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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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. […]

“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 […]

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, […]