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

‘His reading was literally boundless. He was as familiar with the natural sciences, history, poetry, and belles-letters, as with agriculture, and nearly if not quite as well qualified to discuss them. It was difficult to start any literary topic which you did not at once perceive had been examined by him with the eye of a scholar and critic. In one of my letters, half sportively, yet in a serious tone, I asked him ‘what he thought of the German Philosophy?’ In his answer, Kant and Fichte, and I think Schelling and Jacobi, were discussed with as much familiarity as most scholars would find themselves qualified to make use of in speaking of Locke, or Stewart, or Brown. In commenting on the report of mine, (on Common School Libraries,) alluded to by him in the last Cultivator, he betrays an extensive knowledge of the literature of nearly every nation in Europe. As a writer, the public have long been acquainted with Mr. Gaylord. He wrote on nearly every class of topics connected with human improvement; in papers, magazines, and not unfrequently in books. But it is as an agricultural writer that he is best known. Here, taken all in all, he stands unrivalled. There are many agricultural writers in our country who are as well or better qualified to discuss a single topic, than he was. But I deem it not disrespectful to say, that for acquaintance with and ability to discuss clearly and correctly every department of agricultural science, he has not, he never has had, an equal in this State. He was every way fitted for an editor. Placable and forgiving in his temper; modest, disinterested, unprejudiced; never evincing a foolish credulity; above deception, despising quackery; with an honesty of motive that was never suspected.’

No one who knew intimately our lamented relative and friend, but will confirm the justice of this encomium. We trust that a collection of Willis Gaylord’s writings, literary, scientific, and agricultural, will be made by some competent hand. They are demanded, we perceive, by various public journals throughout the country. ••• Professor Gouraud’s extraordinary exposition of Phreno-Mnemotechny seems to be winning him ‘fame and fortune’ wherever he goes. He was in Philadelphia at the last advices, where his success was to the full as signal as in this city. It is obvious, we think, that the advantages of this great system will hereafter be chiefly enjoyed by the rising generation, who will thus be enabled to attain in six months an amount of information which in the ordinary way could scarcely be mastered in as many years. Still, the science has already been studied by hundreds of highly-endowed men, persons eminent in their own peculiar walks, who have cheerfully yielded their tributes of admiration to its vast resources. Several excellent articles upon this theme have from time to time appeared in the columns of the ‘New World’ weekly journal, from the pen of Mr. Mackay, one of the editors; who, being himself a pupil of Mr. Gouraud, writes from personal experience of the matter in question. ‘A thousand dollars,’ he avers, ‘would not be a fair equivalent for the great advantages obtainable by Phreno-Mnemotechny;’ and in this opinion there is a general concurrence of Professor Gouraud’s pupils in this city. ••• What a power there is in much of the occasional music one hears, to stir the heart! Perhaps you never heard Brough, to the ‘instrumentation’ of that fine composer and most facile performer, ‘Frank Brown,’ sing Barry Cornwall’s ‘King Death,’ or ‘The Admiral and the Shark?’ No? Then never let the opportunity to do so slip, if you should ever be so fortunate as to enjoy it. Listen to the words of the first-named:

IKing Death was a rare old fellow,He sat where no sun could shine;And he lifted his hand so yellow,And poured out his coal-black wine!IIThere came to him many a maiden,Whose eyes had forgot to shine,And widows with grief o’er laden,For a draught of his sleepy wine.IIIThe scholar left all his learning,The poet his fancied woes;And the beauty her bloom returningLike life to the fading rose.IVAll came to the rare old fellow,Who laughed till his eyes dropped brine,As he gave them his hand so yellow,And pledged them in Death’s black wine.

We should reluct at consorting with any citizen who could hear this song executed, in the manner of Brough, without feeling the electric fluid coursing up his vertebra, and passing off at the points of his hair, as the hollow tones waver down the chromatic, or wail in low and spondaic monotones. ‘F. B.’ was ‘rich’ in ‘Over There,’ a song which, like the numerous platitudes of the ‘Brigadier-General,’ is indebted to its music for its popularity. There ensues a verse that is very striking:

‘Oh! I wish I was a geese,Over there! over there!Oh! I wish I was a geese,Over there!‘Oh I wish I was a geese,’Cause they lives and dies in peace,And accumulates much grease,Over there!’

