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110 Works of Falconbridge

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After all the vicissitudes, ups and downs of a soldier’s life, especially in such a campaign as that in Mexico, there is a great deal of music mixed up with the misery, fun with the fuss and feathers, and incident enough to last a man the balance of a long lifetime. While camped at Camargo, […]

Cigar Smoke

Story type: Literature

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Few persons can readily conceive of the amount of cigars consumed in this country, daily, to say little or nothing of the yearly smokers. The growing passion for the noxious weed is truly any thing but pleasantly contemplative. A boy commences smoking at ten or a dozen years old, and by the time he should […]

There are a great many good jokes told of the false notions formed as to the character and standing of persons, as judged by their dress and other outward signs. It is asserted, that a fine coat and silvery tone of voice, are no evidence of the gentleman, and few people of the present day […]

The Broomstick Marriage

Story type: Literature

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“Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” is a time-honored idea, and calls to mind a matrimonial circumstance which, according to pretty lively authority, once came about in the glorious Empire State. A certain Captain of a Lake Erie steamer, who was blessed with an elegant temperament for fun, fashion, and the feminines, was “laid […]

“A gentleman by the name of Collins stopping with you?” “Collins?” was the response. “Yes, Collins, or Collings, I ain’t sure which,” said the hardy-looking, bronzed seaman, to the gaily-dressed, flippant-mannered, be-whiskered man of vast importance, presiding over the affairs of one of our “first-class hotels.” “Very indefinite inquiry, then,” said the hotel manager. “Well, […]

A great deal has been written, to show that the literary business is a very disagreeable business; and that branch of it coming under the “Editorial” head is about as comfortable as the bed of Procustes would be to an invalid. It may doubtless look and sound well, to see one’s name in print, going […]

Pills And Persimmons

Story type: Literature

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I remember an old “Joke” told me by my father, of an old, and rather addle-headed gentleman, who some fifty years ago did business in New Castle, Delaware, and having occasion to send out to England for hardware, wrote his order, and as he was about to despatch it to the captain of the ship, […]

A gentleman from “out ‘town,” came into Redding & Co.’s on Christmas day, and leaning thoughtfully over the counter, says he to Prescott, “Got any Psalms here?” “N-n-no,” says Prescott, reflectingly, “but,” he continued, after a moment’s pause, and handing down a copy of Hood, “here’s plenty of old Joe’s!” The out-of-town gentleman gave a […]

We do not now recollect what philosopher it was who said, “it’s no disgrace to be poor, but it’s often confoundedly unhandy!” But, we have little or no sympathy for poor folks, who, ashamed of their poverty, make as many and tortuous writhings to escape its inconveniences, as though it was “against the law” to […]

The Advertisement

Story type: Literature

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Sit down for a moment, we will not detain you long, our story will interest you, we are sure, for it is most commendable, brief, and–singularly true. A poor widow, in the city of Philadelphia, was the mother of three pretty children, orphans of a ship-builder, who lost his life in the corvette Kensington, a […]

People often wonder how a man can manage to drink up his salary in liquor, provided it is sufficient to buy a gallon of the very best ardent every day in the year. How a fortune can be drank up, or drank down, by the possessor, is still a greater poser to the unsophisticated. Now, […]

The Question Settled

Story type: Literature

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“Doctor” Gumbo, who “does business” somewhere along shore, met “Prof.” White,–a gemman, whose complexion is four shades darker than the famed ace of spades,–a few evenings since, in front of the Blade office, and after the usual formalities of greeting, says the doctor– “What you tink, sah, oh dat Lobes question, what dey’s makin’ sich […]

The Troubles Of A Mover

Story type: Literature

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“Mr. Flash in?” “Mr. Flash? Don’t know any such person, my son.” “Why, he lives here!” continued the boy. “Guess not, my son; I live here.” “Well, this is the house, for I brought the things here.” “What things?” says our friend, Flannigan. “Why, the door mat, the brooms, buckets and brushes,” says little breeches. […]

