.
Open his sleepy eyes to the prospect of something good to eat, and his
wakefulness will be insured until the uttermost morsel is entombed in
those regions of unknown capacity to which he diurnally sends such
astonishing quantities of provisions.
His internal dimensions have long been a favorite theme of speculation
to his friends, but, alas! the problem must ever set at defiance all the
ordinary rules of mensuration.
He has occasional fits of spasmodic piety, and then tries to read his
Bible, and invariably goes to sleep and lets the book fall into the
ashes--and I verily believe, that though his eternal salvation depended
upon his reading three chapters of the Gospel without having a fit of
somnambulism, he would go fast asleep before he had accomplished three
verses.
Put ourselves into our new clothes and started on our tour. Went to the
Smiths, Thompsons, Tompkins, Greens, Browns, Wiggins, Robinsons, &c.; in
all these places there was the same performance, without change of
programme. I give the formula--
Enter--speak to the lady of the house--"happy New Year,"
compliments--happy returns--take a glass of wine with the
ladies--another of brandy or punch with the father--nibble a little
cake--exit--to be repeated "_ad libitum_."
At Jones' they had, on a side-table, a plate under a placard labelled
"for the poor"--and every visitor was expected to drop in a
contribution.
Some malicious person has recollected that the Joneses did the same
thing last year, and his inconvenient and libellous memory has also
recalled the circumstance that soon after New Year's, the two daughters
of Jones had new silk dresses, and Mrs. J. rejoiced in a new cloak and
hat of the richest style, and he says that Brogley, the broker, told him
that on the 3rd of January last, Jones got some "tens" and "twenties" of
him in exchange for small money, and made him give him two per cent.
over because so much of it was silver change--and, in fact, he
insinuates that as the money was to be "for the poor," Jones voted
himself as poor as any body, and kept the proceeds--and rumor whispers
that the Joneses won't have half so many calls this year as last,
because their friends object to being taxed to pay their milliners'
bills.
At Snooks' we found the doors closed, and a basket hung outside, in
which to deposit cards--thought of the foundling hospital, &c.
Odd circumstance, very--but in all the parlors we visited that day I
noticed one unvarying peculiarity of furniture--there were in no single
parlor any two chairs of the same pattern--but they were of all shapes,
sizes, dimensions, capacities, and degree of discomfort--from the
damask-covered to the unvarnished, which looked as if they had strayed
in from the kitchen. The effect of this arrangement is to impress a
stranger with the idea that the owner of the establishment has been
compelled to furnish his drawing-room from the chaotic assortment of a
second-hand furniture store.
And, notwithstanding the recent election of a Maine Law Governor, in
nearly every house, wines, brandy, punches, "hot stuff," and various
inebriating drinks abounded, and every guest was compelled, on pain of
slighting his host, to partake--the inevitable result was, that before
night, many a youth, whose head might have withstood the attack of a
single bottle, not being able to endure a twenty hours' siege, gave in
dead-drunk--while others of harder heads and stronger stomachs, reeled
from parlor to parlor, proclaiming the obituary of their respectability
and decency, by exhibiting the noisy clamor, or idiotic gibber of
beastly drunkenness, to the refined and polished ladies of "our best
society"--in many cases rewarding the pseudo-hospitality of their fair
entertainers by liberally sprinkling the marble steps to their noble
mansions, with an unclean baptism from their aristocratic stomachs.
Kept Sandie awake until we entered a hack, and then let him relapse into
a refreshing slumber, which continued until we reached home--entered the
parlor, and took a seat in a corner, from which, unobserved, I could get
a fair view of the various performances.
Every young lady is skilled in music, and an "elegant player" upon that
tortured instrument, the piano--each can sing an assortment of "glees"
from beautiful operas--transposing her voice into a vocal cork-screw,
and opening her mouth so that, as a general thing, you can see those
unmentionable articles, which are used, in fireman's phraseology, to
"light up the hose"--and these songs, these delectable morsels of
harmony, varied by such extemporaneous discords as the agitation or
forgetfulness of the moment may occasion, are always "executed" for the
entertainment of evening visitors.
Mrs. Griggs' daughters are no exception to this general rule.
First call-bell rings--enter bashful young man--evidently his first
attempt at a fashionable visit--came in with his hat in his hand--put
it behind him to make his bow--dropped it--tried to pick it up--stepped
in it--put his foot through it--fell over it--and in his frantic
struggles to recover himself, burnt his coat, fractured his pantaloons,
untied his cravat, demolished his shirt collar, and was finally borne
away to the hall by his sympathizing friends; minus his patent
moustache, one-half of which was afterwards found in Laura Matilda's
scrap-book and the rest discovered in the coal-scuttle.
