Stories by American Authors Volume I Part 3

Lord Clifden's b.c. _Surplice_, by Touchstone.......... 1 Mr. Bowe's b.c. _Springy Jack_, by Hetman.............. 2 Mr. B. Green's br.c. _Shylock_, by Simoon.............. 3 Mr. Payne's b.c. _Glendower_, by Slane............... o Mr. J.P. Day's b.c. _Nil Desperandum_, by Venison...... o

DOc.u.mENT NO. 7.

_Paragraph of Shipping Intelligence from the "Liverpool Courier" of June 21st, 1848:_

The bark _Euterpe_, Captain Riding, belonging to the Transatlantic Clipper Line of Messrs. Judkins & Cooke, left the Mersey yesterday afternoon, bound for New York. She took out the usual complement of steerage pa.s.sengers. The first officer's cabin is occupied by Professor t.i.tus Peebles, M.R.C.S., M.R.G.S., lately instructor in metallurgy at the University of Edinburgh, and Mr. William Beauvoir. Professor Peebles, we are informed, has an important scientific mission in the States, and will not return for six months.

DOc.u.mENT NO. 8.

_Paragraph from the "N.Y. Herald" of September 9th, 1848:_

While we well know that the record of vice and dissipation can never be pleasing to the refined tastes of the cultivated denizens of the only morally pure metropolis on the face of the earth, yet it may be of interest to those who enjoy the fascinating study of human folly and frailty to "point a moral or adorn a tale" from the events transpiring in our very midst. Such as these will view with alarm the sad example afforded the youth of our city by the dissolute career of a young lump of aristocratic affectation and patrician profligacy, recently arrived in this city. This young _gentleman's_ (save the mark!) name is Lord William F. Beauvoir, the latest scion of a venerable and wealthy English family. We print the full name of this beautiful exemplar of "haughty Albion," although he first appeared among our citizens under the alias of Beaver, by which name he is now generally known, although recorded on the books of the Astor House by the name which our enterprise first gives to the public. Lord Beauvoir's career since his arrival here has been one of unexampled extravagance and mad immorality. His days and nights have been pa.s.sed in the gilded palaces of the fickle G.o.ddess, Fortune, in Thomas Street and College Place, where he has squandered fabulous sums, by some stated to amount to over 78,000 sterling. It is satisfactory to know that retribution has at last overtaken him. His enormous income has been exhausted to the ultimate farthing, and at latest accounts he had quit the city, leaving behind him, it is shrewdly suspected, a large hotel bill, though no such admission can be extorted from his last landlord, who is evidently a sycophantic adulator of British "aristocracy."

DOc.u.mENT NO. 9.

_Certificate of deposit, vulgarly known as a p.a.w.n-ticket, issued by one Simpson to William Beauvoir, December 2d, 1848:_

=John Simpson, Loan Office, 36 Bowery, New York.=

_Dec. 2nd, 1848_,

_One Gold Hunting-case Watch and_ Dolls. Cts.

_Chain 150 00_

_William Beauvoir_

Not accountable in case of fire, damage, moth, robbery, breakage, &c.

25% per ann. Good for 1 year only.

DOc.u.mENT NO. 10.

_Letter from the late John Phoenix, found among the posthumous papers of the late John P. Squibob, and promptly published in the "San Diego Herald":_

OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, Jan. 3, 1849.

MY DEAR SQUIB:--I imagine your pathetic inquiry as to my whereabouts--pathetic, not to say hypothetic--for I am now where I cannot hear the dulcet strains of your voice. I am on board ship.

I am half seas over. I am bound for California by way of the Isthmus. I am going for the gold, my boy, the gold. In the mean time I am lying around loose on the deck of this magnificent vessel, the _Mercy G. Tarbox,_ of Nantucket, bred by _Noah's Ark_ out of _Pilot-boat,_ dam by _Mudscow_ out of _Raging Canawl._ The _Mercy G. Tarbox_ is one of the best boats of Nantucket, and Captain Clearstarch is one of the best captains all along sh.o.r.e--although, friend Squibob, I feel sure that you are about to observe that a captain with a name like that would give any one the blues. But don't do it, Squib! Spare me this once.

But as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the _Mercy G.--_mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my back-bone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society--just we three, you know--to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the captain's liquors is most dangerous, so that we can take the pledge not to touch it. One of them is a chemist or a metallurgist, or something scientific. The other is a gentleman.

The chemist or metallurgist or something scientific is Professor t.i.tus Peebles, who is going out to prospect for gold. He feels sure that his professional training will give him the inside track in the gulches and gold mines. He is a smart chap.

He invented the celebrated "William Riley Baking Powder"--bound to rise up every time.

And here I must tell you a little circ.u.mstance.

As I was coming down to the dock in New York, to go aboard the _Mercy G.,_ a small boy was walloping a boy still smaller; so I made peace, and walloped them both. And then they both began heaving rocks at me--one of which I caught dexterously in the dexter hand. Yesterday, as I was pacing the deck with the professor, I put my hand in my pocket and found this stone. So I asked the professor what it was.

He looked at it and said it was gneiss.

"Is it?" said I. "Well, if a small but energetic youth had taken you on the back of the head with it, you would not think it so nice!"

And then, O Squib, he set out to explain that he meant "gneiss," not "nice!" The ignorance of these English about a joke is really wonderful. It is easy to see that they have never been brought up on them. But perhaps there was some excuse for the professor that day, for he was the president _pro tem._ of our projected temperance society, and as such he head been making a quant.i.tative and qualitative a.n.a.lysis of another kind of quartz.

