Chapter V (6)

Most people, in taking a farewell which may, perhaps, be forever, are anxious to part on good terms; and it is usual, on such melancholy occasions, for even enemies to shake hands, forget their previous quarrels, and bury all former animosities in parting regrets. Now, because most people do this, I am determined to act in quite a different way; for, as I have lived, so I should wish to die, in my own way, without imitating any person, whatever may be his rank, talents, or reputation. Besides, if I know our trio, we have no enmities to obliterate, no hatchet to bury; and as to all injuries—those we have long since forgiven. At this moment there is not an individual in the world, not even the Pope himself, to whom we have any personal hostility. But if, shutting their eyes to the many striking proofs of good-nature displayed through the whole course of this work, there should be any persons so singularly ridiculous as to take offense at our strictures, we heartily forgive their stupidity; earnestly entreating them to desist from all manifestations of ill-humor, lest they should, peradventure, be classed under some one of the denominations of recreants, we have felt it our duty to hold up to public ridicule. Even at this moment, we feel a glow of parting philanthropy stealing upon us; a sentiment of cordial good-will toward the numerous host of readers that have jogged on at our heels during the last year; and in justice to ourselves must seriously protest, that if at any time we have treated them a little ungently, it was purely in that spirit of hearty affection, with which a schoolmaster drubs an unlucky urchin, or a humane muleteer his recreant animal, at the very moment when his heart is brimful of loving kindness. If this is not considered an ample justification, so much the worse; for in that case I fear we shall remain forever unjustified—a most desperate extremity, and worthy of every man’s commiseration!

One circumstance, in particular, has tickled us mightily as we jogged along; and that is, the astonishing secrecy with which we have been able to carry on our lucubrations! fully aware of the profound sagacity of the public of Gotham, and their wonderful faculty of distinguishing a writer by his style, it is with great self-congratulation we find that suspicion has never pointed to us as the authors of SALMAGUNDI. Our gray-beard speculations have been most bountifully attributed to sundry smart young gentlemen, who, for aught we know, have no beards at all; and we have often been highly amused when they were charged with the sin of writing what their harmless minds never conceived, to see them affect all the blushing modesty and beautiful embarrassment of detected virgin authors. The profound and penetrating public, having so long been led away from truth and nature by a constant perusal of those delectable histories, and romances, from beyond seas, in which human nature is, for the most part, wickedly mangled and debauched, have never once imagined this work was a genuine and most authentic history; that the Cocklofts were a real family, dwelling in the city, paying scot and lot, entitled to the right of suffrage, and holding several respectable offices in the corporation. As little do they suspect that there is a knot of merry old bachelors seated snugly in the old-fashioned parlor of an old-fashioned Dutch house, with a weathercock on the top that came from Holland; who amuse themselves of an evening by laughing at their neighbors, in an honest way, and who manage to jog on through the streets of our ancient and venerable city, without elbowing or being elbowed by a living soul.

When we first adopted the idea of discontinuing this work, we determined, in order to give the critics a fair opportunity for dissection, to declare ourselves, one and all, absolutely defunct: for it is one of the rare and invaluable privileges of a periodical writer, that by an act of innocent suicide he may lawfully consign himself to the grave, and cheat the world of posthumous renown. But we abandoned this scheme for many substantial reasons, In the first place, we care but little for the opinion of critics, whom we consider a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters; who, like deer, goats, and divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon the buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity. It also occurred to us, that though an author might lawfully, in all countries, kill himself outright, yet this privilege did not extend to the raising himself from the dead, if he was ever so anxious; and all that is left him in such a case, is to take the benefit of the metempsychosis act, and revive under a new name and form.

Far be it, therefore, from us to condemn ourselves to useless embarrassments, should we ever be disposed to resume the guardianship of this learned city of Gotham, and finish this invaluable work, which is yet but half completed. We hereby openly and seriously declare, that we are not dead, but intend, if it please Providence, to live for many years to come, to enjoy life with the genuine relish of honest souls, careless of riches, honors, and everything but a good name, among good fellows, and with the full expectation of shuffling off the remnant of existence after the excellent fashion of that merry Grecian, who died laughing.

TO THE LADIES.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

Next to our being a knot of independent old bachelors, there is nothing on which we pride ourselves more highly than upon possessing that true chivalric spirit of gallantry which distinguished the days of King Arthur and his valiant Knights of the Round Table. We cannot, therefore, leave the lists where we have so long been tilting at folly, with giving a farewell salutation to those noble dames and beauteous damsels who have honored us with their presence at the tourney. Like true knights, the only recompense we crave is the smile of beauty, and the approbation of those gentle fair ones, whose smile and whose approbation far excels all the trophies of honor, and all the rewards of successful ambition. True it is that we have suffered infinite perils, in standing forth as their champions, from the sly attacks of sundry arch caitiffs, who, in the overflowings of their malignity, have even accused us of entering the lists as defenders of the very foibles and faults of the sex. Would that we could meet with these recreants hand to hand; they should receive no more quarter than giants and enchanters in romance.

