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
Love, according to my notion on it, is a good anchor for us on this 'ere
voyage of life!--it brings us up so all a standing when we put on too
much sail. It puts me in mind, now I think on it, of our cruise through
Hell Gate in Captin Doolittle's sloop; for jest as the tide and the wind
was a carrying us on the rocks, we dropt anchor and kept off. I look on
the uses of women purty much as I look on the freshet that in the spring
brings down the Connecticut the rale rich soil for the meadows in
Weathersfield. They make a great deal of splutter and fuss in their
spring-time, with their rustles and their ribbons, and their fooleries,
I know; but when they light on a feller for good, they are the rale
onion patches of his existence. Put us together, and the soil will grow
anything; but keep us apart, and we are his thistles and nettles.
Your loving son,
JONATHAN SLICK.
* * * * *
LETTER XI.
Visit to the Park Theatre--First Impressions of the Poetry of Motion, as
written on the air, in the aerial feats of Mademoiselle Celeste--First
shock at the exhibition of a Ballet Costume accompanied by the
"twinkles" of Celeste's feet--with her pigeon wings, double-shuffles,
gallopades, and pirouettes.
DEAR PAR:
I've been a trying tu git time tu write you a letter this ever so long;
but somehow I've had so many parties tu go tu, besides sleigh-rides,
balls, and so on, that I haint known which eend my head is on more than
half the time. Besides all that, I've felt kinder loth tu write you, for
I aint jest sartin that you and marm won't be in a pucker about what
I've been a doing since I writ tu you before. But I've got my pluck a
stirring jest now; so I'm detarmined tu up and tell you all right out,
jest as it is--for arter all, a feller must be a consarned coward
that'll do a thing, right or wrong, and then back out from owning on
it.
Wal, t'other night Mr. Beebe he cum up tu my office about sundown, and
sez he, "Cousin Slick, supposing we go tu the Park Theatre to-night, and
see Madame Celeste dance."
My heart riz right up into my throat as he said this, for the very idee
of going tu the Theatre set me all over in a twitter. Ever since I cum
down here tu York, I've had an etarnal hankering tu go and see some of
their plays; but I tried all I could tu pacify myself, and thought over
more than forty times all the preachings you used to make agin them--how
you used tu say they were filled with sinful devices and picters of the
devil's own painting, and that they warn't nothing more nor less than
scraps of the infarnal regions sot up here on arth tu delude away poor
mortals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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