So much for the chemist or metallurgist or something scientific. The gentleman and I get on better. His name is Beaver, which he persists in spelling Beauvoir. Ridiculous, isn't it? How easy it is to see that the English have never had the advantage of a good common-school education--so few of them can spell. Here's a man don't know how to spell his own name. And this shows how the race over there on the little island is degenerating.

It was not so in other days. Shakspere, for instance, not only knew how to spell his own name, but--and this is another proof of his superiority to his contemporaries--he could spell it in half a dozen different ways.

This Beaver is a clever fellow, and we get on first rate together. He is going to California for gold--like the rest of us. But I think he has had his share--and spent it. At any rate he has not much now. I have been teaching him poker, and I am afraid he won't have any soon. I have an idea he has been going pretty fast--and mostly down hill.

But he has his good points. He is a gentleman all through, as you can see. Yes, friend Squibob, even you could see right through him. We are all going to California together, and I wonder which one of the three will turn up trumps first--Beaver, or the chemist, metallurgist or something scientific, or

Yours respectfully, JOHN PHOENIX.

P.S. You think this a stupid letter, perhaps, and not interesting. Just reflect on my surroundings.

Besides, the interest will acc.u.mulate a good while before you get the missive. And I don't know how you ever are to get it, for there is no post-office near here, and on the Isthmus the mails are as uncertain as the females are everywhere.

(I am informed that there is no postage on old jokes--so I let that stand.) J.P.

DOc.u.mENT NO. 11.

_Extract from the "Bone Gulch Palladium," June 3d, 1850:_

Our readers may remember how frequently we have declared our firm belief in the future unexampled prosperity of Bone Gulch. We saw it in the immediate future the metropolis of the Pacific Slope, as it was intended by nature to be. We pointed out repeatedly that a time would come when Bone Gulch would be an emporium of the arts and sciences and of the best society, even more than it is now. We foresaw the time when the best men from the old cities of the East would come flocking to us, pa.s.sing with contempt the puny settlement of Deadhorse. But even we did not so soon see that members of the aristocracy of the effete monarchies of despotic Europe would acknowledge the undeniable advantages of Bone Gulch, and come here to stay permanently and forever. Within the past week we have received here Hon. William Beaver, one of the first men of Great Britain and Ireland, a statesman, an orator, a soldier and an extensive traveller. He has come to Bone Gulch as the best spot on the face of the everlasting universe. It is needless to say that our prominent citizens have received him with great cordiality. Bone Gulch is not like Deadhorse. We know a gentleman when we see one.

Hon. Mr. Beaver is one of nature's n.o.blemen; he is also related to the Royal Family of England. He is a second cousin of the Queen, and boards at the Tower of London with her when at home. We are informed that he has frequently taken the Prince of Wales out for a ride in his baby-wagon.

We take great pleasure in congratulating Bone Gulch on its latest acquisition. And we know Hon. Mr. Beaver is sure to get along all right here under the best climate in the world and with the n.o.blest men the sun ever shone on.

DOc.u.mENT NO. 12.

_Extract from the Dead Horse "Gazette and Courier of Civilization" of August 26th, 1850:_

BONEGULCH'S BRITISHER.

Bonegulch sits in sackcloth and ashes and cools her mammoth cheek in the breezes of Colorado canyon. The self-styled Emporium of the West has lost her British darling, Beaver Bill, the big swell who was first cousin to the Marquis of Buckingham and own grandmother to the Emperor of China, the man with the biled shirt and low-necked shoes. This curled darling of the Bonegulch aristocrat-worshippers pa.s.sed through Deadhorse yesterday, clean bust. Those who remember how the four-fingered editor of the Bonegulch "Palladium" p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and lifted up his falsetto crow when this lovely specimen of the British sn.o.b first honored him by striking him for a $ will appreciate the point of the joke.

It is said that the "Palladium" is going to come out, when it makes its next semi-occasional appearance, in full mourning, with turned rules.

For this festive occasion we offer Brother B. the use of our late retired Spanish font, which we have discarded for the new and elegant dress in which we appear to-day, and to which we have elsewhere called the attention of our readers. It will be a change for the "Palladium's"

eleven unhappy readers, who are getting very tired of the old type cast for the Concha Mission in 1811, which tries to make up for its lack of w's by a plentiful superfluity of greaser u's. How are you, Brother Biles?

"We don't know a gent when we see him." Oh no(?)!

DOc.u.mENT NO. 13.

_Paragraph from "Police Court Notes," in the "New Centreville [late Dead Horse] Evening Gazette" January 2d, 1858:_

HYMENEAL HIGH JINKS.

William Beaver, better known ten years ago as "Beaver Bill," is now a quiet and prosperous agriculturalist in the Steal Valley. He was, however, a pioneer in the 1849 movement, and a vivid memory of this fact at times moves him to quit his bucolic labors and come in town for a real old-fashioned tare. He arrived in New Centreville during Christmas week; and got married suddenly, but not unexpectedly, yesterday morning.

His friends took it upon themselves to celebrate the joyful occasion, rare in the experience of at least one of the parties, by getting very high on Irish Ike's whiskey and serenading the newly-married couple with fish-horns, horse-fiddles, and other improvised musical instruments. Six of the partic.i.p.ators in this epithalamial serenade, namely, Jose Tanco, Hiram Scuttles, John P. Jones, Hermann b.u.mgardner, Jean Durant ("Frenchy"), and Bernard McGinnis ("Big Barney"), were taken in tow by the police force, a.s.sisted by citizens, and locked up over night, to cool their generous enthusiasm in the gloomy dungeons of Justice Skinner's calaboose. This morning all were discharged with a reprimand, except Big Barney and Jose Tanco, who, being still drunk, were allotted ten days in default of $10. The bridal pair left this noon for the bridegroom's ranch.