Nothing by the author of Thomas Campbell’s ‘Woodman Spare that Beechen-Tree’ amended, equals the foregoing in the melody of its language or ‘breadth of effect.’ Speaking of songs: what can be more delightful than those of our fair correspondent Mrs. Hewitt? Her translations are excellent; and the words she has written for the use of that great musical genius, Wallace, in his romance of ‘Le Réve,’ are ‘beautiful exceedingly.’ Mrs. Bailey, a most pleasing artiste, well remembered here, has recently produced them at her concerts in Baltimore, with great éclat. ••• The ‘Spirit of the Times,’ with its numerous and ample pages, filled to overflowing with a variety which always seems to embrace ‘every thing that’s going;’ whether relating to all sorts of matters interesting to all sorts of sportsmen, or to literature, the drama, agricultural science, and the fine arts; this same widely popular journal is now afforded at FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR! ‘Ask that gentleman to sit down; he’s said enough!’ ••• Every-body must remember the ‘Boots’ who figures in one of Dickens’ stories, who was wont to designate all the lodgers by the names of their different kinds of boots, shoes, slippers, etc. The author of ‘The Two Patrons,’ a capital tale in the last number of Blackwood’s Magazine, has a serving-man of a similar kind, who in commenting upon the visitors at his master’s house, compares them to diverse dishes, as shadowing forth the relative degrees of aristocracy. He establishes some one supereminent article of food as a high ideal, to which all other kinds of edibles are to be referred; and the farther removed from this imaginary point of perfection any dish appears, the more vulgar and common-place it becomes: ‘They are low, uncommon low; reg’lar b’iled mutton and turnips. They may be rich, but they a’nt genteel. Nothink won’t do but to be at it from the very beginning; fight after it as much as they like; wear the best of gownds, and go to the fustest of boarding-schools; though they plays ever so well on the piando, and talks Italian like a reg’lar Frenchman, nothink won’t do; there’s the b’iled mutton and turnips sticking out still. Lady Charlotte, now, is a werry different affair; quite the roast fowl and bl’mange; how unlike our young ladies!—b’iled veals and parsley and butters—shocking wulgarity! And look at the father: I never see no gentleman with so broad a back, except p’raps a prize-ox.’ There is another very amusing character in the same story; one of those stupid matter-of-fact persons, who can never appreciate a figure of speech, or understand the simplest jest. A ‘benign cerulean,’ enthusiastic for the ‘rights of the sex,’ remarks that woman’s rights and duties are becoming every day more widely appreciated. ‘The old-fashioned scale must be readjusted; and woman, noble, elevating, surprising woman, ascend to the loftiest eminence, and sit superior on the topmost branch of the social tree.’ The ear of the matter-of-fact man catches the last simile, and he ventures to say: ‘Uncommon bad climbers, for the most part in general, is women. Their clothes isn’t adapted to it. I minds once I seen a woman climb a pole after a leg of mutting!’ If looks could have killed the mal-apropos speaker, he would not have survived the reception which this ridiculous remark encountered from every guest at the table. He was himself struck with the mournful silence that followed his observation, and added, by way of explanation: ‘That was a thing as happing’d on a pole; in coors it would be werry different on a tree, because of the branches.’ At length, however, the theme of woman is renewed by the former advocate: ‘Woman has not yet received her full development. The time will come when her influence shall be universal; when, softened, subdued, and elevated, the animal now called Man will be unknown. You will be all women: can the world look for a higher destiny?’ ‘In coors,’ observed the old spoon, ‘if we are all turned into woming, the world will come to an end. For ‘spose a case; ‘spose it had been my sister as married my wife, instead of me; it’s probable there would’nt have been no great fambly; wich in coors, if there was no population–’ What the fearful result of this supposed case would have been, was not permitted to transpire. The feminine ‘b’iled veals and parsley and butters’ immediately rose and left the table, and the matter-of-fact man to the ridicule of the male guests. ••• If our metropolitan friend ‘S.,’ who has disappointed us in a paper intended for the present number, ‘by reason of that contemptible disorder, dyspepsia,’ will take our advice, he will not be likely to fail us again, from a similar cause. Let him walk, as we do, some six or eight miles every day; and above all, pay frequent visits to our old friend Dr. Rabineau’s spacious and delightful Salt-Water Swimming Bath, near Castle-Garden; always remembering to make free use of his ‘crash towels.’ Dyspepsia never made a call upon us; and it ‘doesn’t associate with any body’ that keeps company with that public benefactor, Dr. Rabineau. ••• We should be reluctant to introduce the annexed profane story to our readers, but that it forcibly illustrates a characteristic vice of the wandering natives of a little island across the water, who are never at a loss for ‘themes of disgust’ in relation to America, and the ‘revolting habits’ of American citizens. On the continent, an Englishman is universally known by the soubriquet of ‘Signor Goddam; and many of our readers wilt remember Byron’s anecdote of the pompous Italian in London, who was desirous of imitating the English style in the British metropolis. ‘Bring me,’ said he, with an imperious tone, ‘bring me some wine! Why don’t you bring him?’ The servant answered: ‘I will, Sir.’ ‘You will?’ rejoined the Italian; ‘you will, eh? Goddam, you MUSHT!’ And this settled the question. But to the story ‘under notice,’ which was picked up by our correspondent at Cairo, in Egypt:

