Mysteries of Washington City, during Several Months of the Session of the 28th CongressAtwater, Caleb
History
Mysteries of Washington City, during Several Months of the Session of the 28th Congress
Atwater, Caleb
United States. Congress (28th, 1st session : 1843-1844); Washington (D.C.)
With a view to learn the mystery of wearing unnatural beards, some
filled with vermin, and some with ginger bread! some resembling those
of Saracens, Turks and Russians, I visited Lipscomb’s near Gadsby’s,
on the avenue, and M’Cubbin’s on Eighth street, and there gravely sat
often for a long time, studying beards and mustaches, but in vain.
At last I came home to my lodgings at MRS. TILLEY’S on Tenth street,
nearly opposite Peter Force’s large library, and falling asleep in my
easy armchair, a form stood before me in my dream, with mild aspect a
sympathising look, she thus addressed me: “Let not thy thoughts about
beards and mustaches trouble thee, because I am sent to reveal to thee
the sublime mysteries of beards and mustaches. All men are created with
certain propensities, and He who made them, has marked them, so that
their propensities may be known as soon as the eye sees them. Euruchs
have little or no beards, but a man whose disposition is Saracenic,
Turkish, Tartarean, Gothic, barbarous or christian, has given him a
beard in accordance with his natural disposition, But if he is like, in
all respects, a goat, in smell and sensuality, a goat’s beard is given
him and he wears it, leading about some frail female, dressed in silk
velvet, while his wife with six small children, and one at the breast
is left to starve at home. Such a man will never buy or read thy book,
otherwise he will buy it. In compassion to thee, I further inform thee,
that as to beards full of vermin, that circumstance is owing to the
poverty of their owners, whose purses do not contain money enough to
pay for a comb! Those beards which contain ginger bread, it is owing
to a fact which is as well known to me, as it is to this whole city,
that many of the bearded race are so poor, that I have seen twelve of
them contribute a cent a piece, to purchase a large roll of ginger
bread; they would then tie a cord around its centre and suspend it to
the ceiling over their heads in the middle of the room, and seating
themselves flat on the floor, in a circle, and in that position each
one of them would catch a bite, as the ginger bread was whirled around
from mouth to mouth. And although every mouth was wide open like an
anaconda’s when swallowing a rabbit, yet, sometimes the roll struck
the beard and got entangled in it, until the mouth was filled with the
delicious morsel. The beard itself retained the roll, until some of the
beard stuck to the roll. The fragments of tobacco in the beard, are to
be accounted for in the same way.” I awoke, refreshed in body and in
mind, having had revealed to me one of the greatest mysteries of this
city. My mind is now at ease about that mystery, because I know every
man I see on the avenue, by the beard he wears, whether he is civilized
or savage, rich or poor. If he is able to get shaved without running in
debt for shaving, he is shaved clean and smooth. Has he a beard like
a goat’s; his beard proves him to be one that will stand on the left
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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