Nursing A Legacy

Story type: Literature

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Waiting for dead men’s shoes is a slow and not very sure business; sometimes it pays and sometimes it don’t. I know a genius who lost by it, and his case will bear repeating, for there is both morality and fun in it. Lev Smith, a native of “the Eastern shore” of Maryland, and a […]

The Perils Of Wealth

Story type: Literature

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Money is admitted to be–there is no earthly use of dodging the fact–the lever of the whole world, by which it and its multifarious cargo of men and matters, mountains and mole hills, wit, wisdom, weal, woe, warfare and women, are kept in motion, in season and out of season. It is the arbiter of […]

A great many dogmas have been written, and may continue to be written, on dogs. Confessing, once, to a dogmatical regard for dogs, we “went in” for the canine race, with a zeal we have bravely outgrown; and we live to wonder how men–to say nothing of spinsters of an uncertain age–can heap money and […]

German Caution

Story type: Literature

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Some ten years since, an old Dutchman purchased in the vicinity of Brooklyn, a snug little farm for nine thousand dollars. Last week, a lot of land speculators called on him to “buy him out.” On asking his price, he said he would take “sixty tousand dollars–no less.” “And how much may remain on bond […]

“Conscience sakes! but hain’t they got a lot of pork here?” said a looker-on in Quincy Market, t’other day. “Pork!” echoes a decidedly Green Mountain biped, at the elbow of the first speaker. “Yes, I vow it’s quite as- tonishing how much pork is sold here and et up by somebody,” continued the old gent. […]

An Active Settlement

Story type: Literature

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Gen. Houston lives, when at home, at Huntsville, Texas; the inhabitants mostly live, says Humboldt, Beeswax, Borax, or some of the other historians, by hunting. The wolves act as watchmen at night, relieved now and then by the Ingins, who make the wig business brisk by relieving straggling citizens of their top-knots. A man engaged […]

The American “Ole Bull,” young Howard, one of the most scientific crucifiers of the violin we ever heard, gave us a call t’other day, and not only discoursed heavenly music upon his instrument, but gave us the “nub” of a few jokes worth dishing up in our peculiar style. Howard spent last winter in a […]

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” Great men are not the less liable or addicted to very small, and very mean, and sometimes very rascally acts, but they are always fortunate in having any amount of panegyric graven on marble slabs, shafts and pillars, o’er their dust, and eulogistic and profound histories written in […]

Philosophy Of The Times

Story type: Literature

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The philosophy of the present age is peculiarly the philosophy of outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats beneath a cambric front? or who imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid? What Prometheus was to […]

No better specimen of the genus, genuine Yankee nation, can be found, imagined or described, than the skippers of along shore, from Connecticut river to Eastport, Maine. These critters give full scope to the Hills and Hacketts of the stage, and the Sam Slicks and Falconbridges of the press, to embody and sketch out in […]

Presence Of Mind

Story type: Literature

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Mr. Davenport–the “Ned Davenport” of the Bowery boys–before sailing for Europe and while attached to the Bowery Theatre, was of the lean and hungry kind. In fact he was extremely lean–tall as a may-pole, and slender enough to crawl through a greased fleute,–to use a yankeeism. Somebody “up” for Shylock one night, at the Bowery, […]

All of our mercantile cities are overrun with young men who have been bred for the counter or desk, and thousands of these genteel young gents find it any thing but an easy matter to find bread or situations half their time, in these crowded marts of men and merchandise. An advertisement in a New […]

Cabbage Vs. Men

Story type: Literature

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Theodore Parker says, the cultivation of man is as noble and praiseworthy a science, as the cultivation of cabbage, or the garden sass! Says brother Theodore, “You don’t cast garden-seed in the mire, over the rough broken ground, and exhibit your benefits. No, you dig, level, rake, and then sow your seed, you give them […]

“Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.”–Isaiah. A portly elderly gentleman, with one hand in his breeches pocket, and the fingers of the other drumming a disconsolate rub-a-dub upon the […]

Jeremy Diddlers have existed from time immemorial down, as traces of them are found in all ancient and modern history, from the Bible to Shakspeare, from Shakspeare to the revelations of George Gordon Byron, who strutted his brief hour, acted his part, and–vanished. Diddler is derived from the word diddle, to do –every body who […]

