The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844: Volume 23, Number 6Various
General
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844: Volume 23, Number 6
Various
Periodicals
'If it were only for once, one might ask all his _rats des champs_ to meet
one another at a Tea. This might be amusing, if the jest did not grow
painful by repetition. There is no reciprocity in your dealings with such
invitees. You will probably never again reach their Siberian settlement,
whereas they come to town three times a year! It is not fair. It is a base
cheat. How can they be so ungenerous and illiberal as to accuse you of
neglect and ingratitude for not cultivating them when in the city? They
might as well abuse you for not having a green-house! This doctrine of
ours is so clearly reasonable, that all people of any breeding admit its
truth, and act accordingly. You may stay a week at a country-seat, and
need make no acknowledgments of any kind to the owner thereof in his
town-house; whereas a dinner in the city is a debt of honor, which must be
paid. This is a well settled law. Not that your obligation is by any means
cancelled. It is not dead, but dormant. Next summer you will feel deep
gratitude for the kindness you received during the last; but no such
indebtedness is payable in urbanity. GEORGE SELWYN met in St.
James-street, London, a man whom he had known very well in Bath, and
passed steadily by him without a look of recognition. His acquaintance
followed him, and said: 'Sir, you knew me very well in Bath.' 'Well, Sir,'
replied SELWYN, 'in Bath I may possibly know you again.' Farewell.
ANOTHER 'PELLET' FROM JULIAN.--Not a word is necessary by way of
introduction to the ensuing passages from an epistle lately received from
our esteemed friend and correspondent JULIAN. Happy husband of a happy
wife and happier mother! Happy father! may his joy never be less: 'We are
in the country! When you write this way, say 'To the care of ---- ----,
Esq.', for we are designedly three miles from post-offices and newsboys. I
have given warning that if any of the latter come within my grounds with
his French things, I will souse him in the river, and hold him there till
he shall be thoroughly chilled into a dislike of these parts. You will
readily imagine why we are here. The excitements and distractions of city
life for the last few months were too much for us, and there are some
things that can only be enjoyed apart from the world. Here, we subside
gradually and gracefully from that high and tense delirium from which I at
least made my aërials, always coming back, however, to young JULIAN; who,
by the way, is another occasion for country life, as I have great faith in
first impressions, and I wish his to be bright and beautiful. Heaven
preserve him from all darker colors; from the doubts, the glooms, the
moral mistiness of your city atmosphere! Let no fog come between him and
the bright sky, till he has well discovered that there is a heaven beyond,
where there is neither cloud nor shadow, and up to which not one grain of
all this dust and filth of the earth's whirling shall ever reach. It is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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