Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others

Front matter

<3 v ^ * fa

N .(V

WHIM-WHAMS AND OPINIONS OF LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ. AND OTHERS.

Contents

NO. PAGE

I.— SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 1807, 13

Publisher's Notice. Shakspeake Gallery, New York, .... 15

Chapter I

THE man in the moon f — preparations for departure — hints to traveller about packing their trunks J — straps, buckles, and bed-cords — case of pistols, a la cockmy — five trunks, three

* It is not a little singular, that this mode of ridiculing the gossiping productions of Sir John Carr, and other tourists of the day, should have been successfully adopted almost at the same moment by two writers placed in different and distant quarters of the globe. " My Pocket Book" appeared in London only two or three weeks after the publication of these " Memorandums" in New York — so that neither writer could possibly have borrowed from the other — and by its ingenious pleasantry and poignant satire, crushed a whole host of book-making tourists, with the luckless knight at their head. — Paris Ed. This matter is again referred to at the close of No. XIII.

f Vide Carr's Stranger in Ireland. John Carr, Esq., of the Honorable Society of the Middle Temple, wrote several slip-slop entertaining books of travel, "A Northern Summer," " The Stranger in France," and " The Stranger in Ireland, a Tour in 1805." The last appears to have been popular in America. It reached its third edition from the New York press of Eiley, this very year, 1807.

% Vide Weld. Isaac Weld travelled through the United States in 1795-7.

THE STRANGER IN NEW JERSEY. 75

bandboxes, a cocked hat, and a medicine-chest, a la Frangaise — parting advice of my two sisters — quere, why old maids are so particular in their cautions against naughty women — description of Powles-Hook ferry-boats — might be converted into gunboats, and defend our ports equally well with Albany sloops — Brom, the black ferryman — Charon — river Styx — ghosts ; — Major Hunt — good story — ferriage nine-pence ; — city of Harsimus — built on the spot where the folk once danced on their stumps, while the devil fiddled — quere, why do the Harsimites talk Dutch ? — story of the Tower of Babel, and confusion of tongues — get into the stage — driver a wag — famous fellow for runniug stage races — killed three passengers and crippled nine in the course of his practice — philosophical reasons why stage-drivers love grog— causeway — ditch on each side for folk to tumble into — famous place for skilly-pots; Philadelphians call 'em tarapins — roast them under the ashes as we do potatoes — queer, may not this be the reason that the Philadelphians are all turtle-heads ? — Hackensack bridge — good painting of a blue horse jumping over a mountain — wonder who it was painted by; — mem. to ask the Baron de Gusto about it on my return Rattle-snake Hill, so called from abounding with butterflies salt marsh, surmounted here and there by a solitary hay-stack — more tarapins — wonder why the Philadelphians don't establish a fishery here, and get a patent for it — bridge jver the Passaic — rate of toll — description of toll-boards — tollman had but- one eye — story how it is possible he may have lost the other — pencetable, etc.*

* Vide Carr.

Chapter II

Newark — noted for its fine breed of fat musquitoes — stingthrough the thickest boots * — story about Gallynippers — Archy Gilford and his man Caliban — -jolly fat fellows — a knowing traveller always judges of everything by the inn-keepers and waiters f — set down Newark people all fat as butter — learned dissertation on Archy Gilford's green coat, with philosophical reasons why the Newarkites wear wear red worsted nightcaps, and turn their noses to the south when the wind blows — Newark academy full of windows — sunshine excellent to make little boys grow — Elizabethtown — fine girls — vile mosquitoes — plenty of oysters — quere, have oysters any feeling ? — good story about the fox catching them by his tail — ergo, foxes might be of great use in the pearl fishery — landlord member of the legislature — treats everybody who has a vote-— mem. all the inn-keepers members of the legislature in New Jersey ; Bridge-town, vulgarly called Spank-toion, from a story of quondam parson and his wife — real name, according to Linkum Fidelius, Bridge-town, from bridge,

* Vide Weld. " General "Washington," says Weld, " told me that he never was so much annoyed by mosquitoes in any part of America, as in Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the thickest boot."

f Vide Carr; vide Moore; vide Weld; vide Parkinson; vide Priest. Richard Parkinson, late of Orange Hill, near Baltimore, published in London, 1805, his tour in America, in 1*798-1800, exhibiting sketches of Society and Manners, and a particular account of the American system of agriculture, etc. William Priest, who signs himself on the title page of his book, " Musician, late of the theatres Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston," travelled in the United States between the year 1793 and 1*797, and published his journals in London, in a thin^ octavo in 1802. Vide Linkum Fidelius, and vide Messrs. Tag, Rag, and Bobtail.

DE OMNIBUS REBUS. 77

a contrivance to get dry shod over a river or brook ; and town, an appellation given in America to the accidental assemblage of a church, a tavern, and a blacksmith's shop — Linkum as right as my left leg ; — Rahway River — good place for gunboats — wonder why Mr. Jefferson don't send a river fleet here, to protect the hay-vessels ? — Woodbridge — landlady mending her husband's breeches — sublime apostrophe to conjugal affection and the fair sex ;* — Woodbridge famous for its crab-fishery — sentimental correspondence between a crab and a lobster — digression to Abelarde and Eloisa ; — mem. when the moon is in Pisces, she plays the devil with the crabs.

