Produced by Chris Curnow, Sue Fleming and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [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.