Dabster says he would not mind living as a bachelor, but when he comes to think that bachelors must die–that they have got to go down to the grave “without any body to cry for them”–it gives him a chill that frost-bites his philosophy. Dabster was seen on Tuesday evening, going convoy to a milliner. […]

Did you ever see a real, true, unadulterated specimen of Down East, enter a store, or other place of every-day business, for the purpose of “looking around,” or dicker a little? They are “coons,” they are, upon all such occasions. We noted one of these “critters” in the store of a friend of ours, on […]

The Vagaries Of Nature

Story type: Literature

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Nature seems to have her fitful, frightful, and funny moods, as well as all her children. Now she gets up a stone bridge, the gigantic proportions and the symmetrical development of which attract great attention from all tourists and historians who venture into or speak of “old Virginia.” The old dame goes down far into […]

No slight portion of the ills that flesh is heir to, in a city life, is the culinary item of rent day. Washing day has had its day–machines and fluid have made washing a matter of science and ease, and we are no longer bearded by fuming and uncouth women in the sulks and suds, […]

Genius For Business

Story type: Literature

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It’s a highly prized faculty in shop-keeping to sell something when a customer comes in, if you can. A female relative of ours went into a Hanover street fancy store ‘tother day, to “look over” some ivory card and needle cases; the slightly agricultural-looking clerk “flew around,” and when the question “Have you any ivory […]

In “comparing notes” with a travelled friend, I glean from his stock of information, gathered South-west, a few incidents in the life of a somewhat extensively famed Boston panoramic artist–one of which incidents, at least, is worth rehearsing. Some years ago, the South-west was beset by an organized coalition of desperadoes, whose daring outrages kept […]

There is an individual in Quincy Market, “doing business,” who is downon customers who don’t speak proper. “What’s eggs, this morning?” says a customer. ” Eggs, of course,” says the dealer. “I mean–how do they go ?” “Go?–where?” “Sho–!” says the customer, getting up his fury, “what for eggs?” “Money, money, sir! or good endorsed […]

Snaking Out Sturgeons

Story type: Literature

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We have roared until our ribs fairly ached, at the relation of the following “item” on sturgeons, by a loquacious friend of ours:– It appears our friend was located on the Kennebec river, a few years ago, and had a number of hands employed about a dam, and the sturgeons were very numerous and extremely […]

It is a most singular, or at least curious fact, connected with the histories of most all eminent men, that they were denied–by the decrees of stern poverty, or an all-wise Providence–those facilities and indulgences supposed to be so essentially necessary for the future success and prosperous career of young men, but acted as “whetstones” […]

Infirmities Of Nature

Story type: Literature

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Some folks are easily glorified. We once knew a man who became so elated because he was elected first sergeant in the militia, that he went home and put a silver plate on his door. Ollapod, in speaking of this kind of people, makes mention of one Sabin, who was so overjoyed the first time […]

I do not know a feminine–from the piney woods of Maine to the Neuces–so given to popularity, newspaper philippics, and city item bombards, as Aunt Nabby Folsom, of the town of Boston. The name and doings of Aunt Nabby are linked with nearly all popular cabals in Faneuil Hall, the “Temple,” “Chapel,” or Melodeon–from funeral […]

Scientific Labor

Story type: Literature

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“Bob, what yer doing now?” “Aiding Nat’ral History.” “Aiding Nat’ral History–what do yer mean by that?” “Why every time the kangaroo jumps over the monkey, I hold his tailup.”