Had we a spark of vanity in our natures, here is a glorious occasion to show our skill in refuting these illiberal insinuations; but there is something manly and ingenuous in making an honest confession of one’s offenses when about retiring from the world; and so, without any more ado, we doff our helmets, and thus publicly plead guilty to the deadly sin of GOOD-NATURE; hoping and expecting forgiveness from our good-natured readers—yet careless whether they bestow it or not. And in this we do but imitate sundry condemned criminals, who, finding themselves convicted of a capital crime, with great openness and candor, do generally, in their last dying speech, make a confession of all their previous offenses, which confession is always read with great delight by all true lovers of biography.

Still, however, notwithstanding our notorious devotion to the gentle sex, and our indulgent partiality, we have endeavored, on divers occasions, with all the polite and becoming delicacy of true respect, to reclaim them from many of those delusive follies and unseemly peccadilloes in which they are unhappily too prone to indulge. We have warned them against the sad consequences of encountering our midnight damps and withering wintry blasts; we have endeavored, with pious hands, to snatch them from the wildering mazes of the waltz, and thus rescuing them from the arms of strangers, to restore them to the bosoms of their friends; to preserve them from the nakedness, the famine, the cobweb muslins, the vinegar cruet, the corset, the stay-tape, the buckram, and all the other miseries and racks of a fine figure. But, above all, we have endeavored to lure them from the mazes of a dissipated world, where they wander about, careless of their value, until they lose their original worth; and to restore them, before it is too late, to the sacred asylum of home, the soil most congenial to the opening blossom of female loveliness, where it blooms and expands in safety, in the fostering sunshine of maternal affection, and where its heavenly sweets are best known and appreciated.

Modern philosophers may determine the proper destination of the sex; they may assign to them an extensive and brilliant orbit, in which to revolve, to the delight of the million and the confusion of man’s superior intellect; but when on this subject we disclaim philosophy, and appeal to the higher tribunal of the heart—and what heart that had not lost its better feelings, would ever seek to repose its happiness on the bosom of one whose pleasures all lay without the threshold of home—who snatched enjoyment only in the whirlpool of dissipation, and amid the thoughtless and evanescent gayety of a ball-room? The fair one who is forever in the career of amusement may for a while dazzle, astonish, and entertain; but we are content with coldly admiring, and fondly turn from glitter and noise, to seek the happy fireside of social life, there to confide our dearest and best affections.

Yet some there are—and we delight to mention them—who mingle freely with the world, unsullied by its contaminations; whose brilliant minds, like the stars of the firmament, are destined to shed their light abroad and gladden every beholder with their radiance—to withhold them from the world would be doing it injustice—they are inestimable gems, which were never formed to be shut up in caskets, but to be the pride and ornament of elegant society.

We have endeavored always to discriminate between a female of this superior order and the thoughtless votary of pleasure, who, destitute of intellectual resources, is servilely dependent on others for every little pittance of enjoyment; who exhibits herself incessantly amid the noise, the giddy frolic, and capricious vanity of fashionable assemblages; dissipating her languid affection on a crowd; lavishing her ready smiles with indiscriminate prodigality on the worthy or the undeserving; and listening with equal vacancy of mind to the conversation of the enlightened, the frivolity of the coxcomb, and the flourish of the fiddle-stick.

There is a certain artificial polish—a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the _beau monde_, which, in the commerce of the world, supplies the place of natural suavity or good humor; but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character. By a kind of fashionable discipline the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to irradiate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness or good-will. The elegant simulation may be admired by the connoisseur of human character as a perfection of art, but the heart is not to be deceived by the superficial illusion; it turns with delight to the timid, retiring fair one, whose smile is the smile of nature; whose blush is the soft suffusion of delicate sensibility; and whose affections, unblighted by the chilling effects of dissipation, glow with all the tenderness and purity of artless youth. Hers is a singleness of mind, a native innocence of manners, and a sweet timidity that steal insensibly upon the heart, and lead it a willing captive; though venturing occasionally among the fairy haunts of pleasure, she shrinks from the broad glare of notoriety, and seems to seek refuge among her friends, even from the admiration of the world.

These observations bring to mind a little allegory in one of the manuscripts of the sage Mustapha, which, being in some measure applicable to the subject of this essay, we transcribe for the benefit of our fair readers.

Among the numerous race of the Bedouins, who people the vast tracts of Arabia Deserta, is a small tribe, remarkable for their habits of solitude and love of independence. They are of a rambling disposition, roving from waste to waste, slaking their thirst at such scanty pools as are found in those cheerless plains, and glory in the unenvied liberty they enjoy. A youthful Arab of this tribe, a simple son of nature, at length growing weary of his precarious and unsettled mode of life, determined to set out in search of some permanent abode. “I will seek,” said he, “some happy region, some generous clime, where the dews of heaven diffuse fertility; I will find out some unfailing stream, and, forsaking the joyless life of my forefathers, settle on its borders, dispose my mind to gentle pleasures and tranquil enjoyments, and never wander more.”

Enchanted with this picture of pastoral felicity, he departed from the tents of his companions; and having journeyed during five days, on the sixth, as the sun was just rising in all the splendors of the East, he lifted up his eyes and beheld extended before him, in smiling luxuriance, the fertile regions of Arabia the Happy. Gently swelling hills, tufted with blooming grove, swept down into luxuriant vales, enameled with flowers of never-withering beauty. The sun, no longer darting his rays with torrid fervor, beamed with a genial warmth that gladdened and enriched the landscape. A pure and temperate serenity, an air of voluptuous repose, a smile of contented abundance, pervaded the face of nature, and every zephyr breathed a thousand delicious odors. The soul of the youthful wanderer expanded with delight—he raised his eyes to heaven, and almost mingled with his tribute of gratitude, a sigh of regret that he had lingered so long amid the sterile solitudes of the desert.