Crowd of young men came in together, (it is customary here, for young
gentlemen to club their funds, hire a carriage by the hour, and go
calling in a drove; stopping at every house where one of the company
happens to be acquainted; so that when a lady keeps open house, for
every person whom she knows or desires to see, a dozen unknown
individuals annoy her by their uninvited presence,)--every one asked the
young ladies to sing, and the young ladies _did_ sing--generally opera,
but sometimes varying the entertainment with the touching ballad of "Old
Dog Tray," or the graceful and genteel melody, "Jordan is a Hard Road."
On this occasion the programme was somewhat as follows:--Gent. No. 1 was
treated with a "gem from Norma"--No. 2, a Grand March--No. 3, "Old Dog
Tray"--No. 4, "Prima Donna Waltz"--No. 5, "Norma"--No. 6, "Jordan"--No.
7, "Norma"--No. 8, "Prima Donna," again--No. 9, "Norma"--No. 10,
"Norma"--No. 11, "Dog Tray"--No. 12, "Norma," &c.; "Norma" being always
ahead, and evidently a favorite of the field.
I have no doubt that in the whole city, yesterday, "Norma" must have
been entreated to "hear my prayer," at least fifteen thousand distinct
times, by probably five thousand imploring females--and these harmonious
supplications, if blended and consolidated into one powerful, entreating
scream, would have been sufficient to raise the ancient Druids from
their graves, only to find that, although the final trump had not
sounded, it was by an imitation by no means to be despised, that they
had been fooled into a premature resurrection.
As evening came on, the guests who came showed signs of the day's
indulgences--I was particularly edified by the movements of three of
them, whom I noted with peculiar care--the first shook hands cordially
with the servant girl, called her "Mrs. Griggs," wished her many happy
returns, and on being told of his error, made an humble apology to the
piano stool, and immediately sat down in a spittoon.
The next made his bow to the hat-stand in the hall, swaggered into the
room, called for a brandy "smash"--tried to rectify his mistake by
begging pardon of Mrs. G. for mistaking her parlor for a bar-room, and
assured her, if he had done anything he was sorry for, he was
exceedingly glad of it.
The third stumbled on to the sofa, and, after steadily contemplating his
boots with much satisfaction for fifteen minutes, he picked up a Chinese
fire-screen, and with an irresistible drunken sobriety, he tried to
decipher the mysterious characters inscribed thereon, at the same time
calling the attention of Mrs. G. to the capital story in "the Magtober
number of Harper's Octazine."
Refreshments--first man often essaying to wipe his nose with his
umbrella, which he afterwards placed in the music rack--poured his
coffee into his ice-cream, put his cake and sandwich into its place,
stirred them up with a tea-spoon, and tried to drink--the effort
resulting in a signal failure, he passed his cup to the chandelier for
"a little more sugar."
The next spilled his wine in Laura Matilda's neck, begged she wouldn't
apologize, and offered to wipe it with his pocket handkerchief--by
which appellation he designated the door mat, which he had brought in
with him from the hall.
The other, after carefully depositing his plate on the floor, dropped
his gloves into his saucer, and tried to put his over-coat into his vest
pocket, made a great attempt to eat his cup of coffee with his knife and
fork, and then resolutely set about picking his teeth with the
nut-cracker.
After some complicated man[oe]uvring, they bowed themselves out as best
they could--but the last one, having mistaken the door and gone down
cellar, instead of out-doors, was found next morning reposing
complacently in the coal-hole.
In fact, New York, every New Year's Eve, goes to bed with a huge brick
in its municipal hat, and, as the legitimate effect of such
indiscretion, awakes next morning with a tremendous corporate
headache--"Young America," for once, is unstarched in appearance; and in
deportment, meek as the sucking dove.
XXI.
Amusement for the Million--A 2.40 Sleigh-ride.
Sleigh-riding is an amusement to which I was never partial, for I cannot
appreciate the pleasure there is, in a man's deliberately freezing his
feet, and congealing his fingers into digital icicles; and for my own
part unless there was some unusual charm beyond the ride itself, I would
as soon think of seeking an evening's amusement by sitting a given
number of hours on a frozen mill pond with my pedal extremities stuck
through a hole in the ice into the water below. And in the city there
are even more discomforts attending this popular penance than in the
open country.
