A gallop among American scenery: or, Sketches of American scenes and military adventureSilliman, Augustus E. (Augustus Ely)
History
A gallop among American scenery: or, Sketches of American scenes and military adventure
Silliman, Augustus E. (Augustus Ely)
Atlantic States -- Description and travel
No.—State-street—(storm without)—apartment strewed with sundry bachelor
appurtenances, fronting on the Battery—a gentleman, in dressing-gown and
embroidered slippers, measuring the room with hasty strides—exclaimeth
impatiently—
North-east by the flags of the shipping in the bay! North-east by the
chill rain dashing on the window panes! North-east by the weather-cocks
on all the steeples, from St. Paul’s to the dog-vane on the stable end!
_North-east_ by the ache of every bone in my body! Eheu! What’s to be
done? No going abroad in this torrent. I’ve read all the landlady’s
little library. How shall I kill the enemy? I’ll whistle; vulgar. Sing;
I can’t. There are the foils and the gloves. Pshaw! I have no friend to
pommel or pink; besides, the old lady in the room below, has nerves.
Whew! how it pours. I’ll—I’ll—stand and look out into the street.
Jupiter! how near the bread-cart came to going over the chimney sweep.
Poor Sooty—how he grins! He owes the worm no silk—whatever obligations
his rags may be under to the sheep. Poor fellow! Holloa! ho! blackey;
catch this quarter, and get you a hot breakfast. There goes that
confounded battery gate again! bang—bang—night and day. There’s never a
loafer takes his morning promenade, or even siesta on the grass, but must
needs follow his dirty face through that particular gate.
Alas! me miserable. What shall I do? The spirit of ennui rides me as
thoroughly as did the “old man of the sea” Sinbad the sailor. Eh! they’re
the dumb bells. Diminish nervous excitability, by muscular exertion.
Good!—humph; and there’s the old lady’s nerves below. How the wind roars
and rumbles round the chimney tops. Rain—rain—rain. There! that tin spout
is choked, and the gutter is pouring over a young cataract. Oh! that I
were a newspaper carrier, or a whale—or the sea serpent, chasing the down
East fishermen—or—in short, any thing, so that I need not mind the wet.
Hum—hum—what shall I do? I have it. Eureka! I have it. I’ll sit down and
give my friend of the American an account of my last ramble.
(Rolleth his chair up to the table at the fire—crosseth his legs on the
fender—and proceedeth to nib his pen.) Now for it. (Writes.)
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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