With fond impatience he hastened to make choice of a stream where he might fix his habitation, and taste the promised sweets of this land of delight. But here commenced an unforeseen perplexity; for, though he beheld inumerable streams on every side, yet not one could he find which completely answered his high-raised expectations. One abounded with wild and picturesque beauty, but it was capricious and unsteady in its course; sometimes dashing its angry billows against the rocks, and often raging and overflowing its banks. Another flowed smoothly along, without even a ripple or a murmur; but its bottom was soft and muddy, and its current dull and sluggish. A third was pure and transparent, but its waters were of a chilling coldness, and it had rocks and flints in its bosom. A fourth was dulcet in its tinklings, and graceful in its meanderings; but it had a cloying sweetness that palled upon the taste; while a fifth possessed a sparkling vivacity, and a pungency of flavor, that deterred the wanderer from repeating his draught.

The youthful Bedouin began to weary with fruitless trials and repeated disappointments, when his attention was suddenly attracted by a lively brook whose dancing waves glittered in the sunbeams, and whose pratting current communicated an air of bewitching gayety to the surrounding landscape. The heart of the wayworn traveller beat with expectation; but on regarding it attentively on its course, he found that it constantly avoided the embowering shade, loitering with equal fondness, whether gliding through the rich valley, or over the barren sand; that the fragrant flower, the fruitful shrub, and the worthless bramble were alike fostered by its waves, and that its current was often interrupted by unprofitable weeds. With idle ambition it expanded itself beyond its proper bounds, and spread into a shallow waste of water, destitute of beauty or utility, and babbling along with uninteresting vivacity and vapid turbulence.

The wandering son of the desert turned away with a sigh of regret, and pitied a stream which, if content within its natural limits, might have been the pride of the valley, and the object of all his wishes. Pensive, musing, and disappointed, he slowly pursued his now almost hopeless pilgrimage, and had rambled for some time along the margin of a gentle rivulet, before he became sensible of its beauties. It was a simple pastoral stream, which, shunning the noonday glare, pursued its unobtrusive course through retired and tranquil vales; now dimpling among flowery banks and tufted shrubbery; now winding among spicy groves, whose aromatic foliage fondly bent down to meet the limpid wave. Sometimes, but not often, it would venture from its covert to stray through a flowery meadow; but quickly, as if fearful of being seen, stole back again into its more congenial shade, and there lingered with sweet delay. Wherever it bent its course, the face of nature brightened into smiles, and a perennial spring reigned upon its borders. The warblers of the woodland delighted to quit their recesses and carol among its bowers; while the turtle-dove, the timid fawn, the soft-eyed gazelle, and all the rural populace, who joy in the sequestered haunts of nature, resorted to its vicinity. Its pure transparent waters rolled over snow-white sands, and heaven itself was reflected in its tranquil bosom.

The simple Arab threw himself upon its verdant margin; he tasted the silver tide, and it was like nectar to his lips; he bounded with transport, for he had found the object of his wayfaring. “Here,” cried he, “will I pitch my tent: here will I pass my days; for pure, O fair stream, is thy gentle current; beauteous are thy borders; and the grove must be a paradise that is refreshed by thy meanderings!”

* * * * *

“Pendant opera interrupta.”—_Virg._

“The work’s all aback.”—_Link. Fid._

“How hard it is,” exclaims the divine Confutsé, better known among the illiterate by the name of Confucius, “for a man to bite off his own nose!” At this moment I, William Wizard, Esq., feel the full force of this remark, and cannot but give vent to my tribulation at being obliged, through the whim of friend Langstaff, to stop short in my literary career, when at the very point of astonishing my country, and reaping the brightest laurels of literature. We daily hear of shipwrecks, of failures and bankruptcies; they are trifling mishaps which, from their frequency, excite but little astonishment or sympathy; but it is not often that we hear of a man’s letting immortality slip through his fingers; and when he does meet with such a misfortune, who would deny him the comfort of bewailing his calamity?

Next to embargo, laid upon our commerce, the greatest public annoyance is the embargo laid upon our work; in consequence of which, the produce of my wits, like that of my country, must remain at home; and my ideas, like so many merchantmen in port, or redoubtable frigates in the Potomac, moulder away in the mud of my own brain. I know of few things in this world more annoying than to be interrupted in the middle of a favorite story, at the most interesting part, where one expects to shine or to have a conversation broken off just when you are about coming out, with a score of excellent jokes, not one of which but was good enough to make every fine figure in corsets literally split her sides with laughter. In some such predicament am I placed at present; and I do protest to you, my good-looking and well beloved readers, by the chop-sticks of the immortal Josh, I was on the very brink of treating you with a full broadside of the most ingenious and instructive essays that your precious noddles were ever bothered with.

