The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
big drum, in a dark alcove between-decks, and were fishing savagely in
German and broken English, according to the nationality with which their
affairs happened to get entangled. Even the colored _chef de cuisine_,
a muscular mulatto, with a beard of a rash disposition, coming out on
wrong parts of his face in little eruptive pustules of black wool,
sported his lines out of the galley-airholes, and his porgies were
simmering in the pan while their memories were yet green in the
submarine parishes from which they came. Have these finny creatures
their full revenge upon fishermankind, when a smack sinks foundered into
the swallowing deep? Do the midnight revellers in the sea-caverns
call out in broad Scuppaug to the attendant mermaid for a "half-dozen
large-sized jolterheads on the half monkey-jacket?" To these queries I
hope that Poetical Justice, if still living, will forward a reply at
her earliest convenience. Porgy now began to pervade the air with an
astringent perfume of the sea: none of your Fulton Market smells of
stagnating fish, but a clean, wholesome, coralline odor, such as we
may imagine supplied to the Peris "beneath the dark sea" by the scaly
fellows in the toilet line down there, who are likely to keep it for
sale in conch-shells,--quarts and pints. Porgy prevailed to that extent,
in fact, that it came to be talked of, by-and-by, as a circulating
medium; and a hard-fisted mechanic averred his intention of compensating
his landlady for his board with porgy, for the week that was passing
away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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