"Selling" A Landlord

Story type: Literature

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During the great gathering of people in Quakerdom, while the Whigs were dovetailing in Old Zack, an artful dodger, a queer quizzing Boston friend of mine, thought a little side play wouldn’t be out of the way, so to work he goes to get up a muss, and I’ll tell you how he managed it, […]

A Juvenile Joe Miller

Story type: Literature

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We observed a small transaction last Wednesday noon, on Hanover street, that wasn’t so coarse for an urchin hardly out of his swaddling clouts. He was a cunning-looking little fellow, and poking his head into a shoe shop, he bawls out in a very keen, fine, silvery voice– “S-a-a-y, Mister-r-r–“ “Eh?–what?” says the shop-keeper. “Somebody’s […]

Miseries Of A Dandy

Story type: Literature

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That poverty is at times very unhandy–yea, humiliating, we can bear witness; but that any persons should make their poverty an everlasting subject of shame and annoyance to themselves, is the most contemptible nonsense we know of. During our junior days, while officiating as “shop boy,” behind a counter in a southern city, we used […]

People of experience tell awful stories about the miseries of boarding, and boarding-houses, and it is very clearly palpable to us that keepers of boarding-houses could a tale unfold of their own miseries, equal, if not double that of the luckless creatures who board. That housekeeping has its joys it would be vain to deny, […]

Cato, when Censor of Rome, expelled from the Senate Manilius, whom the general opinion had marked out for counsellor, because he had given his wife a kiss in the day time, in the sight of his daughter. And this reminds us of a local story told us by one of the “oldest inhabitants” of the […]

“I dunno where I heer’d it, but I know it’s true. I expected it long ago. I told Jones it’d come out so.” “Why, Uncle Josh, you don’t pretend to say that Miller’s wife has run off with Bob Tape, Yardstick’s clark, do you?” “Yes, I do, too; hain’t it been the talk of the […]

Printers, from time immemorial–back possibly to the days of Faust–have suffered martyrdom, more or less, at the hands of the people who didn’t pay! Many of the long-established newspaper concerns can show a “black list” as long as the militia law, and an unpaid cash account bulky enough to take Cuba! Country publishers suffer in […]

Sure Cure

Story type: Literature

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Travel is a good invention to cure the blues and condense worldly effects. When Cutaway went to California, “I carried,” said he, “a pile of despondency, and more baggage, boots, and boxes, than would fit out a caravan. After an absence of just fourteen calendar months, I started homewards, and was so boiling over with […]

It is truly astonishing, that the inexhaustible beds–mines of anthracite coal, lying along the Schuylkill river and ridges, valleys and mountains, from old Berks county to the mountains of Shamokin, were not found out and applied to domestic uses, fully fifty years before they were! Coal has been exhumed from the earth, and burned in […]

"Taking Down" A Sheriff

Story type: Literature

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Ex-honorable John Buck, once the “representative” of a district out West, a lawyer originally, and finally a gentleman at large, and Jeremy Diddler generally, took up his quarters in Philadelphia, years ago, and putting himself upon his dignity, he managed for a time, sans l’argent, to live like a prince. Buck was what the world […]

Few extravaganzas of man or woman lay such a heavy stress upon the pocket-book or purse as meanness. This may seem paradoxical, but it’s nothing of the kind. How many thousands to save a cent, walk a mile! How many to cut down expenses, cut off a thousand of the little “filling ins” which go […]

Human nature doubtless has a great many weak points, and no few bipeds have a great itching after notoriety and fame. Fame, I am credibly informed, is not unlike a greased pig, always hard chased, but too eternal slippery for every body to hold on to! I have never cared a tinker’s curse for glory […]

The Fitzfaddles At Hull

Story type: Literature

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“Well, well, drum no more about it, for mercy’s sake; if you must go, you must go, that’s all.” “Yes, just like you, Fitzfaddle”–pettishly reiterates the lady of the middle-aged man of business; “mention any thing that would be gratifying to the children–“ “The children– umph! “ “Yes, the children; only mention taking the dear, […]

Deacon —-, who resides in a pleasant village inside of an hour’s ride upon Fitchburg road, rejoices in a fondness for the long-tailed crustacea, vulgarly known as lobsters. And, from messes therewith fulminated, by some of our professors of gastronomics that we have seen, we do not attach any wonder at all to the deacon’s […]

“Well, you must do it.” “Do it?” “Do it, sir,” reiterated the lady of Jipson, a man well enough to do in the world, chief clerk of a “sugar baker,” and receiving his twenty hundred dollars a year, with no perquisites, however, and–plenty of New Hampshire contingencies, (to quote our beloved man of the million, […]