The man who would trustingly endeavor to draw a sherry cobbler out of a
clam-shell, make a gin sling from cold potatoes, lard oil from railroad
spikes, or a mint-julep out of sea weed and chestnut burs--or hopefully
essay the concoction of a satisfactory oyster stew from
jack-knife-handles and bootlegs, is the only person I can conceive of,
sanguine enough to anticipate an evening's pleasure from a city
sleigh-ride.
I can readily conceive that in the country, give a man a fast team, a
light sleigh, a clear sky, a straight road, a pretty girl, plenty of
snow, and a good tavern with a bright ball-room and capital music
waiting at his journey's end, the frigid amusement may be made
endurable--possibly, to a man enthusiastic enough to seek for pleasure
with the thermometer at zero, even desirable.
But in New York, we can't get an unadulterated country sleigh-ride, any
more than we can get genuine country milk--neither will bear
importation. In both cases some unbargained-for dash of cold water
interferes with the purity of the article, and nips in the bud our
delusive anticipations.
The conditions necessary to a thorough-bred sleigh-ride can never be
present in a great city. In the first place, the snow (an item of some
importance) cannot even reach the earth unsullied; it is met in its
quiet journey by some aspiring chimney, some impertinent roof, or
ambitious spire, all dust-covered and smoke-begrimed, or by some other
of the spontaneous nuisances indigenous to a city, and is robbed of its
maiden purity, as its first welcome to the lower world--then, mixed with
ashes, soot, and pulverulent nastiness of every sort--tainted with
dainty perfumes of gas, garbage, markets and slaughter-houses, besides
all the volatile filth of six hundred thousand perspiring bipeds (not
mentioning hogs, horses, rats, dogs, and jackasses), it comes from upper
air to us, expectant citylings--and even then we have to take it
second-hand, for it is stopped in its airy transit by countless awnings,
the tops of innumerable houses, stages, drays, and hackney-coaches, and
the hats and outside apparel of the peripatetic multitude--from all
which meddling mediums, it is transferred to the cold charity of the
stony pavement, where the first installment, in sorrow for its sullied
purity, dissolves itself in discontented tears, and sulkily seeks, by
some narrow down-hill track, its grave--the common sewer.
But a persevering snow-storm, which gives its whole attention to the
work, sometimes succeeds in covering the streets of Gotham with a
pepper-colored mixture, which we accept as snow.
When the air is cold, this peculiar substance cuts up into a kind of
greyish sand, as much like real snow, as wild geese are like wooden
legs--and when the weather is moist, it degenerates into a muddy,
malicious mixture, in which the city flounders, until a drenching rain
dilutes the mass into a coffee-colored flood, which sneaks into rivers
through back lanes and dirty alleys, leaving the thoroughfares once more
practicable. One week last winter eight inches of snow set our city
people crazy, and turned Broadway into a horse purgatory. From
Bloomingdale to the Battery, the street was filled with sleighs,
cutters, pungs, jumpers and every variety of sled, all full of
screeching, screaming men, women and children, in different stages of
frigidity and voluntary discomfort, but all seeming, by their actions,
to reiterate the cockney sentiment--"Wat's the hodds, long's you're
'appy?"
Every man who could hire or buy a transient interest in a string of
bells and a horse, jackass or big dog, went in for an independent ride
on his own hook--and those who could not compass this luxury, piled
pell-mell into the stage sleighs, a hundred in a heap, each bound to
have a sixpence-worth of slushy, slippery, horse locomotion.
At this crisis, Sandie proposed to me to join a company who were going
to undertake an evening's pleasure, calculating to ride through the
city, see the sights, go out of town to a ball, and dance till morning.
Agreed to go, put on my tightest boots, and got ready--time came, sleigh
arrived, got in, received a promiscuous introduction to seventeen young
ladies, by the light of a street lamp. Couldn't of course distinguish
their faces so as to tell them apart, and so was continually calling
Miss Jones, Miss Snifkins; Miss Loodle, Miss Vanderpants; and addressing
Miss Faubob and Miss Wiggins by each other's names; which, as they were
ready to scratch each other's eyes out for jealousy, and hadn't been on
speaking terms for a year and a half, made the matter decidedly
pleasant.
