Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 02, May 1, 1858
History
Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 02, May 1, 1858
New York (N.Y.) -- Politics and government
rather lively for one so extremely young, whose extraordinary vivacity
I attributed to worms. Wesley Harper was incomparably modest and
susceptible in those days, and visited and married a lady residing with
Fletcher, who was connected with his wife. While they were courting up
stairs, the servant girl, myself, and other apprentices often annoyed
them with our funny tricks; but Wesley and Fletcher did not dare
complain of us to John and James Harper, as the courtship of Wesley was
without the knowledge of the elder Harpers. The servant of Fletcher
imparted to us this precious secret, and we long teased the timid
lovers with impunity, in which the mischievous servant participated
with great hilarity.
(To be continued to the mournful eve of our last gasp)
Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1858.
LISTEN!—On Saturday last we arose with the glorious sun, and went
to our printing office, and found the printer’s devil asleep in his
dingy bunk. We applied a bodkin, and he sprang at us like a tiger.
We grappled, and discovering that he had an Editorial Alligator by
the throat, he released his grasp. We then banged the gong, and the
printers appeared, like the imps in Robert the Devil, from the infernal
regions. We then placed our leviathan form on the press, and lit
the faggots, and puff, puff, went the machinery, like the drums and
trumpets in Musard’s Express Train Gallop. We filled our carpet bag
with Alligators, and flew like a whirlwind to the wholesale newspaper
merchants in Beekman, Nassau, and Ann streets, where we found a plumed
battalion awaiting the advent of the Alligator. The wholesalers, and
retailers, and newsboys approached us in platoons, and clasped our
fervent hands until they squeezed them into icicles, and we cried for
quarter, and returned to our printing office, for another carpet bag of
Alligators, which we sold on our way to Ann street, and returned again,
and again, and yet again, for Alligators, until the weary sun retired
to his downy bed in the bleak peach and potato fields of the Jerseys.
Our printing office was besieged throughout the day, for Alligators,
and on our return from Ann street the second time, we found our office
stairs so thronged with applicants for Alligators, that we had to
meander a dark alley, and ascend a ladder, and enter our office through
a window. During the day, several bloody collisions transpired on the
stairs, between the newsboys, in their struggles for the Alligators, as
they emanated from our electric presses; and in one of the desperate
conflicts, the Police were summoned to preserve the public peace.
And, altogether it was a most laborious and exciting day for us, and
at early twilight we were weary and worn, and retired soon after
the curfew strains expired on the evening air. But we had an awful
nightmare, in which we soliloquised in tones so stentorian, (about
newsboys and Alligators,) as to arouse and terrify a venerable nervous
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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