The Pigeon Express Man

Story type: Literature

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In nearly all yarns or plays in which Yankees figure, they are supposed to be “a leetle teu darn’d ceute” for almost any body else, creating a heap of fun, and coming out clean ahead; but that even Connecticut Yankees–the cutest and all firedest tight critters on the face of the yearth, when money or […]

Jolly Old Times

Story type: Literature

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Either mankind or his constitution has changed since “the good old times,” for we read in an old medicine book, that bleeding at the nose, and cramp, could be effectually prevented by wearing a dried toad in a bag at the pit of the stomach; while for rheumatism and consumption, a snake skin worn in […]

We have been, frequently, much amused with the man[oe]uvring of some folks in trade. It’s not your cute folks, who screw, twist and twirl over a smooth fourpence, or skin a flea for its hide and tallow, and spoil a knife that cost a shilling,–that come out first best in the long run. Some folks […]

We shall never forget, and always feel proud of the fact, that we knew so great an every-day Plato as Davy Crockett. Had the old Colonel never uttered a better idea than that everlasting good motto–“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead!” his wisdom would stand a pretty good wrestle with tide and time, before […]

Wonders Of The Day

Story type: Literature

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The “firm” who save a hogshead of ink, annually, by not allowing their clerks and book-keepers to dot their i’s or cross their t’s, are now bargaining (with the old school gentlemen who split a knife that cost a fourpence, in skinning a flea for his hide and tallow!) for a two-pronged pen, which cuts […]

Legal Advice

Story type: Literature

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Old Ben. Franklin said it was his opinion that, between imprisonment and being at large in debt to your neighbor, there was no difference worthy the name of it. Some people have a monstrous sight of courage in debt, more than they have out of it, while we have known some, who, though not afraid […]

Shakspeare has written–“let him that’s robbed–not wanting what is stolen, not know it, and he’s not robbed at all! ” Now this fact often becomes very apparent, especially so in the case of Mrs. Pompaliner,–a lady of whom we have had occasion to speak before, the same who sent Mrs. Brown, the washerwomen, sundry boxes […]

Practical Philosophy

Story type: Literature

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Skinflint and old Jack Ringbolt had a dispute on Long Wharf, a few days since, upon a religious pint. Jack argued the matter upon a specie basis, and Skinflint took to “moral suasion.” Jack went in for equal division of labor and money–all over the world. “Suppose, now, John,” says Skinflint, “we rich men should […]

Few incidents of the campaign in Mexico seem so mixed up and indefinite as that relative to the taking of Huamantla, and the death of that noble and chivalric officer, Capt. Walker. In glancing over the papers of Major Mammond, of Georgia, which he designates the “Secondary Combats of the Mexican War,” we observe that […]

Old Jack Ringbolt

Story type: Literature

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Had been spinning old Mrs. Tartaremetic any quantity of salty yarns; she was quite surprised at Mr. Ringbolt’s ups and downs, trials, travels and tribulations. Honest Jack (!) had assured the old dame that he had sailed over many and many cities, all under water, and whose roofs and chimneys, with the sign-boards on the […]

“Ha, ha!” said Uncle Joe Blinks, as the subject of summer travel, a jaunt somewhere, was being discussed among the regular boarders in Mrs. Bamberry’s spacious old-fashioned parlors; “Ha! ha! ha! ladies, did Mrs. Bamberry ever tell you of my tour to Saratogy Springs?–last summer was two years.” “No,” said several of us neuter genders […]

A Circuitous Route

Story type: Literature

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We know several folks who have a way of beating round and boxing the compass, from A to Z, and back again, that fairly knocks us into smithereens. One of these characters came to us the other day, and in a most mysterious manner, with the utmost earnestness, solemnity, and hocus pocus, says he– “Cap’n, […]

New Year’s day is some considerable “pumpkins” in many parts of the United States. In the Western States, they have horse-racing, shooting-matches, quilting-frolics and grand hunting parties. In the South, the week beginning with Christmas and ending with New Year’s day, is devoted to the largest liberty by the negroes, who have one grand and […]