Found a place for my feet among the miscellaneous pedal assortment at
the bottom--sat down, held on with both hands, and prepared to enjoy
myself. After a great deal of whipping of the spirited horses, and some
curiously emphatic observations by the driver, we got under way. Driver
(an enthusiastic Hibernian with one black eye) took the middle of the
street, resolved to give the road to nothing--met a young gent in a
cutter, _he_ didn't turn out, _we_ didn't turn out, collision ensued,
young man got the worst, his hat was smashed, and his delicate person
left in a snow-bank--his horse started, hit against a lamp-post, then
ran away, distributing the ruins of the cutter all along the road,
leaving a piece at every corner and telegraph pole, until there wasn't
enough left in any one spot to make a rat-trap--finally dashing through
the show window of a confectioner's shop and being brought to a
stand-still by the shafts sticking in a soda fountain.
Met a charcoal cart, run against us and distributed a shower of
pulverized nigritude over the company, to the great damage of the clean
linen of the gentlemen, and the adornments generally of the ladies,
especially those little white rosettes which they had tied on the backs
of their heads, and dignified with the fabulous title of bonnets.
Met a stage sleigh, got jammed with us--and during the three minutes
preceding our violent extrication, I had leisure to take particular
notice of the inmates.
Now, even in ordinary times, any kind of an omnibus is a purely
democratic institution, but an omnibus sleigh containing ordinarily,
anywhere from fifty to a hundred and twenty people, is a most effectual
leveller of aristocratic distinctions.
In this particular vehicle, a fashionably dressed Miss, had from
necessity, taken her seat in the lap of a Bowery boy, who, in his
anxiety to make her comfortable, had put one arm round her waist, and
one hand into her muff.
An up-town merchant was carrying a washerwoman's baby, while a dandy, in
patent leather boots, was holding her bundle of dirty linen.
A news-boy, stealing a ride, was smoking a Connecticut cigar, and
puffing the smoke into the faces of the incongruous assembly.
A negro woman was sustaining her position on the edge of the slippery
craft, by holding on with one arm round the neck of a clergyman in a
blue cloak with a brass hook and eye at the neck, who had a basket of
potatoes with a leg of mutton in it, which a sailor was using for a
shield to protect him from the shower of snow balls, fired by the boys
on the corner--naughty boys--one hit one of our ladies on the head, she
made a very pretty faint, but was soon revived by a piece of ice which I
slipped down her back--one blacked the driver's other eye, and a
particularly and solidly unpleasant one, hit Sandie in the mouth and
waked him up.
Began to be sensible of the pleasures of my situation--felt as if my
boots were full of ice water, my nose a Croton water pipe, and my
fingers carrot-shaped icicles. Each leg seemed a perpendicular iceberg
my feet good sized snow-drifts, my head a frozen pumpkin, and the inside
of me felt as if I had made my supper on a cast-iron garden-fence.
As, however, these peculiar but unpleasant sensations are inseparable
from the sleigh-riding performances, I tried to warm myself by imagining
volcanoes and conflagrations; and, indulging in a hope of hot brandy and
water at my journey's end, endeavoured to bear my trials like a frozen
martyr, as I was.
Got to the hotel at last, waiters rescued us and got us into the house,
which was full of parties ahead of us. Burnt the skin off my throat
trying to thaw my congealed digestive apparatus, by drinking brandy and
water boiling hot; ladies imbibed hot gin sling all round "_ad
libitum_," gentlemen ditto, and "_Da Capo_."
Ready for a dance; got into the ball-room, which was so full
already that each cotillon had only a space about as big as a
pickle-tub--"balance four" and you stepped on somebody's heels and tore
off the skirt of some lady's dress--"forward two" and you poked your
nose into the whiskers of the gentleman opposite, and felt his neck-tie
in your eye, and "promenade all" was the signal for an animated but
irregular fancy dance upon the toes of the bystanders.
But this quadrille was voted by most of our ladies to be altogether too
antiquated and energetic--the truth is, city dancing is no more like a
country jig than a dead march is like a hornpipe--in the one case the
ladies slide about with a die-away air, as if one lively step would
annihilate their delicate frames; and in the other, they dance, as if
they were made of watch-springs and india rubber.
The only way to get an ordinary city girl really interested in a dance,
is to have some moustachoed puppy put his arm round her waist, hug her
close up to him, spin her round the room till her head swims.
But the dancing couldn't last for ever, and at length we had to prepare
for the ride home.
Towards morning the music got tired, the leading violinist was fiddling
on one string on the wrong side of the bridge, and the ophicleide man,
unable from sheer exhaustion to convey his potables to his mouth, was
pouring them into his instrument, which he had regaled with four mugs of
ale and a brandy smash, and the little fifer, with his foot in the big
end of the French horn, was wasting his precious breath in trying to
coax a quick step out of a drumstick, which he mistook for a flageolet.
