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SCENE: THE EDITOR'S SANCTUM. -TIME: PAST TWELVE O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.

EDITOR.- ELIZABETH BARRETT is a great woman.

MOUSER.Whoo ?

EDITOR.- ELIZABETH BARRETT. She has written no less than eighty-seven sonnets!

MOUSER (stretches first one wing and then the other, with an expression of intense weariness): Whoo!

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EDITOR.-Yet DULOT, a French poet, even went beyond that. He lost his papers, and with them, as he complains, three hundred sonnets! 'What!' exclaim his friends, three hundred?' 'Yes, blank sonnets; bouts-rimés: all they wanted was the filling up!' By the way, I have somewhere a letter on this very subject, from an old friend, a poor clergyman and poet, as yet unpublished. It is in the following words:

MOUSER.-To-whit:

EDITOR (reads): 'Sonnets I take to be the last remnants of that species of invention which formerly sprouted out in numberless petty devices, such as anagrams, charades, chronograms, lypograms, acrostics, and the like. They belong to the age of powder and periwigs, clipped hedges, and yews trimmed into monsters; when men, in order to be elegant, were obliged, as BEN JONSON writes,

"To pump for those hard trifles Anagrams

Or Eteosticks, or your finer flams

Of Eggs, and Halberds, Cradles, and a Hearse,

A pair of scissors, and a comb in verse.'

'BYRON says, in a letter to MOORE, 'I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise; and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions.' To which I subscribe. I do not mean to say that good sonnets have not been written. I have seen such; it is the school that is bad. They are like Flemish pictures, or as the painter said of the sardines, Little fishes done in oil. But as I have been. requested to write a sonnet, I will not refuse you, yet I am sure I would not do so

again even for a friend; that is, a friend for whom I had an especial regard: sonneteering is too nice a matter; the better done, the worse; and I think, with DISRAELL, 'Extreme exactness is the sublime of fools.' Nevertheless here is the thing. If you wish to put it among your KNICK'-knacks, you have my consent thereto, thinking that it may do some good :'

'A SONNET?' well, if it's within my ken,

I'll write one with a moral. When a boy,
One Christmas morn I went to buy a toy,
Or rather we; I and my brother BEN;
But so it chanced that day I had but ten

Cents in my fist, but as we walked, Be goy-
Blamed' if we did n't meet one PAT MCCOY,

An Irishman, one of my father's men,

Who four more gave, which made fourteen together.
Just then I spied, in most unlucky minute,

A pretty pocket-wallet; like a feather

My money buys it. BEN began to grin it:

You're smart,' says he; you've got a heap of leather,
But where's them cents you wanted to put in it?'

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GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.-Here is an extract from a letter written by a lady-friend of ours, resident in San Francisco, to another lady-friend 'of ours' in New-York, which seems to us to present a graphic picture of life in the former diggings.' The letter was written soon after the last destructive fire, which consumed, for the second time, the best part of the great California capital:

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'BEFORE this letter reaches you, you will have heard that we have again been nearly burned up. Just one week ago to-day I was nearly all ready for church, hat on and tied, when the alarm of Fire' was given; and an alarm here has a very different effect from one in New-York. Every body is at once panic-struck, and run immediately to the hills for protection. In five minutes our house presented a singular scene. Every body was 'picking up his own.' My husband said, 'Take care of your clothes, and let every thing else go' He said this because ladies' garments are the most difficult things to obtain here. I concluded to make a frolic of the matter, thinking all the while that it was ridiculous to be in such a hurry; but only for a short time was I laboring under this impression. I never in my life saw such flames as roared, and surged, and licked with crimson tongues the open sky.' The atmosphere of our house soon became so hot that I was glad enough to vacate it. Just fancy Mr. H— and myself running up a high hill, I with a copy of TASSO and DANTE in one hand, and my jewel-box in the other. Before I left I took a hasty glance into the kitchen; saw our dinner lying on the table; hesitated a moment as to whether it would not be more sensible to leave the books and take the beef, but finally concluded the beef could stand the fire best, and so left it, not expecting to see either our dinner or our house again. I begged very hard to be permitted to remove some of our furniture, but my husband said, 'No.' I did, however, secure my beautiful curtains. Twenty-five dollars a load (the 'fire price' at San Francisco) makes people rather reluctant to try to save their goods from conflagration. From the house to which we had fled upon the hill, we could look down upon the whole scene. By three o'clock the fire had been so far subdued that it was considered safe to return. We found our faithful old cook in the kitchen, shelling peas, with the fire raging all around her. She had n't moved a peg. The building was as hot as if it had actually been on fire; but the old woman said she kind o' mistrusted 't wasn't a-goin' to burn up that time!"

