The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman PotterAdams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
General
The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter
Adams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
Political fiction
"The fashionable critic belongs to the Press Club, from which it may
be inferred that he is an excellent judge of Cologne and hair oil. I
say this, sir, seeing how large a a quantity of these excellent
articles are used by the nice persons who constitute that club. In
dress, the fashionable critic is quite up to Fifth Avenue, and in
manners he is rather above it. He is in high favor with certain aged
dowagers of doubtful ancestry, who never think of giving an evening
party without one or two of the best cravatted. He has a wonderful
relish for light literature, and affects to speak numerous tongues.
In truth, if there be a tongue he is not familiar with, he will tell
you most patronizingly that it is a tongue not known in fashionable
society. He writes articles for magazines, turns the brains of
certain young damsels at boarding schools, and at the end of the
year fancies himself a Byron. Now and then he gathers his stray
effusions together, and gives them to the forgiving world in a book
that sends a titillation of joy to the hearts of his numerous
admirers, and also sets every fashionable critic to praising it as
the most wonderful work of the age; for unlike the wise critic, the
fashionable critic eschews envy, and invariably puffs the bantlings
of his fellows. In fine, the fashionable critic is always tied to
some lady friend, who has written a book he is about to notice in
Putnam, a journal he has nearly choked to death with his great
learning. If you would know how he lives I will tell you. He has
three dollar lodgings with Mrs. Sponge, in Amity Street, which is
fashionable enough for any body. But being a sharp fellow, he takes
a dinner or two at the Brevort House, which enables him to indite
all his epistles therefrom, so, to his friends, he is at the Brevort
House. And, believe me, sir, for I say it more in pity than anger,
he is a man much given to appropriating to himself the coats and
breeches of his friends, and going uninvited to balls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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