Chapter III

Brunswick — oldest town in the state — division line between two counties in the middle of the street ; — posed a lawyer with the case of a man standing with one foot in each county — wanted to know in which he was domicil — lawyer couldn't tell for the soul of him ; — mem. all the New Jersey lawyers nums ; — Miss Hay's boarding-school — young ladies not allowed to eat mustard — and why ? — fat story of a mustard-pot, with a good saying of Ding-Dong's ; — Yernon's tavern — fine place to sleep, if the noise would let you — another Caliban ! — Yernon slew-eyed — people of Brunswick, of course, all squint ; — Drake's tavern — fine old blade — wears square buckles in his shoes — tells bloody long stories about last war — people, of course, all do the same ; — Hook'em Snivy, the famous fortune-teller, born here — contemporary with Mother Shoulders — particulars of his history — died one day — lines to his memory, which found their

* Vide the Sentimental Kotzebue.

way into my pocketbook ;* — melancholy reflections on the death of great men — beautiful epitaph on myself.

Chapter IV

Princeton — college — professors wear boots ! — students famous for their love of a jest — set the college on fire, and burnt out the professors ; an excellent joke, but not worth repeating — mem. American students very much addicted to burning down colleges — reminds me of a good story, nothing at all to the purpose — two societies in the college — good notion — encourages emulation, and makes little boys fight ; — students famous for their eating and erudition — saw two at the tavern, who had just got their allowance of spending money — laid it all out in a supper — got fuddled, and d — d the professors for nincoms. N.B. Southern gentlemen — Churchyard — apostrophe to grim death — saw a cow feeding on a grave — metempsychosis — who knows but the cow may have been eating up the soul of one of my ancestors — made me melancholy and pensive for fifteen minutes - r — man planting cabbagesf — wondered how he could plant them so straight — method of mole-catching— and all that — query, whether it would not be a good notion to ring their noses as we do pigs' — mem. to propose it to the American Agricultural Society — get a premium perhaps — commencement — students give a ball and supper — company from New York, Philadelphia,

* Vide Carr and Blind Bet ! Carr, in his travels, meets on the roadside in Wales, a stone-blind woman supporting herself and infirm mother by the sale of gloves and stockings. The traveller perpetrates some verses on the occasion, which he introduces in this ludicrous fashion : "Upon her quitting us, the .following lines found their way into my pocket book !"

\ Vide Carr.

ET QTTIBUSDAM ALUS. 79

and Albany — great contest which spoke the best English — Albanians vociferous in their demand for sturgeon — Philadelphians gave the preference to raccoon * and splacnuncs f — gave them a long dissertation on the phlegmatic nature of a goose's gizzard — students can't dance — always set off with the wrong foot foremost — Duport's opinion on that subject — Sir Christopher Hatton the first man who ever turned out his toes in dancing — favorite with Queen Bess on that account — Sir Walter Raleigh — good story about his smoking — his descent into New Spain — El Dorado — Candide — Dr. Pangloss — Miss Cunegunde — earthquake at Lisbon — Baron of Thundertentronck J — Jesuits — Monks — Cardinal Woolsey — Pope Joan — Tom Jefferson — Tom

Paine, and Tom the whew ! N.B. Students got drunk as

usual.

Chapter V

Left Princeton — country finely diversified with sheep and hay-stacks§ — saw a man riding alone in a wagon! why the deuce didn't the blockhead ride in a chair ? fellow must be a fool — particular account of the construction of wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, and quail-traps — saw a large flock of crows — concluded there must be a dead horse -in the neighborhood — mem. country remarkable for crows — won't let the horses die in

* Vide Priest. "At two," says Priest, "the Philadelphians dine on what is usual in England, both a variety of American dishes, such as bear, opossum, raccoon, etc!"

f Gulliver is announced by the town crier in Brobdingnag as " a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a splacnuck, an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six feet long."

\ Jeremy Cockloft appears, in this enumeration, to have come from a recent perusal of Voltaire's Candide.

§ Vide Carr.

peace — anecdote of a jury of crows — stopped to give the horses water — good-looking man came up and asked me if I had seen his wife ? heavens ! thought I, how strange it is that this virtuous man should ask me about his wife — story of Cain and Abel — stage-driver took a swig — mem. set down all the people as drunkards — old house had moss on the top — swallows built in the roof — better place than old men's beards — story about that — derivation of words hippy, hippy, hippy, and shoo-pig* — negro driver could not write his own name — languishing state of literature in this country;"}* philosophical inquiry of 'Sbidlikens, why the Americans are so much inferior to the nobility of Cheapside and Shore-ditch, and why they do not eat plum-pudding on Sundays — superfine reflections about anything.