Now I keep all my clothes packed up, ready to move at any moment. Had this fire originated a block from us, I should have had no time to save any thing. After this I shall be prepared, unless it comes next door; then I shall consider it fortunate if I get away myself. At the first toll of the bell there are thousands of people rushing into the streets, looking on, and letting the fire take its course. They can do nothing, except to do what I saw done, take up rich car pets and hang them over the fronts of houses. They are in truth perfectly powerless here: no water, no engines, and every thing so dry; and yet the broad Pacific is all around us. I think if a few more enterprising Yankees were here it would be put to some use.

'I can't for the life of me realize that I am in the United States. It is very far from civilization,' yet, in more meanings than one. It is amusing to sit at our window and see the different nations pass; so many 'Chineses,' as MILTON calls them, and so many curious-looking people; the men mostly covered with hair. Our house is in a central situation, so that we see all that is going on-sometimes too much. . . . I often sigh for some female friend; one whom I could sit and sew or read with. It would make the hours pass very pleasantly. 'I think it is a sad place, this same San Francisco. In the first place, there are so many bad women here that ladies can scarce go into the street. This prevents almost all social visiting at night. You know what a coward I always was in the streets of New-York, so you can well imagine that I seldom go out here, and I should die to be left alone at home. At first my husband would not let me sit at the windows; and never, upon any occasion, to open the door in the day-time!' . . . I wish you could look out of our windows just now and see the wind blow! At eleven it begins, and blows a perfect hurricane until night. I have not seen a rainy day since I left New-York-not one; and every day we sit down with a large fire in the parlor. And still they tell me, 'You must like our climate!' Perhaps so; but I like the climate of NewYork better.

'Wouldn't you like to know a little something about the expenses of house-keeping hereabout? Premising that we pay two hundred dollars a month for a comfortable' house, and our cook a hundred and fifty, just take a few things for our dinner to-day, and, as J used to say, then you come at it' a little. Cook told me yesterday she could make us a good maccaroni pudding: so I sent out for a dozen maccaronis, 'only' a shilling apiece; six eggs, ten shillings; one quart of milk seventy-five cents; to say nothing of jelly. (The 'good things' take the money!) I've just sent out for a quart of vinegar, four shillings; a bar of common soap, five shillings; while even the water that we use costs us a dollar a day, which does not include our water for washing. A little waiter-girl receives twenty-five dollars a month, and washing done out' is at five dollars the dozen! . . . Tell —— -, when he sits in his comfortable pew at Grace-church on Sundays, to think of our privilege in that respect, here in San Francisco. Such a church as we attend I never saw before; a mere shed, with rough benches. But there is not the slightest use in building a handsome church here, for it is sure to burn down. And such is life' in California's chief capital.'

PUNCTUAL to the day and hour, we have The North-American Review' for October. It is a very good number, although some of the papers are rather dry. As among the best of them, we regard the two upon the Life and Poetry of WORDSWORTH,' and 'PARKMAN'S History of PONTIAC's War.' We heartily endorse the just praise bestowed upon Professor REED, of Philadelphia, in the first of the above-named papers. Mr. REED's edition of WORDSWORTH'S Poetical Works' is truly a noble one, and its two illustrations most creditable to those excellent artists, Messrs. TROUTMAN and HAYES, Philadelphia. "We cannot conclude our article,' says the reviewer, without a notice of the great service Professor REED has rendered to the American public, as the editor of the works of WORDSWORTH and of his Memoirs. His notes on the poet's writings evince an intelligent and genial appreciation of the author, and tend to cultivate the like quality in others; and his additions to the memoirs furnish no inconsiderable portion of the most interesting matter they contain. Mr. REED has lately published a new, and now complete, edition of the poet's works, in a handsome volume, with convenient indices; a book which no American library should be without.' In treating of Mr. PARKMAN's book, already noticed somewhat at large in the KNICKERBOCKER, the reviewer commends the great spirit and fidelity with which the author has executed his task, and the large amount and variety of interesting and relevant material which he has amassed and deftly arranged. He also warmly commends a previous work of the same author, the 'Oregon Trail, which was written for the KNICKERBOCKER. Several sketches from the same pen, which preceded it in these pages, were remarkable for the COOPER-like faithfulness of their descriptions of forest-life and scenery. The present work places Mr. PARKMAN in the front rank of American historians.