‘An impetuous Englishman, unacquainted with any language but his own, was desirous of seeing Egypt, and satisfying himself by occular demonstration of the truth of the many wonders which he had heard of that celebrated land. To get to Alexandria was easy enough; and some acquaintances whom he had picked up on the way, kindly facilitated his journey to the Nile, and saw him fairly afloat in his cangea for Cairo. But here, left with an Arab captain, and five swarthy Egyptians, his difficulties commenced, and without knowing a single word of Arabic, he had to depend on his own resources. The boats on the Nile are very ticklish flat-bottomed affairs, wretchedly handled. Before the wind they rush up like steamers, but on a wind, go to lee-ward like feathers; while in consequence of the Nile being full of shifting sand-banks, with a daily varying depth of water, they are continually running aground in the middle of the river. To this add the laziness of the captain and crew, to whom time was of no consequence; to-day, to-morrow, the next day, or a week hence, was all the same to them; they had no preferment to look forward to, no release from labor but death; and wisely enough, perhaps, exerted themselves as little as they could. ‘Inshalla! God was great, and the sun was hot! Why should they weary themselves?’ And so they took every opportunity to rest, cook their miserable fare, and dawdle the listless hours away. Of these dilatory habits of the natives the Englishman had been warned, and that whenever it happened, he was to prevent them from stopping, and force them to go on.

‘The opportunity was not long wanting. Without any reason sufficiently apparent to him, the huge stone fastened to a coir cable, and doing duty for an anchor, was dropped overboard, and the crew betook themselves to sleep. What was to be done? Of Arabic he had not a word to tell them to proceed; but he had plenty of English; so by dint of shaking his stick at the captain, and a somewhat boisterous ‘G-d d—n your eyes!’ roared out in a tone sufficiently indicative of his wishes, the primitive ‘anchor’ was got up, and onward they proceeded. Delighted to find his most British remonstrance succeed, he did not let it rust for want of practice; but every time the lazy crew attempted to ‘bring to,’ the stamp, the roar, and the shake of the stick, with the never-failing objurgation, were resorted to, and invariably with the same results. The passage up to Cairo averages three days, but vessels have been known to be as many as nine. Seven, eight, nine days past; twelve, fourteen; yet as if by magic, Grand Cairo seemed to recede before them. No time had been lost by him, for the wind had been strong in their favor, and he scarcely allowed the crew to take the necessary rest. It was very odd how greatly had he been misinformed in the distance! The very maps too seemed leagued against him; his manifold measurings and calculations were of no apparent avail. At last, at rising on the morning-of the fifteenth day, he found himself at anchor off a strange tumble-down-looking town, which by signs the captain gave him to understand was the place of his destination. Could that be ‘Grand Cairo!’ How odd! But then he was in a country of oddities; and on stepping ashore, he encountered a sun-burnt English-looking man gazing earnestly at the new arrival.

‘Is this Grand Cairo, Sir?’ inquired the astonished novice.

‘Grand Cairo, Sir! Good God, no! This is Kennah, a thousand miles beyond! Why, how the devil did you manage to get up here without knowing it? Do you speak Arabic?’

‘Not a word!’

‘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 theeI 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 handKeeps 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 outUnutterable things.He half unconscious, she deep-struckWith sudden, solemn truth,That number’d are her days on earth—Her shroud prepared in youth:That all in life her heart holds dearGod 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 reachesThe 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.