Compelled to stop dancing. Ladies went to a private room and repaired
their damaged wardrobe with pins and other extemporaneous contrivances,
known of them alone. Gentlemen put on what hats and great-coats the
preceding parties had left, paid the bill--woke up the driver, and all
started for home.
Shower came on, making the ladies look like damaged kaleidoscopes, and
taking the starch out of the gentlemen's collars--the gum out of their
hats, and the color out of their whiskers.
Upset--females got scattered round loose (horses didn't run away, not a
bit of it), one young lady had her foot in my overcoat pocket, and both
hands clinched in my hair--got out of the snarl at last, and found that
I had traps enough hanging to me to manufacture a small-sized new
married couple--a set of false teeth in my fur glove--two pairs of
patent moustaches, with the springs broken, in my hat-band, half a head
of glossy, ringleted hair in my button-hole, a lace collar hanging to my
pantaloons, and my boots full of puff combs.
Righted up at last, hurried over mile-stones, curb-stones, and
pebble-stones, till we reached the city--took the young ladies home, and
was immediately after arrested by a moist watchman for being a
suspicious character, and only identified by my friends in the morning,
just in time to keep my name out of the papers.
Am completely disgusted with sleigh-riding--the enjoyment is purely
imaginary, and the expense not at all so. Excitement ain't pleasure, any
more than sawdust pudding is roast turkey--and then too, the girls are
so different--girls here are such touch-me-not creatures, that no one
understanding the nature of the animal would venture on a kiss, unless
he wanted to get his mouth full of magnesia and carmine; fuss, feathers,
furbelows and flummery, will never make a _woman_ out of any of these,
until a new saddle and pair of gilt spurs will transform a sucking-calf
into a race-horse.
A modern belle stands no kind of a chance with a country beauty--pale
cheeks and dingy complexions may be _alleviated_ by chalk and
vermillion; but artificial hues are always evanescent, nature alone
paints _cheeks_ in fast colors. Sitting up late and guzzling brandy
punches won't put the same kind of crimson in the face that is placed
there by getting up in the morning, feeding the chickens, chasing the
pigs out of the garden, and drinking sweet milk for breakfast. And not
only in looks do they differ, but they
"have yet
Some tasks to learn, some frailties to forget."
An affected giggle won't pass muster for a hearty laugh--superficial
boarding-school "finishing" is not education, for bad spelling will
show, though the pen be held by jewelled fingers--and bad French, bad
Italian, and worse English, are miserable substitutes for conversation,
though uttered by the fairest lips that ever lisped in fashionable
drawl.
It is true that in the circle of my limited acquaintance I have the
honor to number some ladies whose unaffected manners, natural grace, and
true politeness place even my usual awkwardness at perfect ease, while
their superior intelligence causes me to feel most deeply my extensive
_non-acquirements_--but to every one of these I have met twenty who,
although they could dance, sing, play the piano; paint on velvet, or
work in worsted, flowers unknown in botany, and animals to which
ordinary natural historians are strangers; couldn't write an
intelligible English note, or read anything more difficult than easy
words in two syllables; and if told that wheat bread is made out of
kidney potatoes wouldn't know the difference.
I repudiate all this tribe of diluted milk-and-water misses, and should
I ever feel matrimonially inclined shall commission some country friend
to choose me a wife who can darn stockings, and make pumpkin pies
anyhow, and hoe and chop cord-wood, if in any case the subscriber
shouldn't be able to meet current family expenses.
XXII.
Cupid in Cold Weather.--Valentine's Day.
In accordance with some heathen custom, the origin of which is unknown
to moderns, a certain day is selected in the year, when people send
hosts of anonymous letters to other people, generally supposed to be on
the subject of love, but which are not unfrequently missives containing
angry, malicious, or insulting allusions. This is a day to rejoice the
hearts of the penny postmen, who always get their money before they give
up the documents. This glorious day is, as most people are aware, the
fourteenth of February--time when young ladies expect to receive
sentimental poetry by the cord, done up in scented envelopes, written
upon gilt-edged paper, and blazoned round with cupids, hearts, darts,
bows and arrows, torches, flames, birds, flowers, and all the other
paraphernalia of those before-folks-laughed-at-but-in-private-learned
-by-heart epistles known as "Valentines."
