In this City, which, even in cholera seasons, is most heroically
nasty, when the filth in Broadway gets so deep as to stop the stages and
throw the cars off the track, men are sent round by the City to expend
an infinity of labor in hoeing it into symmetrical heaps, like miniature
fortifications. In fact, if plenitude of mud could avail to protect a
town from invading foes, New York might bid the world defiance, for all
the allied powers of all the earth could no more reduce our (in that
case) impregnable City, than the late chivalrous Lord Forth could take
Sebastopol, by lying flat on his back, and calling for his ma to come
and take him home. As the City authorities content themselves with
_erecting_ these picturesque monuments, and do not trouble themselves to
remove the same, but leave them to adorn the landscape, of course the
first rain metamorphoses the fragrant mass from an embryo mountain to a
diminutive lake, almost disgusting enough to make a street contractor
sick. No lady attempts the perilous navigation of our streets, unless
she has been a couple of seasons at Newport or Rockaway, and learned to
swim like a mermaid. And any man who would black his boots in the
morning, would be taken to the Lunatic Asylum before night. A search for
a dry crossing would be a hopeless pilgrimage, and he who would find a
get-over-able-without-getting-your-shoes-full-of-mud street in this
metropolis, would wear his life out in a fruitless exploration, and be
prematurely planted in Greenwood, with his object unattained. In
ordinary times the ladies sweep the sidewalks tolerably clean with their
trailing skirts, but now they seem to have thrown up their contract.
Coming down town the other day in a stage, our reckless driver tried the
depth of one of the above mentioned municipal lakes--the wheels stuck
fast--the vehicle settled into the hopeless depth--one scream from the
ladies--one unanimous curse from the men--one frantic, furious,
ineffectual struggle of the horses, and in another instant we were
floating a hopeless wreck. Every one for himself. I saw one of the
ladies dragged safely out by the hair--men eventually reached the land
in safety, but I rejoiced to see a malignant baby, (which during our
journey had screamed and kicked one half the time, and the other half
persisted in calling me "Daddy," and soiling my shirt-front with its
sticky fingers,) go to the bottom amid a universal chorus of
thanksgiving from the company. Got ashore myself, with my coat spoiled,
my hat minus, my boots full of water, and my whole person "dripping from
the recent flood," like a he-Venus rising from an odoriferous ocean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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