Few animals possess the sagacity of the horse; passive and obedient, they are easily trained; bring them up the way you want them to go, and they’ll go it! The horse in his old age does not forget the precepts of his youth. A very touching anecdote is told of a horse, in the cavalry […]

We Don’t Wonder At It

Story type: Literature

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In the city, we get so many new kicks, and put on so many new ways of living and doing up things, that no wonder the quiet and matter-of-fact country folks make awkward mistakes, and get mixed up with our conventionalities, and other doings. Dining at the American, last week, we sat vis-a-vis with an […]

Some years ago, there lived, dragged and toiled, in one of our “Middle States,” or Southern cities, and old lady, named Landon, the widow of a lost sea captain; and as a dernier resort, occurring in many such cases, with a family of children to provide for,–the father and husband cut off from life and […]

In fifty years the steam engine will be as old a notion, and as queer aninvention, as the press Ben. Franklin worked is now. In fifty years,copper-plate, steel-plate, lithography, and other fine engravings, willbe multiplied for a mere song, in a beautiful manner, by the nowinfantile art of Daguerreotyping. A passage to California will then […]

In the village of Washington, Fayette Co., Ohio, there was a transient sort of a personage, a kind of floating farmer, named Hinkle,–Jacob Hinkle,–commonly called Old Jake Hinkle. Jake was, originally, a Dutchman, a Pennsylvania, Lancaster County Dutchman; and that was about as Dutch as Holland and Sour Krout could well make a human “critter.” […]

Quartering Upon Friends

Story type: Literature

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City-bred people have a pious horror of the country in winter, and no great regard for country visitors at any time, however much they may “let on” to the contrary. In rushing hot weather, when the bricks and mortar, the stagnated, oven-like air of the crowded city threatens to bake, parboil, or give the “citizens” […]

"According To Gunter"

Story type: Literature

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Old Gunter was going home t’other night with a very heavy “turkey on”–about a forty-four pounder. Gunter accused the pavements of being icy, and down he came– kerchug! A “young lady” coming along, fidgetting and finiking, she made a very sudden and opposite ricochet, on seeing Gunter feeling the ground, and making abortive attempts to […]

Hotel Keeping

Story type: Literature

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Fortunes are made–very readily, it is said, in our large cities, by Hotel keeping. It does look money-making business to a great many people, who stop in a large hotel a day or two, and perhaps, after eating about two meals out of six–walking in quietly and walking out quietly–no fuss, no feathers, find themselves […]

Humbug

Story type: Literature

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There is no end to the humbug in life. About half we say, and more than half we do, is tinged with humbug. “My Dear Sir,” we say, when we address a letter to a fellow we have never seen, and if seen, perhaps don’t care a continental cent for him; dear sir! what a […]

A Ralph Waldo Emerson

Story type: Literature

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Of all the public lecturers of our time and place, none have attracted more attention from the press, and consequently the people, than RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Lecturing has become quite a fashionable science–and now, instead of using the old style phrases for illustrating facts, we call travelling preachers perambulating showmen, and floating politicians, lecturers. As […]

A retrospective view of some ten or fifteen years, brings up a wonderful “heap of notions,” which at their birth made quite a different sensation from that which their “bare remembrance” would seem to sanction now. The statement made in a “morning paper” before us, of a fine horse being actually scared stone and instantaneously […]

“Well, squire, as I wer’ tellin’ on ye, when I went around pedlin’ notions, I met many queer folks; some on ’em so darn’d preoud and sassy, they wouldn’t let a feller look at ’em; a-n-d ‘d shut their doors and gates, bang into a feller’s face, jest as ef a Yankee pedler was a […]

It is somewhat curious that more embarrassments, and queer contre temps do not take place in the routine of human affairs, when we find so many persons floating about of one and the same name. It must be shocking to be named John Brown, troublesome to be called John Thompson, but who can begin to […]

Amateur Gardening

Story type: Literature

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“I don’t see what in sin’s become of them dahlias I set out this Spring,” said Tapehorn, a retired slop-shop merchant, to his wife, one morning a month ago, as he hunted in vain among the weeds and grass of his garden, to see where or when his two-dollars-a-piece dahlia roots were going to appear. […]