THERE

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is some fervency in the following, and the theme is one that demands it. The man who can keep a dinner-table waiting, must at an early period of his life have committed some murder or other which he thought very little of at the time,' but which gradually led him down through profane swearing, disturbing a Methodist meeting, procrastination, etc., to the awful vice of coming Too Late to Dinner :'

LIVES there a man with soul so small,
Who, summoned to the banquet-hall,
Accepts, then does not come?

Or coming, is so very late

The guests are all compelled to wait,
Wrapped in the darkest gloom?

If such there be, go! mark him well,
And never be your dinner-bell

To him a well-known sound:
Never invite him to your board,
For if you do, mark well my word,
He'll always late be found.

Aid me, ye gods! to curse the man,
If such there be, although I can
Scarcely believe 't is true:
Oh! may his soup be ever cold,
His fish a little bit too old,

His meat burned through and through!
And when he dies, for die he must,
And mingles with his kindred dust,
Alas! poor hapless sinner!
Stop, stranger, as you tread the path,
And read this simple epitaph:
'Always too late to dinner!'

J. HOWARD WAINWRIGHT.

THERE is not a little amusing gossip in the missive of our correspondent at C, Indiana; 'as par examp.':

"I HAVE some 'good times' in perusing your Gossip' with readers; and especially did I enjoy myself hugely in reading some extracts from the memoirs of WILLIAM DELANEY PATTON, with whom I formed an acquaintance some years since, during a residence in Belmont county, Ohio, immediately adjoining the bailiwick in which the aforesaid WILLIAM DELANEY exercised the fune tions of High Sheriff. He is a veritable personage, I assure you. His 'Memoirs' are somewhat grandiloquent, certainly; but I think he could be equalled, if not excelled, in this Hoosier 'ked'ntry.'

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'I have looked in vain for a copy of an Address to the Patriotic Voters of the Fourth Congres sional District,' written by one JoHN G. CHAPMAN, an unfledged lawyer, during an exciting Congressional canvass that shook the hills and jarred the rivers of Indiana, about the year of Gon 35. It begins thus: Man, vain man, cruel, credulous, prejudiced, pusillanimous, and egotism!' and the author concludes by exhorting the free and enlightened voters to approach the polls, and vote for RARIDEN with reverence, and dignity, and contempt!' The address abounds in the most fulsome laudations of his favorite candidate, and CHAPMAN followed it up by divers voluntary appeals to the voters aforesaid; till RARIDEN, who could not breast the storm of ridicule called forth thereby, sent him a message that he would cow-skin him, if he ever heard of his writing another line in his behalf! I am sorry I cannot find the address; but ex uno disce omnes. I have said that CHAPMAN was unfledged when he wrote for the patriotic voters, or rather to them; and compared with some of the efforts of maturer years, it is as a Satyr to HYPERION. A friend has promised me one of his e-forts' when prosecuting a poor devil who was indicted in the Elkhart Circuit Court, and who had, as he averred in the indictment, with force and arms, at the said county of Elkhart, feloniously stolen, taken and carried away one quart of a certain spirituous liquor, commonly called whiskey? The same friend promises me to reduce to writing and send to me a speech of our hero,' when called to order in our State Senate. You shall have it.

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'Let me give you (for I infer from the 'Gossip' that you enjoy a laugh after dinner) a speech tkat I actually heard. In the autumn of 1843 I made my 'star-entree' into R —— county, in this State, with a license in my pocket, obtained about six weeks before, that authorized me to practise law in the Circuit and Inferior Courts of Record in the State of Indiana;' and between you and me, dear KNICK., that same license and nine one-dollar bills of scrip on the White Water Valley Canal Company were about all I had in my pocket. I found it a land of thorns and thistles, inhabited by a set of GoD-forsaken Arabs, who were disposed to sneer at a young gentleman who wore 'store-clothes' and kept his boots blacked, albeit he blacked them himself. I left after having staid one year, during which I rather fear I appeared' on the stump for CLAY and FRELINGHUYSEN more frequently than I appeared at the bar of the Randolph Circuit Court in behalf of any unfortunate clients who chose to deliver themselves up to my tender mercies. But I wander. The attorneys were illiterate men, who read the speeches of PHILLIPS, CURRAN and EMMET, and made them their models; per consequence, they indulged in a style of speaking which might be termed 'subloom;' a style of oratory not described by BLAIR or Lord KAIMES, but which was very common in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, and signifies one degree beyond the sublime.

