Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 1 (of 2)Bird, Robert Montgomery
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Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Bird, Robert Montgomery
American fiction -- 19th century; Satire
Among the many young gentlemen who paid court to the fair Miss Smith,
I noticed one, who, besides being more assiduous in his attentions,
seemed also to enjoy a greater share of her regard than others. He was
a young fellow of uncommonly genteel figure; that is, he was long and
lank, somewhat narrow in the shoulders, but clean-limbed, and straight
as an arrow. He had a long face and hollow cheeks; but what his jaws
lacked in flesh was made up to them in beard, his whiskers, which
were coal-black, being as exuberant as if made by a brush-maker, and
stretching from his temples to the point of his chin, and so enveloping
his whole face. He had besides a pair of peaked mustaches, that would
have done honour to the Grand Seignior; and, with a turban and caftan
on, he might have paid his respects to the alumni of any college in the
land, without even the necessity of speaking bad Latin.[2] He dressed
well, walked with a step as easy and majestical as a stork or an
ostrich, and was evidently a favourite with the ladies.
[2] Here Sheppard Lee seems to have had in his eye a very ingenious
loafer of Pearl Slip, or thereabouts who, some years since, was seized
with the whim of travelling, and bamboozling the politic, especially
the learned part thereof. By the aid of little dog-Latin, horribly
anglicized in idiom and pronunciation, a stock of Gothamic impudence,
and features truly Yankee and vernacular, he convinced the cognoscenti
of one or more learned institutions that he was a highly unlucky son
of a Turk, born all the way off at Damascus.
His name, Tim told me, was I. D.--that is to say, Isaac
Dulmer--Dawkins; though, in consideration of the rusticalness of the
first member of the triad, and from regard to his feelings, which
were outraged by its pronunciation, his friends had universally
agreed to suppress it; and, in consequence, he was called I. Dulmer
Dawkins, Esquire, that title being added, because it is the only one
an American gentleman not in office, or the militia, can claim. He
was, as Timothy assured me, a dandy of the true style, being a born
scion of the chip-chop order, and, as such, admitted to all its honours
and immunities, though without the support of any living relations
in society, or, as his ill luck would have it, of connexions either.
He was said to possess some little property in town, and, what was
still better, to be the heir of a rich uncle without children, whom he
expected to die within a reasonable period. As for his town property,
my brother Tim doubted its existence altogether, and would perhaps
have been as skeptical in regard to the uncle, had he not known that
an uncle did really exist, and a rich one too, for he was largely
concerned in the distilling and lumbering business on the Susquehanna.
I am particular in making the reader acquainted with Mr. I. Dulmer
Dawkins, inasmuch as it was my fortune, after a time, to fall into a
connexion with him myself--as intimate as it was unexpected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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