Dog Day

Story type: Literature

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I used to like dogs–a puppy love that I got bravely over, since once upon a time, when a Dutch bottier, in the city of Charleston, S. C., put an end to my poor Sue,–the prettiest and most devoted female bull terrier specimen of the canine race you ever did see, I guess. My Sue […]

A Chapter On Misers

Story type: Literature

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We all love, worship and adore that everlasting deity– money. The poor feel its want, the rich know its power. Virtue falls before its corrupting and seductive influence. Honor is tainted by it. Pride, pomp and power, are but the creatures of money, and which corrupt hearts and enslaved souls wield to the great annoyance–yea, […]

The Leg Of Mutton

Story type: Literature

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I’m going to state to you the remarkable adventures of a very remarkable man, who went to market to get a leg of mutton for his Sunday dinner. I have heard, or read somewhere or other, almost similar stories; whether they were real or imaginary, I am unable to say; but I can vouch for […]

A Hint To Soyer

Story type: Literature

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Magrundy says, in his work on Grub, that a Frenchman will “frigazee” apair of old boots and make a respectable soup out of an ancient chapeau;but our friend Perriwinkle affirms that the French ain’t “nowhere,”after a feat he saw in the kitchen arrangement of a “cheap boardinghouse” in the North End:–the landlady made a chowder […]

A few weeks ago, during a passage from Gotham to Boston, on the ” Empire State,” one of the most elegant and swift steamers that ever man’s ingenuity put upon the waters, I met a well-known joker from the Quaker city, on his first trip “down East.” After mutually examining and eulogising the external appearance […]

Rather Twangy

Story type: Literature

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Three Irishmen, green as the Isle that per-duced ’em, but full of sin, and fond of the crater, broke into a country store down in Maine, one night last week, and after striking a light, they lit upon a large demijohn, having the suspicious look of a whiskey holder. One held the light, while another […]

Roosting Out

Story type: Literature

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In 1837, after the capture of Santa Anna, by General Samuel Houston and his little Spartan band, which event settled the war, and something like tranquillity being restored to Texas, several of us adventurers formed a small hunting party, and took to the woods, in a circuitous tour up and across the Sabine, and so […]

“I’ll take a circuit around, and come out about the lower end of your mot,”* said I to my companion. “You remain here; lie down flat, and I’ll warrant the old doe and her fawns will be found retracing their steps.” [*] Mot is the name given small clumps of trees or woods, found scattered […]

“Sir!” said Fieryfaces, the lawyer, to an unwilling witness, “Sir! do you say, upon your oath, that Blinkins is a dishonest man ?” “I didn’t say he was ever accused of being an honest man, did I?” replied Pipkins. “Does the court understand you to say, Mr. Pipkins, that the plaintiff’s reputation is bad?” inquired […]

A Desperate Race

Story type: Literature

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Some years ago, I was one of a convivial party, that met in the principal hotel in the town of Columbus, Ohio, the seat of government of the Buckeye State. It was a winter evening when all without was bleak and stormy, and all within were blythe and gay; when song and story made the […]

During the “great excitement” in Boston, relative to the fugitive slave “fizzle,” a good-natured country gentleman, by the name of Abner Phipps; an humble artisan in the fashioning of buckets, wash-tubs and wooden-ware generally, from one of the remote towns of the good old Bay State, paid his annual visit to the metropolis of Yankee […]

Have you ever had the tooth-ache? If not, then blessed is your ignorance, for it is indeed bliss to know nothing about the tooth-ache, as you know nothing, absolutely nothing about pain–the acute, double-distilled, rectified agony that lurks about the roots or fangs of a treacherous tooth. But ask a sufferer how it feels, what […]

People Do Differ!

