Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

To all the young belles who enliven our scene,
From ripe five-and-forty, to blooming fifteen;
Who racket at routs, and who rattle at plays,
Who visit, and fidget, and dance out their days;
Who conquer all hearts with a shot from the eye,
Who freeze with a frown, and who thaw with a sigh:—
To all those bright youths who embellish the age,
Whether young boys or old boys, or numskull or sage:
Whether BULL DOGS, who cringe at their mistress’s feet,
Who sigh and who whine, and who try to look sweet;
Whether TOUGH DOGS, who squat down stock still in a row
And play wooden gentlemen stuck up for a show;
Or SAD DOGS, who glory in running their rigs,
Now dash in their sleighs, and now whirl in their gigs;
Who riot at Dyde’s[15] on imperial champagne,
And then scour our city—the peace to maintain;
To whoe’er it concerns or may happen to meet,
By these presents their worships I lovingly greet,
Now KNOW YE, that I, Pindar Cockloft, Esquire,
Am laureate, appointed at special desire;
A censor, self-dubbed, to admonish the fair,
And tenderly take the town under my care.
I’m a ci-devant beau, cousin Launcelot has said—
A remnant of habits long vanished and dead:
But still, though my heart dwells with rapture sublime,
On the fashions and customs which reign’d in my prime,
I yet can perceive—and still candidly praise,
Some maxims and manners of these “latter days;”
Still own that some wisdom and beauty appears,
Though almost entombed in the rubbish of years.

No fierce nor tyrannical cynic am I,
Who frown on each foible I chance to espy;
Who pounce on a novelty, just like a kite,
And tear up a victim through malice or spite;
Who expose to the scoffs of an ill-natured crew,
A trembler for starting a whim that is new.
No, no—I shall cautiously hold up my glass,
To the sweet little blossoms who heedlessly pass;
My remarks not too pointed to wound or offend,
Nor so vague as to miss their benevolent end:
Each innocent fashion shall have its full sway;
New modes shall arise to astonish Broadway:
Red hats and red shawls still illumine the town,
And each belle, like a bon-fire, blaze up and down.
Fair spirits who brighten the gloom of our days,
Who cheer this dull scene with your heavenly rays,
No mortal can love you more firmly and true,
From the crown of the head to the sole of your shoe.
I’m old fashioned, ’tis true,—but still runs in my heart
That affectionate stream, to which youth gave the start,
More calm in its current—yet potent in force;
Less ruffled by gales—but still steadfast in course.
Though the lover, enraptured, no longer appears,—
’Tis the guide and the guardian enlightened by years.
All ripen’d and mellow’d and soften’d by time,
The asperities polish’d which chafed in my prime;
I’m fully prepared for that delicate end,
The fair one’s instructor, companion, and friend.
—And should I perceive you in fashion’s gay dance,
Allured by the frippery-mongers of France,
Expose your weak frames to a chill wintry sky
To be nipp’d by its frosts, to be torn from the eye:
My soft admonitions shall fall on your ear—
Shall whisper those parents to whom you are dear—
Shall warn you of hazards you heedlessly run,
And sing of those fair ones whom frost has undone,
Bright suns that would scarce on our horizon dawn,
Ere shrouded from sight, they were early withdrawn;
Gay sylphs, who have floated in circles below,
As pure in their souls, and as transient as snow;
Sweet roses, that bloom’d and decay’d to my eye,
And of forms that have flitted and passed to the sky.
But as to those brainless pert bloods of our town,
Those sprigs of the ton who run decency down;
Who lounge and who lout, and who booby about,
No knowledge within, and no manners without;
Who stare at each beauty with insolent eyes;
Who rail at those morals their fathers would prize;
Who are loud at the play—and who impiously dare
To come in their cups to the routs of the fair;
I shall hold up my mirror, to let them survey
The figures they cut as they dash it away:
Should my good-humored verse no amendment produce,
Like scarecrows, at least, they shall still be of use;
I shall stitch them, in effigy, up in my rhyme,
And hold them aloft through the progress of time,
As figures of fun to make the folks laugh,
Like that queer-looking angel erected by Paff,
“What shtop,” as he says, “all de people what come;
What smiles on dem all, and what peats on de trum.”

* * * * *

——“_How now, mooncalf?_”

We have been congratulating ourselves exceedingly on having, at length, attracted the notice of a ponderous genius of this city, Dr. Christopher Costive, LL. D., etc., who has spoken of us in such a manner that we are ten times better pleased than ever we were before. It shall never be said of us, that we have been outdone in the way of complimenting, and we therefore assure Dr. Christopher Costive that, for a Yankee doodle song, about “Sister Tabitha,” “our Cow,” and “dandy,” and “sugar candy,” and all these jokes of truly _Eastern saltness_, we know no man more “cute” than himself.

If Dr. Costive should find fault with having nothing but whipt syllabub from us, we promise him that, if circumstances render it necessary, we will occasionally give it a little variety by whipping him up in it as completely as ever a dish of ass’s milk was whipt up in this world. Our friend seems rather vociferous in his demand for a dish of “flummery,” and as such a dish is not in our bill of fare, we immediately requested our publisher to procure us one that would suit our friend’s appetite. He has brought us “Democracy Unveiled, or Tyranny stripped of the Garb of Patriotism,” by Christopher Costive, LL. D. etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. We can now promise our friend to serve him up a plentiful dish of flummery from his own shop, whenever he thinks fit to demand it, and garnished with a little Salmagundi for sauce. We hope he will not behave like his prototype, Dr. Lampedo, and gag at his own “patent draught.”