In the first place, I had, with infinite labor and pains, and by consulting the divine Plato, Sanconiathon, Apollonius Rhodius, Sir John Harrington, Noah Webster, Linkum Fidelius, and others, fully refuted all those wild theories respecting the first settlement of our venerable country; and proved, beyond contradiction, that America, so far from being, as the writers of upstart Europe denominate it, the new world, is at least as old as any country in existence, not excepting Egypt, China, or even the land of the Assiniboins; which, according to the traditions of that ancient people, has already assisted at the funerals of thirteen suns, and four hundred and seventy thousand moons!

I had likewise written a long dissertation on certain hieroglyphics discovered on those fragments of the moon, which have lately fallen, with singular propriety, in a neighboring State, and have thrown considerable light on the state of literature and the arts in that planet, showing that the universal language which prevails there is high Dutch; thereby proving it to be the most ancient and original tongue, and corroborating the opinion of a celebrated poet, that it is the language in which the serpent tempted our grandmother Eve.

To support the theatric department, I had several very judicious critiques, ready written, wherein no quarter was shown either to authors or actors; and I was only waiting to determine at what plays or performances they should be leveled. As to the grand spectacle of Cinderella, which is to be represented this season, I had given it a most unmerciful handling, showing that it was neither tragedy, comedy, nor farce; that the incidents were highly improbable, that the prince played like a perfect harlequin, that the white mice were merely powdered for the occasion, and that the new moon had a most outrageous copper nose.

But my most profound and erudite essay in embryo is an analytical, hypercritical review of these Salmagundi lucubrations; which I had written partly in revenge for the many waggish jokes played off against me by my confederates, and partly for the purpose of saving much invaluable labor to the Zoiluses and Dennises of the age, by detecting and exposing all the similarities, resemblances, synonymies, analogies, coincidences, etc., which occur in this work.

I hold it downright plagiarism for any author to write, or even to think, in the same manner with any other writer that either did, doth, or may exist. It is a sage maxim of law—“_Ignorantia neminem excusat_”—and the same has been extended to literature: so that if an author shall publish an idea that has been ever hinted by another, it shall be no exculpation for him to plead ignorance of the fact. All, therefore, that I had to do was to take a good pair of spectacles, or a magnifiying glass, and with SALMAGUNDI in hand and a tableful of books before me, to muse over them alternately, in a corner of Cockloft library: carefully comparing and contrasting all odd ends and fragments of sentences. Little did honest Launce suspect, when he sat lounging and scribbling in his elbow-chair with no other stock to draw upon than his own brain, and no other authority to consult than the sage Linkum Fidelius—little did he think that his careless, unstudied effusions would receive such scrupulous investigation.

By laborious researches, and patiently collating words, where sentences and ideas did not correspond, I have detected sundry sly disguises and metamorphoses of which, I’ll be bound, Langstaff himself is ignorant. Thus, for instance—the little man in black is evidently no less a personage than old Goody Blake or Goody something, filched from the Spectator, who confessedly filched her from Otway’s “wrinkled hag with age grown double.” My friend Launce has taken the honest old woman, dressed her up in the cast-off suit worn by Twaits, in Lampedo, and endeavored to palm the imposture upon the enlightened inhabitants of Gotham. No further proof of the fact need be given, than that Goody Blake was taken for a witch, and the little man in black for a conjurer; and that they both lived in villages, the inhabitants of which were distinguished by a most respectful abhorrence of hobgoblins and broomsticks; to be sure the astonishing similarity ends here, but surely that is enough to prove that the little man in black is no other than Goody Blake in the disguise of a white witch.

Thus, also, the sage Mustapha, in mistaking a brag-party for a convention of magi studying hieroglyphics, may pretend to originality of idea and to a familiar acquaintance with the black-letter literati of the East. But this Tripolitan trick will not pass here; I refer those who wish to detect his larceny to one of those wholesale jumbles, or hodge-podge collections of science, which, like a tailor’s pandemonium or a giblet-pie, are receptacles for scientific fragments of all sorts and sizes. The reader, learned in dictionary studies, will at once perceive I mean an encyclopædia. There, under the title of Magi, Egypt, Cards, or Hieroglyphics, I forget which, will be discovered an idea similar to that of Mustapha, as snugly concealed as truth at the bottom of a well, or the mistletoe amid the shady branches of an oak; and it may at any time be drawn from its lurking-place, by those hewers of wood, and drawers of water, who labor in humbler walks of criticism. This is assuredly a most unpardonable error of the sage Mustapha, who had been the captain of a ketch; and, of course, as your nautical men are for the most part very learned, ought to have known better. But this is not the only blunder of the grave Mussulman who swears by the head of Amrou, the beard of Barbarossa, and the sword of Khalid, as glibly as our good Christian soldiers anathematize body and soul, or a sailor his eyes and odd limbs. Now I solemnly pledge myself to the world, that in all my travels through the East, in Persia, Arabia, China, and Egypt, I never heard man, woman, or child, utter any of those preposterous and newfangled asseverations; and that, so far from swearing by any man’s head, it is considered, throughout the East, the greatest insult that can be offered to either the living or dead to meddle in any shape even with his beard. These are but two or three specimens of the exposures I would have made; but I should have descended still lower; nor would have spared the most insignificant and, or but, or nevertheless, provided I could have found a ditto in the “Spectator” or the dictionary; but all these minutiæ I bequeath to the Lilliputian literati of this sagacious community, who are fond of hunting “such small deer,” and I earnestly pray they may find full employment for a twelvemonth to come.