Story type: Literature

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Fifty years ago, Uncle Sam was almost a stranger on the maps; he hadn’t a friend in the world, apparently, while he had more enemies than he could shake a stick at. Every body snubbed him, and every body wanted to lick him. But Sam has now grown to be a crowder; his spunk, too, […]

Getting Square

Story type: Literature

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It seems to be just as natural for a subordinate in a “grocery” to levy upon the till, for material aid to his own pocket, as for the sparks to fly upwards or water run down hill. Innumerable stories are told of the peculations of these “light-fingered gentry,” but one of the best of the […]

In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect were a sort of tie; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy. They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed their […]

It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it. What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep all the children in “a poor neighborhood” in “vittels” and clothes the year round. When old Cauliflower took sick, once in a long life-time, he was prevailed […]

If you have ever “been around” some, and taken notice of things, you have doubtless seen the man who knows pretty much every thing and every body! I’ve seen them frequently. As the old preacher observed to a venerable lady, in reference to forerunners, “I see ’em now.” Well, talking of that rare and curious […]

The Wolf Slayer

Story type: Literature

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In 1800 the most of the State of Ohio, and nearly all of Indiana, was a dense wilderness, where the gaunt wolf and naked savage were masters of the wild woods and fertile plains, which now, before the sturdy blows of the pioneer’s axe, and the farmer’s plough, has been with almost magical effect converted […]

Affecting Cruelty

Story type: Literature

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A hard-fisted “old hunker,” who has made $30,000 in fifty-one years, by saving up rags, old iron, bones, soap-grease, snipping off the edges of halves, quarters, and nine-pences, raised the whole neighborhood t’other evening. He came across a full-faced Spanish ninepence, and in an attempt to extract the jaw-teeth of the head, the poor thing […]

Office-Seeking has become a legitimatized branch of our every-day business, as much so as in former times “reduced gentlemen” took to keeping school or posting books. In former times, men took to politics to give zest to a life already replete with pecuniary indulgences, as those in the “sere and yellow leaf” are wont to […]

Hereditary Complaints

Story type: Literature

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Meanness is as natural to some people, as gutta percha beefsteaks in a cheap boarding-house. Schoodlefaker says he saw a striking instance in Quincy market last Saturday. An Irish woman came up to a turkey merchant, and says she– “What wud yees be after axin’ for nor a chicken like that?” “That’s a turkey, not […]

The Story Of Capt. Paul

Story type: Literature

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I love to speak, I love to write of the mighty West. I have passed ten happy and partly pleasant years travelling over the immense tracts of land of the West and South. I have, during that time, garnered up endless themes for my pen. It was my custom, during my travels, to keep a […]

Say what you will, it’s no use talking, poverty is more potent and powerful, as a moral engine, than all the “sermons and soda water,” law, logic, and prison discipline, ever started. All a man wants, while he has a chance to be honest, and to get along smoothly, is a good situation and two […]

Used Up

Story type: Literature

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I am tempted to believe, that few–very few men can start in the world–say at twenty, with a replete invoice of honesty, free and easy–kind, generous–good-natured disposition, and keep it up, until they greet their fortieth year. There are, doubtless, plenty of men–I hope there are, who would be entirely and perfectly generous-hearted, if they […]

Dobbs Makes "A Pint"

Story type: Literature

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Dobbs walked into a Dry Goodery, on Court street, and began to look around. A double jinted clerk immediately appeared to Dobbs. “What can I do for you, sir?” says he. “A good deal,” says Dobbs, “but I bet you won’t.” “I’ll bet I will,” says the knight of the yard-stick, “if I can.” “What’ll […]

The Old Black Bull

Story type: Literature

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It’s poor human natur’, all out, to wrangle and quarrel now and then, from the kitchen to the parlor, in church and state. Even the fathers of the holy tabernacle are not proof against this little weakness; for people will have passions, people will belong to meetin’, and people will let their passions rise, even […]

We are astounded at the incredulity of some people. Every now and then you run afoul of somebody who does not believe in spiritual knockers. Enter any of our drinking saloons, take a seat, or stand up, and look on for an hour or two, especially about the time “churchyards yawn!” and if you are […]

A keen, genteely dressed, gentlemanly man “put up” at Beltzhoover’s Hotel, in Baltimore, one day some years ago, and after dining very sumptuously every day, drinking his Otard, Margieux and Heidsic, and smoking his “Tras,” “Byrons,” and “Cassadoras,” until the landlord began to surmise the “bill” getting voluminous, he made the clerk foot it up […]