High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of ConnecticutStephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
General
High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of Connecticut
Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
The very minit I got into the street, I couldn't hold in any longer. So
I jest stopped on the walk by the Post-office and opened one of the
papers. By the living hokey! if the first thing I see wasn't a picter of
my own self, as large as life and twice as nat'ral, a standing up on the
top of the paper as crank as could be. There was the Express office jest
as it was when I fust see it. I swan! if I didn't haw-haw right out loud
in the street! Down I went to the sloop, about the quickest, and I up
and told Captain Doolittle all about it. I thought the tarnal critter
would a gone off the handle, he larfed so when he saw how nat'ral the
picter looked; but he larfed on t'other side of his mouth, I reckon,
when he read what I'd said about him in the letter. He got awful wrathy,
but I only sot still and took it as if nothing had been the matter.
"Look a here, Captain Doolittle," sez I, "aint Editors and Lawyers
always abusing one another in print? Don't they call each other all
kinds o' names, and then don't they shake hands and come soft sodder
over each other when they come face to face? If you have the honor of
going about with a man that writes for the newspapers, you must be an
etarnal coot if you git mad because he prints that you love cider-brandy
and eat raw turnips. I can tell you what, you wouldn't find many
newspaper chaps that'd stick to the truth as close as I did. So jest
haul in your horns, and I'll write a private letter to Par, and tell him
all I said about you was 'poetical license,' as the editors call it when
they've told a whopper, or a leetle too much truth--for one's as bad as
t'other now-a-days."
"Wal," sez he, "if you'll du that, I'll make up; yit it's allfired hard.
But I say, Jonathan, you'll stand treat, won't you?"
I felt sorry for the critter, and so I went to a grocery with him, and I
guess the long nines and the New England rum that I called for sot all
things tu rights in less than no time.
Your loving son,
JONATHAN SLICK.
* * * * *
LETTER IV.
The Political Meeting and its Disasters.
DEAR PAR:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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