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'During my sojourn, I one day stepped into the office of 'Squire COLGROVE to listen to the ceedings in a trial then and there pending, in a suit which a certain citizen, ‘liber et legalis homo, had brought against another, to recover damages for the value of a certain dog which the latter had, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, with force and arms, unlawfully shot, killed, wounded, injured and destroyed, to the damage of said plaintiff in the sum of forty-five dollars; ' at least so said the declaration. COLGROVE, the Justice, had a very red head; the attorney for the defence was BEATTIE MCCLELLAND, an Irishman, whose countenance furnished indubitable evidence that its owner had had the small-pox: the attorney for the plaintiff was one ZACHARY PUCKETT, formerly Probate Judge. PUCKETT had offered to introduce some evidence, which the Justice decided was inadmissible, whereupon he made a long speech to convince the Justice that his opinion was erroneous. COLGROVE told him that The Court,' as he loved to call his onehorse tribunal, had settled that point, and wished to hear no more argument. Thereupon PUCKETT arose from his seat, walked slowly up to the Justice, and fixing upon him an eye of fire, broke forth in this wise:

66 May it please The Court: The principle which I have asserted is as old as the everlasting granite hills of Ju-dar; it are a principle high as heaven, and low down as hell. It is innate to the feelin's of every man, across the great Sahara of whose bosom the sun of civilization have shot its vivifying rays! The finger of PROVIDENCE have written it onto the human heart in indelible colors; and the very winds that soar at evening through the sycamore boughs bears this great truth upon their wings. This principle is solemnly sot out in the Declaration of American Independence, and as solemnly re-i-terated in the Constitution of the United States, and secured by Bills of Rights in the twenty-seven glorious States of this Union, which our heroic fathers wrested from the thraldom of the British lion, like a brand plucked from the burning of a fire that is not quenched! But what, Sir, becomes of this glorious principle, if I who stand here to assert it am to be insulted by a d―d red-headed 'Squire, and a pock-marked Irish son of a —!' 'But I won't finish the sentence. Suffice it to say, that about that time Judge PUCKETT was seen lying upon the floor, and the Justice standing over him, with hair stiff-bristling and excited eye!'

PEOPLE who have been accustomed to live in the quiet, unostentatious country are not a little astonished, we have observed, on coming to the city, to hear the terms 'crack-churches' and 'fashionable preachers,' which are so frequently made use of in the social conversation of the metropolis; and no marvel, when we think of the sad discrepancy which the very words themselves imply. Our old correspondent 'HENRY,' now principal editor of The Picayune, a lively weekly of this city, has so well described the difference between a 'crack-church' and one that is n't, that we venture to lay his sketch before our readers:

'THOSE who can't pay eight hundred or a thousand dollars in a fashionable or crack-church' are obliged to stay at home, unless they are humble enough to go to some of Gon's temples where Christianity is not only preached but practised. We found our way into a 'crack-church' last Sunday, in the upper part of the city. Casting our left eye, as we entered, on a magnificent prayer-book, we observed in gilt letters the name of a millionaire with whose early history we were fully conversant. He started life as a clam-boy, and the old clam-boat to which he belonged used to be stationed near Washington-market until all its cargo of clams were sold out. He first acquired a few dollars capital. This he invested in the fish trade; speculated in eels, porgies, and other fish; made a large sum of money, and finally succeeded in cornering on shad;' bought up all the stock of the season, both in and out of the water, and sold them afterward at his own prices, and made fifty thousand dollars. He cut his market associations, bought lots up town, now lives in the Fifth Avenue, and is a big dog. As wealth increased, he found himself at the head of the cod-fish aristocracy,' to which of course he had access, from his former business. PHALON, the barber, was sent for; his daughters had their hair combed out and dressed for the first time; teachers of music, drawing, Italian, French, etc., were hired; and old Mr. PORGIE joined the church, and took a costly pew. We happened to get into it; but we no sooner discovered where we were, than we made up our minds to vacate. We were too late. Old Mr. PORGIE Came sailing up the aisle with his wife and daughters, dressed as though they had known .what was what' all their lives. To our a tonishment, instead of shutting the pew-door in our face, he asked us to keep our seat.' And did n't we have a nice time of it! The mother looked at us so did the daughters; and they snuffled, and smelt their salts, wriggled about as though one of their father's shad was in the slip. We felt annoyed. provoked; forgot our prayers; didn't hear a blessed word of the sermon, and came away disgusted with bypocritical upstarts, and with a determination next Sunday to go to a free church. Our ideas of pure, undefiled religion are drawn from the recorded life of our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST. He was a living example of humility, charity, love; in fact, of all that was good and lovely. Some of his chosen disciples were very close imitators of their LORD and MASTER; and though they were by profession fish-catchers (we are not aware that they were clam-catchers or fish-speculators) like Mr. PoRGIE they were not above other men because of their success or money. We wonder whether there will be any upper places, best seats, private pews in the great temple above, where the souls of

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