Stories by American Authors, Volume 1Taylor, Bayard
General
Stories by American Authors, Volume 1
Taylor, Bayard
Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
While we well know that the record of vice and dissipation can never be
pleasing to the refined tastes of the cultivated denizens of the only
morally pure metropolis on the face of the earth, yet it may be of
interest to those who enjoy the fascinating study of human folly and
frailty to "point a moral or adorn a tale" from the events transpiring
in our very midst. Such as these will view with alarm the sad example
afforded the youth of our city by the dissolute career of a young lump
of aristocratic affectation and patrician profligacy, recently arrived
in this city. This young _gentleman's_ (save the mark!) name is Lord
William F. Beauvoir, the latest scion of a venerable and wealthy English
family. We print the full name of this beautiful exemplar of "haughty
Albion," although he first appeared among our citizens under the alias
of Beaver, by which name he is now generally known, although recorded on
the books of the Astor House by the name which our enterprise first
gives to the public. Lord Beauvoir's career since his arrival here has
been one of unexampled extravagance and mad immorality. His days and
nights have been passed in the gilded palaces of the fickle goddess,
Fortune, in Thomas Street and College Place, where he has squandered
fabulous sums, by some stated to amount to over £78,000 sterling. It is
satisfactory to know that retribution has at last overtaken him. His
enormous income has been exhausted to the ultimate farthing, and at
latest accounts he had quit the city, leaving behind him, it is shrewdly
suspected, a large hotel bill, though no such admission can be extorted
from his last landlord, who is evidently a sycophantic adulator of
British "aristocracy."
DOCUMENT NO. 9.
_Certificate of deposit, vulgarly known as a pawn-ticket, issued by one
Simpson to William Beauvoir, December 2d, 1848:_
=John Simpson,
Loan Office,
36 Bowery,
New York.=
_Dec. 2nd, 1848_,
_One Gold Hunting-case Watch and_ Dolls. Cts.
_Chain 150 00_
_William Beauvoir_
Not accountable in case of fire, damage, moth, robbery, breakage, &c.
25% per ann. Good for 1 year only.
DOCUMENT NO. 10.
_Letter from the late John Phoenix, found among the posthumous papers of
the late John P. Squibob, and promptly published in the "San Diego
Herald":_
OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, Jan. 3, 1849.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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