But the most outrageous plagiarisms of friend Launcelot are those made on sundry living personages. Thus: Tom Straddle has been evidently stolen from a distinguished Brummagem emigrant, since they both ride on horseback; Dabble, the little great man, has his origin in a certain aspiring counselor, who is rising in the world as rapidly as the heaviness of his head will permit; mine uncle John will bear a tolerable comparison, particularly as it respects the sterling qualities of his heart, with a worthy yeoman of Westchester County; and to deck out Aunt Charity, and the amiable Miss Cocklofts, he has rifled the charms of half the ancient vestals in the city. Nay, he has taken unpardonable liberties with my own person!—elevating me on the substantial pedestals of a worthy gentleman from China, and tricking me out with claret coats, tight breeches, and silver-sprigged dickeys, in such sort that I can scarcely recognize my own resemblance; whereas I absolutely declare that I am an exceeding good-looking man, neither too tall nor too short, too old nor too young, with a person indifferently robust, a head rather inclining to be large, an easy swing in my walk, and that I wear my own hair, neither queued, nor cropped, nor turned up, but in a fair, pendulous oscillating club, tied with a yard of ninepenny black ribbon.

And now having said all that occurs to me on the present pathetic occasion—having made my speech, wrote my eulogy, and drawn my portrait, I bid my readers an affectionate farewell; exhorting them to live honestly and soberly—paying their taxes, and reverencing the state, the church, and the corporation—reading diligently the Bible and almanac, the newspaper and SALMAGUNDI; which is all the reading an honest citizen has occasion for—and eschewing all spirit of faction, discontent, irreligion, and criticism.

Which is all at present
From their departed friend,
WILLIAM WIZARD.

THE END.

-----

Footnote 1:

The title of a newspaper published in New York, the columns of which,
among other miscellaneous topics, occasionally contained strictures on
the performances at the theatres.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 2:

David Longworth, an eccentric bookseller, had filled a large apartment
with the valuable engravings of “Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery,”
magnificently framed, and had nearly obscured the front of his house
with a huge sign—a colossal painting in _chiaroscuro_, of the crowning
of Shakespeare. Longworth had an extraordinary propensity to publish
elegant works, to the great gratification of persons of taste, and the
no small diminution of his own slender fortune. He alludes ironically
to this circumstance in the present notice.—_Paris Ed._ Longworth’s
store was in Park Row, near the Park Theatre. He was the dramatic
publisher of New York in his day, and long issued the City Directory.

Footnote 3:

It was not originally the intention of the authors to insert the above
address in the work; but, unwilling that a _morceau_ so precious
should be lost to posterity, they have been induced to alter their
minds. This will account for any repetition of idea that may appear in
the introductory essay.—_Note to original Ed._

Footnote 4:

Amongst the amusements of the citizens in times gone by was that of
making excursions in the winter evenings, on sleighs, to some
neighboring village, where the social party had a ball and supper.
Kissing-bridge had its name from the circumstance that here the beaux
exacted from their fair companions the forfeiture of a kiss before
permitting their travelling vehicles to pass over.—_Paris Ed._

The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of Greenwich, in his “Travels through
the Middle Settlements in North America, in the years 1759 and 1760,”
has this mention of the spot, fixing the locality near Fiftieth
street, near the site of old Cato’s. “The amusements of the New
Yorkers,” says Burnaby, “are balls and sleighing expeditions in the
winter; in the summer, going in parties upon the water and fishing, or
making excursions into the country. There are several houses
pleasantly suited upon East River, near New York, where it is common
to have turtle feasts: these happen once or twice in a week. Thirty or
forty gentlemen and ladies meet and dine together, drink tea in the
afternoon, fish and amuse themselves till evening, and then return
home in Italian chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise. In the
way there is a bridge, about three miles distant from New York, which
you always pass over as you return, called the Kissing-bridge, where
it is a part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself
under your protection.” From this it would appear that the privileges
of Kissing-bridge were not confined to sleighing parties.

Footnote 5:

_Old_ Vauxhall stood at the corner of Warren and Greenwich streets,
and was originally the residence of Sir Peter Warren. It fell into the
hands of Sam Fraunces, the famous tavern-keeper, who kept it as a
public garden. Fraunces was the steward of General Washington. A later
Vauxhall was kept in the neighborhood of Broome Street by Delacroix,
who removed the establishment about 1808 to the better known Vauxhall
Garden, which extended from the Bowery to Broadway, crossing the
present Lafayette Place and site of the Astor Library. The Bull’s
Head, the chief cattle mart, occupied the site of the Bowery Theatre,
and has travelled upward with the growth of city, making one or two
halting-places on that avenue on its way to its present position in
the Fifth Avenue.

Footnote 6:

Two fashionable milliners of rival celebrity in the city of New
York.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 7:

In this instance, as well as on several other occasions, a little
innocent pleasantry is indulged at Mr. Jefferson’s expense. The
allusion made here is to the red velvet small clothes with which the
President, in defiance of good taste, used to attire himself on levee
days and other public occasions.—_Paris Ed._

In one of his splenetic moods in Virginia, John Randolph once vented
his complaint of Jefferson, with an allusion to the old scandal. “I
cannot live,” said he, “in this miserable undone country, where, as
the Turks follow their sacred standard, which is a pair of Mahomet’s
green breeches, we are governed by the old red breeches of that prince
of projectors, St. Thomas of Cantingbury; and surely, Becket himself
never had more pilgrims at his shrine, than the saint of Monticello.”

