The History and Records of the Elephant ClubDoesticks, Q. K. Philander
General
The History and Records of the Elephant Club
Doesticks, Q. K. Philander
American wit and humor
"'Well, you see, squire, I come to the city last evenin' from Albany, in
the railroad, and when I got tu the shed where the railroad stops, I
got out. A feller stepped up to me as important as a bantam cock after
he has crowed for the first time, and asked me where I wanted to go. I
told him I wanted tu go tu a first-rate tarvern. He said that idea was
ridiculous; that they never allowed distinguished strangers tu go tu
tarverns, and, unless he was mistaken, I was something above the common
folks from the rooral deestricts. I told him I was supervisor of the
town where I was born and brought up, in the St. Lawrence country. He
said he was thunderin' glad to hear it, as he himself was something of a
high cockalorum of New York. He insisted upon my gittin' intu the
carriage and goin' tu his private dwellin', as it would be vulgar tu go
tu tarverns. I asked him if the St. Nicholas Hotel was common. He said
that nobody but those that wasn't no great shakes went there. We finally
come to a real big, purty stun house, and the man jumped off from the
carriage. He told me again that if he was rich he wasn't proud, and it
was a way he had of always ridin' outside and drivin'. I told him I
always done so, only in the consarn I had they all rode outside, for the
reason that there warn't no inside. With that he larfed, and said that
all folks didn't have jest the same way of doin' things, and we went tu
the door. A nigger come and opened the door, and we went in. There was
about twenty gentlemen, fixed off tu kill, and a table sot with bottles,
and everything as slickery as could be. The man who brought me took me
tu a fine-looking gentleman and told me that he was his brother, that he
was obleeged tu go out on business connected with his office, but that
he would be back by 11 o'clock; he said his brother would see tu me, and
do the scrumptious while he was gone; well, we set down to the table; he
was orful kind, for he helped me tu everything he could on the
table--all kinds of chicken-fixens and gingerbread arrangements; he then
asked me tu take a glass of wine; I told him I was a little tew much of
a temperance man for that; he said certainly he wouldn't ask me if I had
any scrooples agin' it; he asked me if I was opposed to drinkin' cider;
I said no, if it was sweet; he said that they had got in, about a week
before, a barrel of sweet cider, which had jest enough snap in it tu
make it taste good; he told the nigger to take a bottle of wine up
stairs tu his sick nephew, and tu bring a pitcher full of cider up
stairs from the new barrel; the nigger left with the bottle and the
pitcher, and in about five minutes came back intu the room with the
pitcher full of the slickest cider I ever seen; I drunk some of it, and
it tasted so good that I drunk more; when I had taken almost enough,
the gentleman asked me tu go into the back room where a lot of men was a
setting around a table, holdin' little round pieces of bone in their
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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