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
remain until some kind friend with a shilling invites him to a
sling. Truly, sir, he is starved into flattering his patrons. If you
be an ambitious author, you have only to show him the color of your
coin, and for two dollars he will make you quite equal to Thackeray.
Five dollars in his palm, and, my word for it, he will have you
superior to either Bulwer or Dickens. If you be a poet, he will, for
the sum of eight dollars, (which is Easley's price,) enshrine you
with the combined mantles of Homer and Shakspeare. He applies the
same scale of prices to such actors and actresses as stand in need
of his services. Notwithstanding his passion for exalting his
patrons, he affects in conversation a great dislike for American
literature, while at the same time he is ever ready to lavish the
most indiscriminate praise upon the books of foreign authors. He
never makes both ends meet on Saturday, but will borrow a dollar to
go to Coney Island on Sunday.
"And now, your honor, you have the whole mob, and you may make what
you please of them." The general raised his glass, and was about to
declare he had been highly entertained, when Mr. Tickler suddenly
interrupted, by reminding him that he had just called to mind the
fact, that there was a play writer critic. "This fellow is the most
congenial of them all, has a little room somewhere in North Moore
Street, in which may found two or three pictures of fierce looking
tragedians; a cot covered with a quilt of various colors, and
looking as if it had been used for a horse blanket; a carpet the
colors have long since been worn out of; a dumb clock over the dingy
mantel piece; a portrait of the deceased husband of the hostess; and
a table well supplied with pipes, tobacco, and French plays. The
French plays are, when slightly altered and rendered into English,
for the public; the pipes and tobacco are for his friends. And
although perpetually climbing the mountain of poverty, while
building no end of castles in the air, he spends what he gets to-day
and has no thought for to-morrow. It having come the fashion of the
day for managers of theaters to feast their patrons on the morbid
sentimentality of French plays, (as if the vices of our own social
system were not enough to excite the vicious propensities of our
high blooded youths,) so also would it seem the highest inspiration
of the eighteenth century play writer to rehash and coarsify for the
American stage all those lascivious eccentricities for which the
French are famous. Hence, your jolly play writer is generally
engaged with his friends, smoking pipes and reading the last French
piece. The pleasure excited by this congenial occupation is
invariably heightened with libations of whiskey, the play writer
having a credit with the grocer at the corner for three bottles,
which, in a case of emergency, may be extended to four. He writes
occasionally for the Sunday newspapers, thinks John Brougham the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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