As for the proboscis of Paine, “I shall secure him to a nicety,” said
Jarvis, when he was about to take the bust of Paine, now in the New
York Historical Society, “if I can get plaster enough for his
carbuncled nose.” Dr. Francis, who relates the anecdote in one of the
interesting historical sketches which he has given to the public, also
furnishes a couplet sung by the boys in the street:—

“Tom Paine is come from far, from far;
His nose is like a blazing star!”

Footnote 8:

An imaginary association, the object of which was to set the North
River (the Hudson) on fire. A number of young men of some fashion,
little talent, and great pretension, were ridiculed as members.—_Paris
Ed._

Footnote 9:

This edifice, the corner-stone of which was laid by Mayor Edward
Livingston in 1803, was not finished till 1812.

Footnote 10:

An emblematical device, suspended from a poplar in front of the shop
of Paff, a music-seller in Broadway.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 11:

The numbers of Salmagundi were originally published in this form.

Footnote 12:

Cockloft Hall had its origin in a favorite resort of Irving and his
companions, in an old country house, once the residence of the
Kembles, on the Passaic, near Newark. It was then known, says the
writer of a pleasant reminiscence in the Newark Advertiser, as the
“Gouverneur Place,” from which family it had descended to Mr.
Gouverneur Kemble; but during most of the time referred to it was not
inhabited by the family, but was in charge of a respectable couple,
who kept it in order, and acted as host and hostess to Irving,
Paulding, and the three or four others, constituting their coterie.
Mr. Irving, in a letter to the New Jersey Historical Society,
referring to these visits, remarked, “With Newark are associated in my
mind many pleasant recollections of early days, and of social meetings
at an old mansion on the banks of the Passaic.”

Footnote 13:

Several Tripolitan prisoners, taken by an American squadron, in an
action off Tripoli, were brought to New York, where they lived at
large, objects of the curiosity and hospitality of the inhabitants,
until an opportunity presented to restore them to their own
country.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 14:

This is another allusion to the primitive habits of Mr. Jefferson,
who, even while the first magistrate of the Republic, and on occasions
when a little of the “pomp and circumstance” of office would not have
been incompatible with that situation, was accustomed to dress in the
plainest garb, and when on horseback to be without an attendant; so
that it not unfrequently happened that he might be seen, when the
business of the state required his personal presence, riding up alone
to the government house at Washington, and having tied his steed to
the nearest post, proceed to transact the important business of the
nation.—_Paris Ed._

Footnote 15:

Dyde’s public-house was in Park Row. It was brought into notice by a
famous coalition supper of the Burrites and Clintonians. A pamphlet
was published giving an account of the Dyde Supper.

Footnote 16:

The “Weekly Inspector,” here alluded to, was a neatly printed octavo
journal, chiefly political, conducted by Thomas Green Fessenden. It
was commenced Aug. 30, 1806, and was published in New York by Ezra
Sargent, 39 Wall Street, with the motto from Hamilton: “Of those men
who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greater number
have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the
people—commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

Feb. 7, 1807, a fortnight after its publication, Fessenden notices
SALMAGUNDI, a “new literary publication,” with an opening fling or
two at the club of wits who profess themselves supremely
indifferent to the reception of their work. In the next number but
one of the “Inspector” the attack is followed up by an
article—“SALMAGUNDI—_alias_ BUBBLE AND SQUEAK—again.” In reply to
the notice of the former which had appeared in the interim in
SALMAGUNDI, Christopher Caustic raves in his extraordinary slang
at these “frothy productions.” “The disease,” he says, “is
becoming epidemic, the fever rising to frenzy, spreading from fool
to fool; a numberless number of nameless names have already caught
the infection, and from one end of the town to the other, all is
nonsense and ‘Salmagundi.’” He calls it “a mere hodge-podge of
train oil and garlic, instead of ‘Salmagundi.’... This is, in
English, a ‘gibe cat,’ smothered in onions and eaten with fennel,
rue, and caraway seed. In fact, there was one Huddesford, an
English wit, who wrote a poem with _that are_ title, which this
worst of wizards may have purloined in some of their rambles, and
thus gained a _legal_ claim to the wit it contains.” He proposes,
to his own great delight, “Silly-kickaby” as a substitute for
“Salmagundi.” Having dispatched ‘Salmagundi’ or _Silly-kickaby_,
we come next to ‘Whimwhams and Opinions.’ What a broken-backed
metaphor! It is as bad as to have christened your nonsense _Apple
Dumpling_; or _Flights of Fancy_.

‘Atque idem jungat vulpes
Et mulgeat hircos’—

That is, in English:—

This sorry set of silly shoats,
Should be employed to milk _he-goats_,
Or sent to Carolina bogs,
To yoke ox-teams of prairie dogs.