Our respected friend appears a little worried that we do not write for money. Now this looks ill of Dr. Costive—not that we thereby mean to insinuate that Dr. Costive is an ill-looking personage; on the contrary, we think him a great poet, a very great poet, the greatest poet of the age, and, considering the excessive gravity of his person, we are the more astonished at the sublime flights of his fat fancy. To convince him that we are disposed to befriend him all in our power, we take this opportunity to inform our numerous readers that there is such a man as Dr. Christopher Costive, and that he publishes a _weakly_ paper, called the “Weekly Inspector,” somewhere in this city, and that he writes _for money_.[16] We, therefore, advise “everybody, man, woman, and child, that can read, or get anybody to read for them, to purchase _his_ paper,” where they will find the true “bubble and squeak,” and “topsy-turvy,” which Dr. Costive will at any time exchange _for money_.

Upon the whole, we consider him a very modest, decent, good-looking _big_ man, who writes _for money_; being but “half a fish and half a monster.”

NO. IV.—TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1807.

FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.

Perhaps there is no class of men to which the curious and literary are more indebted than travellers—I mean travelmongers, who write whole volumes about themselves, their horses, and their servants, interspersed with anecdotes of innkeepers, droll sayings of stagedrivers, and interesting memoirs of—the Lord knows who. They will give you a full account of a city, its manners, customs, and manufactures; though perhaps all their knowledge of it was obtained by a peep from their inn-windows, and an interesting conversation with the landlord or the waiter. America has had its share of these buzzards; and in the name of my countrymen I return them profound thanks for the compliments they have lavished upon us, and the variety of particulars concerning our own country, which we should never have discovered without their assistance.

Influenced by such sentiments, I am delighted to find that the Cockloft family, among its other whimsical and monstrous productions, is about to be enriched with a genuine travel-writer. This is no less a personage than Mr. Jeremy Cockloft, the only son and darling pride of my cousin, Mr. Christopher Cockloft. I should have said Jeremy Cockloft, _the younger_, as he so styles himself, by way of distinguishing him from Il Signore Jeremy Cockloftico, a gouty old gentleman who flourished about the time that Pliny the elder was smoked to death with the fire and brimstone of Vesuvius; and whose travels, if he ever wrote any, are now lost forever to the world. Jeremy is now in his one-and-twentieth year, and a young fellow of wonderful quick parts, if you will trust to the word of his father, who, having begotten him, should be the best judge of the matter. He is the oracle of the family, dictates to his sisters on every occasion, though they are some dozen or more years older than himself—and never did son give mother better advice than Jeremy.

As old Cockloft was determined his son should be both a scholar and a gentleman, he took great pains with his education, which was completed at our university, where he became exceedingly expert in quizzing his teachers and playing billiards. No student made better squibs and crackers to blow up the chemical professor; no one chalked more ludicrous caricatures on the walls of the college: and none were more adroit in shaving pigs and climbing lightning-rods. He moreover learned all the letters of the Greek alphabet; could demonstrate that water never, “of its own accord,” rose above the level of its source, and that air was certainly the principle of life; for he had been entertained with the humane experiment of a cat worried to death in an air-pump. He once shook down the ash-house, by an artificial earthquake; and nearly blew his sister Barbara and her cat out of the window with thundering powder. He likewise boasts exceedingly of being thoroughly acquainted with the composition of Lacedemonian black broth; and once made a pot of it, which had well-nigh poisoned the whole family, and actually threw the cook-maid into convulsions. But above all, he values himself upon his logic, has the old college conundrum of the cat with three tails at his fingers’ ends, and often hampers his father with his syllogisms, to the great delight of the old gentleman; who considers the major, minor, and conclusion, as almost equal in argument to the pulley, the wedge, and the lever, in mechanics. In fact, my cousin Cockloft was once nearly annihilated with astonishment, on hearing Jeremy trace the derivation of Mango from Jeremiah King—as, Jeremiah King, Jerry King! Jerking, Girkin! cucumber, Mango! In short, had Jeremy been a student at Oxford or Cambridge, he would, in all probability, been promoted to the dignity of a _senior wrangler_. By this sketch I mean no disparagement to the abilities of other students of our college, for I have no doubt that every commencement ushers into society luminaries full as brilliant as _Jeremy Cockloft, the younger_.

Having made a very pretty speech on graduating, to a numerous assemblage of old folks and young ladies, who all declared that he was a very fine young man, and made very handsome gestures, Jeremy was seized with a great desire to see, or rather to be seen by the world; and as his father was anxious to give him every possible advantage, it was determined Jeremy should visit foreign parts. In consequence of this resolution, he has spent a matter of three or four months in visiting strange places; and in the course of his travels has tarried some few days at the splendid metropolis’ of Albany and Philadelphia.

Jeremy has travelled as every modern man of sense should do; that is, he judges of things by the sample next at hand; if he has ever any doubt on a subject, always decides against the city where he happens to sojourn; and invariably takes _home_ as the standard by which to direct his judgment.

Going into his room the other day, when he happened to be absent, I found a manuscript volume lying on his table; and was overjoyed to find it contained notes and hints for a book of travels which he intends publishing. He seems to have taken a late fashionable _travel-monger_ for his model, and I have no doubt his work will be equally instructive and amusing with that of his prototype. The following are some extracts, which may not prove uninteresting to my readers.

MEMORANDUMS FOR A TOUR TO BE ENTITLED “THE STRANGER IN NEW JERSEY, OR,
COCKNEY TRAVELLING.”[17]

BY JEREMY COCKLOFT, THE YOUNGER.