The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844

‘Umph! What language then did you speak?’

‘No other than English; but when they stopped, I d—d their eyes soundly, and they seemed to understand very well what that meant, for they were up anchor and off in a jiffy!’

The stranger, who spoke Arabic fluently, sought an explanation of the native captain, and the mystery was quickly solved.

‘How did you contrive to get up here, Ryis, instead of stopping at Cairo?’

‘Why, Effendim, the Frank was the most impatient man in the world: no sooner did we stop to cook, to rest, or for the wind, than stick in hand, and raving with passion, he stamped on the deck, and with a gesture too imperious to be mistaken, shouted the only Arabic sentence which he seemed to know, which was ‘Goddam Ryis!’—and ‘Inshallah!’ we got no rest, but were forced to work like devils. We passed Bourlac (Cairo) in the night, and Allah Kherim! here we are at a town which none of you Christians pass without stopping.’

‘God-dam’ is very good Arabic for ‘go on;’ and ‘Ry-i-s,’ means ‘captain.’ ‘G-d d—n your eyes!’ however thoroughly English it may seem to cockneys, is very tolerable Arabic for ‘Go on, captain!’ (en avant.)

‘A Story of Sorrow and Crime’ is an affecting monitory sketch, devoid of that mawkishness which is sometimes the characteristic of kindred performances. The writer’s reflections upon the career of his hero, remind us of that beautiful passage in one of Blair’s essays: ‘Life is short: the poor pittance of seventy years is worth being a villain for. What matters it if your neighbor lies in a splendid tomb? Sleep you with innocence! Look behind you through the track of time; a vast desert lies open in the retrospect; through this desert have your fathers journeyed on, until wearied with years and sorrows, they sunk from the walks of men. You must leave them where they fell, and you are to go a little farther, where you will find eternal rest. Whatever you may have to encounter between the cradle and the grave, every moment is big with innumerable events, which come not in slow succession, but bursting forcibly from a revolving and unknown cause, fly over this orb with diversified influence.’ ••• ‘F. P.’s ‘Western Adventures’ have good points about them, but if published entire, would we think disappoint himself perhaps as much as his readers. Here is an anecdote, however, which is worth ‘jotting down’ in types: ‘I met not long after in New-York a man who had just been induced to rent the very hotel in Kentucky which was the scene of the reverses I have been describing. Aware that I had at one time kept the establishment, he was anxious to know my opinion of its pecuniary promise. ‘I don’t expect to make much the first year,’ said he; ‘I shall be satisfied if I ‘realize’ all expenses. But do you think I shall clear myself the first year?’ ‘I haven’t the slightest doubt of it,’ I replied; ‘I cleared myself before the first six months were up, and was d—d glad to get off so; and I rather guess that you’ll be too, in about half that time.’ And he was!’ ••• Could there be a more affecting picture than that of a fond mother learning for the first time from the tell-tale prattle of her little ones that she is ‘given over to darkness and the worm’ by her friends, who had disguised from her the fatal truth? Such is the scene depicted in these pathetic lines:

‘He speaketh now: ‘Oh, mother dear!’
Murmurs the little child:
And there is trouble in his eyes,
Those large blue eyes so mild:

‘Oh, mother dear! they say that soon,
When here I seek for thee
I shall not find thee—nor out there,
Under the old oak-tree;

‘Nor up stairs in the nursery,
Nor any where, they say:
Where wilt thou go to, mother dear?
Oh, do not go away!’

There was long silence, a deep hush,
And then the child’s low sob:
Her quivering eyelids close: one hand
Keeps down the heart’s quick throb.

And the lips move, though sound is none,
That inward voice is prayer.
And hark! ‘Thy will, O Lord, be done!’
And tears are trickling there—

Down that pale cheek, on that young head;
And round her neck he clings;
And child and mother murmur out
Unutterable things.

He half unconscious, she deep-struck
With sudden, solemn truth,
That number’d are her days on earth—
Her shroud prepared in youth:

That all in life her heart holds dear
God calls her to resign:
She hears, feels, trembles—but looks up,
And sighs ‘Thy will be mine!’’

‘I came down from Albany the other evening,’ writes a correspondent, ‘in that floating palace, the Knickerbocker steamer; I slept in your Knickerbocker state-room; arrived in town, I took after dinner a Knickerbocker omnibus, and rode up to the ‘Westminster Abbey Bowling Saloon,’ named of Knickerbocker; I called on you with my article for the Knickerbocker Magazine; and on my way down, enjoyed a delightful ablution at the Knickerbocker Bath; stepped into the Knickerbocker Theatre, and ‘laughed consumedly’ over an amusing play; and finally, closed with a cup of delicious tea, green and black, and anchovy-toast, at Knickerbocker Hall. Every thing, I was glad to see, was Knickerbocker.’ Very flattering; yet we dare say our friend was not aware that this Magazine was the pioneer in the use of this popular name in Gotham, and that its example has suggested, one after another, the namesakes to which he has alluded. Such, howbeit, is the undeniable fact. ••• We remarked the example of catachresis to which ‘L.’ alludes, and laughed at it, we venture to say, as heartily as himself. It was not quite so glaring however as the confused images of a celebrated Irish advocate: ‘I smell a rat; I see it brewing in the storm; and I will crush it in the bud!’ ••• We find several things to admire in our Detroit friend’s ‘Tale of Border Warfare;’ but he can’t ‘talk Indian’—that is very clear. The ‘abrogynes’ are not in the habit of making interminable speeches: they leave that to white members of Congress, who pump up a feeling in a day’s speech ‘for Buncombe.’ Do you remember what Halleck says of Red-Jacket?