‘Whimwhams’ is taken by this junto of notables from an English
publication. Launcelot Langstaff is a vile daub of a caricature of
Isaac Bickerstaff. Will Honeycomb sat for Anthony Evergreen; Will
Wizard’s original may be found in the British classics; and in short,
the prototype of every other character, with the exception of a few
scurrilous personalities. The work ought to have been styled
_Silly-kickaby_, alias _Tag-locks of common English Publications_,
compiled by Dunderpate, Doughhead, Dumpling and Co., published by
Peter Pettyman, sold at the sign of the Ditch delving driveller,
Caughnawaugher Slip, dedicated, and to be devoted, to a certain
goddess. The Doctor ends with abusing the metre of Pindar Cockloft,
and then asserting that it was stolen from “Dr. Caustic’s
nick-nackatory.”

We shall see in a future number how the Doctor’s literary billingsgate
was followed up in SALMAGUNDI. The “Weekly Inspector” replies in the
small shot of a handful of “squibs” in his number for March 6, leveled
at “the lilliputian journal,” alluding to the small page of the
original edition of SALMAGUNDI, and the war dies out.

The “Inspector” makes his exit at the close of his second volume, Aug.
22, 1807.

These mutual random hits and editorial discourtesies of a type too
common in the annals of literature—these quarrels of authors—should be
remembered for what they were, the passing nonsense of the hour.
Thomas Green Fessenden, notwithstanding this nonsensical raving, was a
man of mark and merit—not only of humor and spirit in the comic verses
with which he enlivened the newspaper discussions of his day, but to
be held in memory for his more sober labors in the cause of
agriculture. There is a very pleasing reminiscence of his later
years—he died at the age of sixty-six in 1837—by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
in which he celebrates “the amiable temper and abstracted habits” of
his old friend.

Footnote 17:

It is not a little singular, that this mode of ridiculing the
gossiping productions of Sir John Carr, and other tourists of the day,
should have been successfully adopted almost at the same moment by two
writers placed in different and distant quarters of the globe. _My
Pocket-Book_ appeared in London only two or three weeks after the
publication of these “Memorandums” in New York—so that neither writer
could possibly have borrowed from the other—and by its ingenious
pleasantry and poignant satire, crushed a whole host of book-making
tourists, with the luckless knight at their head.—_Paris Ed._ This
matter is again referred to at the close of No. XIII.

Footnote 18:

_Vide_ Carr’s _Stranger in Ireland_. John Carr, Esq., of the Honorable
Society of the Middle Temple, wrote several slip-slop entertaining
books of travel, _A Northern Summer_, _The Stranger in France_, and
_The Stranger in Ireland, a Tour in 1805_. The last appears to have
been popular in America. It reached its third edition from the New
York press of Riley, this very year, 1807.

Footnote 19:

_Vide_ Weld. Isaac Weld travelled through the United States in 1795–7.

Footnote 20:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 21:

_Vide_ Weld. “General Washington,” says Weld, “told me that he never
was so much annoyed by mosquitoes in any part of America, as in
Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the thickest boot.”

Footnote 22:

_Vide_ Carr; _vide_ Moore; _vide_ Weld; _vide_ Parkinson; _vide_
Priest. Richard Parkinson, late of Orange Hill, near Baltimore,
published in London, 1805, his tour in America, in 1798–1800,
exhibiting sketches of Society and Manners, and a particular account
of the American system of agriculture, etc. William Priest, who signs
himself on the title-page of his book, “Musician, late of the theatres
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston,” travelled in the United States
between the years 1793 and 1797, and published his journals in London,
in a thin octavo in 1802. _Vide_ Linkum Fidelius, and _vide_ Messrs.
Tag, Rag, and Bobtail.

Footnote 23:

_Vide_ the Sentimental Kotzebue.

Footnote 24:

_Vide_ Carr and Blind _Bet_. Carr, in his travels, meets on the
roadside in Wales a stone-blind woman, supporting herself and infirm
mother by the sale of gloves and stockings. The traveller perpetrates
some verses on the occasion, which he introduces in this ludicrous
fashion: “Upon her quitting us, the following lines found their way
into my pocket-book!”

Footnote 25:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 26:

_Vide_ Priest. “At two,” says Priest, “the Philadelphians dine on what
is usual in England, both a variety of American dishes, such as bear,
opossum, raccoon, etc.!”

Footnote 27:

Gulliver is announced by the town crier in Brobdignag as “a strange
creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a
_splacnuck_, an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six
feet long.”

Footnote 28:

Jeremy Cockloft appears, in this enumeration, to have come from a
recent perusal of Voltaire’s _Candide_.

Footnote 29:

_Vide_ Carr.

Footnote 30:

_Vide_ Carr’s learned derivation of _gee_ and _whoa_.

Footnote 31:

Moore:—

“Is this the region then, is this the clime
For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,
Which all their miracles of light reveal
To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
Alas! not so—the Muse of nature lights
Her glories round; she scales the mountain heights,
And roams the forests; every wondrous spot
Burns with her step, yet man regards it not.
She whispers round, her words are in the air,
But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,
Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,
One ray of mind, to thaw them into song.”

—_Epistle to the Hon. W. R. Spencer, from Buffalo, upon Lake Erie._

Footnote 32:

Carr.

Footnote 33:

Rabelais’ Judge Bridlegoose and famous Oracle. There was a slight
difficulty in the Judge’s method of decision, “he was become old, and
his sight of late was very much failed, and become dimmer than it was
wont to be; by reason of which infirmity he was not able so distinctly
and clearly to discern the points of the dice, as formerly he had been
accustomed to do.”

