Getting Into The "Right Pew"
by
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 extensive saturnalia, visit their friends and relations, make love to the “gals” on neighboring plantations, spend the little change saved through the year, or now and then given to them by indulgent or generous masters, and in fact have a glorious good time! The holidays in New Orleans, and in Louisiana generally, is a time, and no mistake. The old French and Spanish families keep open house–dinners and suppers, music, song and dance. On New Year’s eve, they decorate the graves of their friends with flowers. Lamps or lanterns are often required for this purpose, and as you pass the silent grave-yards, it is indeed a novel sight to see the many glimmering lights about the tombs of the departed. In most of the South-Western towns, the day is given up to fun and frolic. The Philadelphians have a great blow out. The streets are filled by holiday-looking people, children with toys and “mint sticks”–making the air resound with tin trumpets and penny whistles. The men and boys used to load up every thing in the shape of cannons, guns, pistols and hollow keys, and bang away from sunset until sunrise, keeping up a racket, din and uproar, equal to the bombardment of a citadel. The authorities stopped that, and now the civil young men kill the night and day in dancing, feasting, and attending the amusements, the multitude of rowdies passing their time in concocting and carrying on street fights and running with the engines.
But the New Yorkers bang the whole of them; bear witness, O ye New Year’s doings I have there seen. Visiting your friends, and your friends’ friends. Open houses every where! “Drop in and take a glass of wine or bit of cake, if nothing else”–that’s the word. Jeremy Diddlers flourish, marriageable daughters and interesting widows set their caps for the nice young men, the streets are noisy and full of confusion, the theatres and show-shops generally reap an elegant harvest, and the police reports of the second morning of the New Year swell monstrously! Of a New Year’s adventure of an innocent young acquaintance of mine, I have a little story to tell.
Jeff. Jones was caught, at a New Year’s dinner in New York, by the fascinating grace and cap -tivating head-gear of a certain young widow, who had a fine estate. Jeff. was what you might call a good boy; he had never seen much of creation, save that lying between Pokeepsie (his birth-place) and the Battery, Castle Garden and Bloomingdale. He was a clever fellow, fond of rational fun and amusement, kept “a set of books” for a mercantile firm in Maiden Lane, dressed well, kept good hours, and in all general respects, was–a nice young man. He went with a friend on a tour–New Year’s day, to make calls. After a number of glasses and chunks of cake, feeling altogether beautiful, he found himself in the presence of a charming widow, and some two months afterwards, himself and the widow, a parson and a brace of male and female friends, Jeff. Jones, aged 28, took a partner for life, ergo he hung up his hat in the snug domicil of the flourishing widow, who became Mrs. Jeff. Jones, thereafter.
Poor Jeff., he found out that there was some truth in the venerable saying–all is not gold that glitters. The charming widow was seriously inclined to wear the inexpressibles; and poor Jeff., being of such a gentlemanly, good and easy disposition, scarcely made a struggle for his reserved rights. However, things, under such a state of affairs, grew no better fast, and as Jeff. Jones had neglected to go around and see the elephant before marriage, he came to the conclusion to see what was going on after that interesting ceremony. In short, Jeff. got to going out of nights–kept “bad hours,” got blowed up in gentle strains at first, but which were promised to be enlarged if Mr. Jones did not mind his Ps. and Qs.