It is a curious fact that two-thirds of the young men from the country,
their first year in the metropolis, do not receive as a remuneration for
their valuable services a sum sufficient to keep them in theatre
tickets.
If a committee of their employers should be detailed to investigate the
hidden pecuniary fountain whence these young men obtain the funds many
of them lavish so freely, the said committee would be considerably
astonished to find out how much more champagne and oysters the N. Y.
merchants pay for than the most knowing of them are aware of; and their
wives would be astounded to learn how many bracelets and diamond pins
had been presented to ladies of the theatre and ballet, and bought with
their husbands' money. And many a country mother would mourn to hear
that her darling had, in the first six months of his city life, learned
to practise more vices than she had ever heard of, and among his other
attainments, had acquired the elegant city accomplishment of spending
his employer's money as freely as if it was his own.
And in due course of time the writer of this paragraph, wearied of the
eternal sameness of a country village, the same unvarying prospect of
ox-teams, hay-scales, errant swine, and wandering disconsolate cows,
took the roving fever and resolved to visit Gotham, looking for a cure.
Packed up my traps in a red box, kissed all my friends who had clean
faces, and bade a long farewell to the aspiring village (which had long
since assumed the name of city, but had never grown large enough to fit
the appellation, and for this reason always reminded me of a boy with
his father's boots on,) where I had vegetated for several years; took a
last look at its town-pump, its grocery, and its court-house square
without any fence round it; feasted my eyes for the last time upon the
dusty charms of the seminary girls who are perpetually going to the
story-and-a-half post-office for letters which never come; rode to the
railroad for the last time in the four-wheeled smoke-house, which, from
early youth, had been impressed upon my ignorant simplicity as an
omnibus; and taking my seat in the cars, left without many tears the
town where I had treasured up such stores of classic knowledge under the
consistent inattention of teachers who had been paid to neglect my
education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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