Footnote 34:

Moore.

Footnote 35:

Carr.

Footnote 54:

The famous production of the Hartford wits, Alsop, Dwight, Hopkins, &
Co.

Footnote 59:

General Eaton’s famous adventure on the land expedition from Egypt to
rescue Bainbridge and the prisoners at Tripoli.

Footnote 60:

_Vide_ Solomon Lang.

Footnote 61:

An amusing verification of the fidelity of the character of Tom
Straddle, to the type of the Brummagem tourist, is afforded in an
anecdote related in a Memoir of Irving, prefixed to the Paris edition
of his works. “Some years ago,” it reads, “a man who was prosecuted in
Jamaica, for a libelous publication, produced a volume of _Salmagundi_
on his trial. This publication, it appeared, had been copied
literally, word for word, from the character of Tom Straddle, printed,
sold, sent abroad, mischievously enough, to be sure, while one of
those English travellers, whom Irving had so delightfully hit off, was
in Jamaica, exploring and astonishing the natives.”

Footnote 62:

The old Government house facing Bowling Green, built for the President
of the United States, afterwards the residence of George Clinton and
John Jay.

Footnote 63:

The allusion is here evidently to the experiment made by Fulton in New
York Harbor, on the 20th of July, 1807, shortly after his return from
Europe, bringing with him the favorite plans of “torpedo warfare,” as
he called it, which he had laid before the governments of France and
England. An old brig was, after some delay, blown up in the bay by one
of Fulton’s charged canisters. The affair, with Fulton’s appeal to the
Government, his previous lecture on Governor’s Island to the
magistracy of the city, when the audience was somewhat diminished on
the production of one of the loaded torpedoes, with his declaration
that it contained a hundred and seventy pounds of powder, and that, if
he were to suffer the clock-work to run fifteen minutes, he had no
doubt it would blow the fortification to atoms—all this, with his
letter to the Corporation the day after his successful experiment, was
well calculated to produce the stir in the city so pleasantly set
forth in this paper of SALMAGUNDI.

Footnote 64:

Dr. Francis, in his remarks on the life and character of Washington
Irving, before the Historical Society, alludes to this conflict of
spelling-books at the school in which they were both instructed.
“There was a curious conflict existing in the school between the
principal and his assistant instructor; the former a legitimate
burgher of the city, the latter a New England pedagogue. So far as I
can remember, something depended on the choice of the boy’s parents in
the selection of his studies; but if not expressed otherwise, the
principal stuck earnestly to Dilworth, while the assistant, for his
section of instruction, held to Noah Webster.”

Footnote 65:

Jefferson in his _Notes on Virginia_, says, “The legislative powers of
government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it
does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no
god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Footnote 66:

The writer of the reminiscence, whom we have already cited in the
previous mention of Cockloft Hall, Mr. W. A. Whitehead of Newark,
describes the recent condition of the summer-house. “The old man,” who
serves the purpose of the narrator, “sighed and turned away his head,
while he led the way to a small building standing not far from the
river’s brink, and near an artificial basin or pond, into which, as
the tide was full, the Passaic was pouring some of its surplus waters
through a narrow sluice. It was octagonal in shape, about eighteen
feet in diameter, containing only one apartment, with a door facing
the river on the east, and having windows opening toward each of the
other three cardinal points. It was built of stone, and had been
originally weather-boarded, although most of the boards had fallen
off. It had evidently been constructed with great care, being fully
plastered within and papered, having an ornamental cornice and
chair-board, an arched doorway, and cut stone steps: all indicating a
fastidiousness of finish not ordinarily found elsewhere than in
dwellings; but it was far gone toward utter ruin, the window sashes
being all out, the door gone, and the mutilated wood-work showing it
to be the resort only of the idle and the vicious. On looking to my
companion for an explanation, he said:—

“‘This, sir, was the Cockloft summer-house, and this the fish-pond
which Irving mentions when giving the portrait of the old proprietor.
You may remember the passage, “an odd notion of the old gentleman was
to blow up a large bed of rocks for the purpose of having a fish-pond,
although the river ran at about one hundred yards’ distance from the
house, and was well stored with fish, but there was nothing, he said,
like having things to one’s self. And he would have a summer-house
built on the margin of the fish-pond; he would have it surrounded with
elms and willows; and he would have a cellar dug under it, for some
incomprehensible purpose, which remains a secret to this day.’ ‘As I
remember it, in the days of youth,’ continued my aged friend, ‘with
its window-seats and lockers, I think it requires no “Will Wizard” to
solve the mystery of the cellar, but that _there_ the bottles were
kept that were wont to surrender their exhilarating contents at the
summons of the occupants of the comfortable apartment above.’

“As I commented on the peculiar position of the building, my companion
remarked:—

“‘Here, too, you see an illustration of a peculiarity of the elder
“Cockloft.” “He was determined,” says Irving, “to have all his views
on his own land, and be beholden to no man for a prospect.” So he
placed, you see, the door of his summer-house on the side toward the
water, while the windows all look inland.’”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

31 Taking of concerts reminds me of Talking of concerts reminds me
that given of that given

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes and, except for those labeled as William Wizard’s notes, placed them all at the end of the final chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.