The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 6, December 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 6, December 1837
Various
Periodicals
"And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe
of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the
unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast
reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as, by a parity
of situation, are exposed to a similarity of temptation. My
very style seems to myself to become more impressive than
usual, with the charge of them. Who that standeth, knoweth
but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to
believe, have never deviated into other's property. You think
it impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence;
but so thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many beside
him, who at last have expiated as he hath done. You are as
yet upright; but you are a banker, or at least the next thing
to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but cash must pass
through your hands, sometimes to a great amount. If in an
unguarded hour----but I will hope better. Consider the scandal
it will bring upon those of your persuasion. Thousands would
go to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the
fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect
it would have on the sale of your poems alone, not to mention
higher considerations! I tremble, I am sure, at myself, when
I think that so many poor victims of the law, at one time of
their life, made as sure of never being hanged, as I, in my
own presumption, am ready, too ready, to do myself. What are
we better than they? Do we come into the world with different
necks? Is there any distinctive mark under our left ears? Are
we unstrangulable, I ask you? Think on these things. I am
shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers, not for their
resemblance to the ape tribe, (which is something,) but for
the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking,
fingering, etc."
Here is a capital programme for those losel scouts whose 'tales of
the crusades' which are waged against the canine species, generally
fill our newspapers in the dog-days. We have no doubt that similar
suggestions to those here thrown out, have been acted upon by many a
dog-hater, in the fervid summer solstice, what time a worse virus
than the hydrophobic was raging in his brain. Lamb is inquiring after
his adopted dog, 'Dash:'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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