‘The spell of eloquence is thine, that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there’s one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery—they are short.’

Not one man in a thousand can talk or write the true ‘Indian.’ Our friend Sa-go-sen-o-ta, formerly known as Col. William L. Stone, is one of the best Indian writers in this country. His late letter ‘To the Sachems, Chiefs, and Warriors of the Seneca Indians,’ acknowledging the honor they had done him in electing him a chief, is a perfect thing in its kind. May it be long before the ‘Master of Breath’ shall call him to ‘the fair hunting-grounds, through clouds bright as fleeces of gold, upon a ladder as beautiful as the rainbow!’ ••• Our entertaining ‘Dartmoor Prisoner’ has a pleasant story of a fellow-captive who on one occasion performed that ‘cautionary’ experiment which is sometimes denominated ‘putting your foot in it.’ The term is of legitimate origin, it should seem. According to the Asiatic Researches, a very curious mode of trying the title to land is practised in Hindostan. Two holes are dug in the disputed spot, in each of which the lawyers on either side put one of their legs, and remain there until one of them is tired, or complains of being stung by the insects, in which case his client is defeated. In this country it is the client and not the lawyer who ‘puts his foot into it!’ ••• We have commenced in the present, and shall conclude in our next number, a ‘Legend of the Conquest of Spain,’ by Washington Irving. We derive it from the same source whence we received the ‘Legend of Don Roderick,’ lately published in these pages. We commend its graphic limnings and stirring incidents to the admiration of our readers. ••• A friend and correspondent in a sister city dashes in with a rich brush, in one of his familiar letters to us, a sketch of a boss-painter, who was renovating the writer’s house with sundry pots of paint; a conceited, half-informed prig, who having grown rich, talks of ‘going to Europe in the steam-boat,’ and has a huge fancy for seeing Italy. ‘Yes,’ said the house-and-sign Raphael, ‘I must see Rome and Athens; them Romans allers made a great impression on me; the land of Apelles and Xerxes; ah! that must be worth travelling for.’ ‘Would you not rather run over England?’ I asked; but the ass poohed at England, and on the strength of his daubing our house-blinds, claimed an interest in the Fine Arts abroad: ‘No, Sir, give me Italy—the Loover and the Vattykin; them’s the places for my money! Gods! how I should like to rummage over them old-masters! They beat us all hollow—that’s a fact. I’ll give in to them. There never was such painters before, nor never will be. I want to study ’em.’ ‘Yes,’ I rejoined; ‘’twould interest you, doubtless; and after having studied the great painters in Italy, you might return by way of Switzerland, and scrape acquaintance with the glaciers.’ The booby did not take, but only stared and said: ‘Oh, they’re famous for glass-work there, be they?’ This lover of the Fine Arts had a counterpart in the man who having ‘made as much money as he wanted by tradin’ in Boston,’ went ‘a-travelling abroad;’ and while in Florence, called on Powers the sculptor, with a design to ‘patronize’ him a little. After looking at his ‘Greek Slave,’ his ‘Eve,’ and other gems of art, he remarked that he ‘thought they’d look a good ’eal better if they had some clothes on. I’m pretty well off,’ he continued, ‘and ha’n’t a chick nor child in the world; and I thought I’d price a statty or two. What’s the damage, now, for that one you’re peckin’ at?’ ‘It should be worth from four to five thousand dollars, I think,’ answered Powers. ‘What! five thousand dollars for that ’are! I cal’lated to buy me a piece of stattyary before I went home, but that’s out of the question! Hasn’t stattyary riz lately? How’s paintin’s here now?’ ••• Just complaints are made by our city contemporaries of the exorbitant rates of postage upon weekly periodicals. Mr. Willis complains, in the ‘New-Mirror’ weekly journal, that country postmasters charge so much postage on that periodical by mail, that in many cases it would make the work cost to its country subscribers something like ten dollars a year! All postage in this country is at too high a rate; and so long as it remains so, the law will continue to be evaded. ‘Cheating Uncle Sam’ is not considered a very heinous offence. There is nothing one robs with so little compunction as one’s country. It is at the very worst robbing only eighteen millions of people. ••• The lines sent us in rejoinder to the stanzas of ‘C. W. D.,’ in a late issue, would not be original in our pages; nor could we hope to have many new readers for them, after they have appeared in, and of course been copied from, that exceedingly pleasant and well-edited daily journal, the Boston Evening Transcript. ••• Hauffman, the German poet, was recently expelled from the Prussian dominions, and all his works proscribed thenceforth. ‘Served him right;’ for in one of his works appears the ‘word following, to wit:’ ‘Sleuerverweigerungsverfassungsmassigberechtig!’—meaning a man who is exempt by the constitution from the payment of taxes. ‘Myscheeves thick’ must needs follow such terrific words. ‘We have heard,’ says a London critic, in allusion to this jaw-breaker, ‘of a gentleman, a member of the Marionettenschauspielhausengesellschaft, who was said to be an excellent performer on the ‘Constantinopolitanischetudelsackpfeife!’’ ••• We owe a word of apology to our friends the publishers, for the omission of notices which we had prepared of their publications, and which are crowded out by our title-page and index, that were forgotten until the last moment. We shall ‘bring up arrears’ in our next.

notes

1

Stephen B. Wilson, Esq.

2

A new public library and reading-room in Berlin.