A time when young gentlemen let off their excess of love by
lack-a-daisical missives to their chosen fair; praising in anonymous
verses their to-other-eyes-undiscoverable-but-to-their-vision-
brilliantly-resplendent charms--poetizing red hair into "auburn
ringlets,"--making skim-milk-colored eyes, "orbs, the hue of heaven's
own blue,"--causing scraggy, freckled necks to become "fair and graceful
as Juno's swans," and deifying squat, dumpy young ladies into
"first-rate angels."
A time when innumerable people take unauthorised liberties with the
name of a venerable Roman, long since defunct, laying themselves
under all sorts of obligations, payable in friendship,--pledging
any amount of love, and running up tremendous bills of affections,
making no solid man responsible therefor, but only signing the
all-over-christendom-once-a-year-universally-forged cognomen
"Valentine."
Most of these communications are amatory, some sickish, some nauseating,
some satirical, some caustic, some abusive; for it seems to be a time
which many a man takes advantage of to revenge some fancied slight from
scornful lady, by sending her one of those scandalous nuisances,
misnamed "comic Valentines;" because he thinks there will be so many of
the foul birds upon the wing that his own carrion fledgling cannot be
traced to its filthy nest.
Bull Dogge, who is looking over my shoulder, remarks, that the man who
would insult a lady, by sending an anonymous letter, would steal the
pennies from a blind man, and then coax his dog away to sell to the
butcher boys.
And Bull Dogge is right.
A time when the penny postman is looked for with more interest than if
he bore the glad tidings so anxiously expected, "Sebastopol not
taken,"--Laura Matilda in the parlor, to whom he brings but one, looks
with envious eyes upon Biddy in the kitchen who gets two.
A time when men who haven't got a wife wish they had, and those who are
provided with that article of questionable usefulness wish they had
another; when maids wish for one husband, and matrons for half a dozen.
A time when nunneries and monasteries go into disrepute, and the
accommodating doctrines of Mahomet, and the get-as-many-wives-as-you-
can-support-and-keep-them-as-long-as-they-don't-fight principles of
Mormonism, are regnant in the land.
And above all, a time when independent bachelors like the deponent, are
beset with so many written laudations of the married state, by unknown
females, that every single blessed man in all the land wishes he could
take a short nap and wake up with a good-looking wife and nine
large-sized children.
On the morning of this traditional pairing-off day, the postman brought
me seventeen letters, all unpaid, and all from "Valentine." Retired to
my room--closed the curtains--lit the gas--placed before me a mug of ale
and two soda crackers, and proceeded to open and examine the documents.
No. 1 was sealed with beeswax and stamped with a thimble; and from its
brown complexion, I should think it had fallen into the dishwater, and
been dried with a hot flatiron. I couldn't read it very well--there
wasn't any capitals--the g's and y's had tails with as many turns as a
corkscrew, the p's bore a strong resemblance to inky hair pins, the h's
resembled miniature plum trees; every f looked like a fish-pole, and
every z like a frog's foot, and the signature I should judge had been
made by the ink bottle, which must have been taken suddenly sea-sick,
and have used the paper as a substitute for the wash-bowl.
All I could understand of it was "my penn is poor, my inck is pail, my
(something) for yew shal never" do something else, I couldn't make out
what.
No. 2 was in a lace envelope--cucumber-colored paper, and was perfumed
with something that smelt like bumble-bees; handwriting very delicately
illegible, proving that it came from a lady--spelling very bad, showing
that it came from a _fashionable_ lady--poetry very unfamiliar,
commencing "come rest in this" the next word looked like "boots," but
that didn't seem to make sense--concluded it must be "barn-yard" as it
went on to say "though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still
here." Couldn't make out whether she was in earnest and wanted me to
come and see her, or was only trying to insinuate that I was a stray
calf, and had better go home to my bovine parent.
(Bull Dogge says he wonders the ladies take such pains to render their
correspondence unreadable--the up-strokes being just visible to the
naked eye, and the down-strokes no heavier than a mosquito's leg--and
why there is such a universal tendency to make little fat o's and a's
just on the line, so that they look like glass beads strung on a
horse-hair--and why they _will_ persist in making their chirography
generally so uncertain and undecided that a page of ordinary feminine
handwriting looks like a sheet of paper covered with a half finished
web, made by 'prentice spiders, and condemned as awkwardly clumsy by the
journeymen spinners).
Will somebody answer Bull Dogge?
I soon threw aside No. 2 in disgust, and went on to the others--most of
them pictured off with hymeneal designs; plethoric cupids with apostolic
necks--flowers the like of which never grew anywhere--birds, intended
for doves, supposed to be "billing and cooing," but which, in reality,
more resembled a couple of wooden decoy ducks fastened together by the
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