Ice Cream.
Under the genial, affable, and generous Joseph Gales, of the National Intelligencer, James Watson Webb is the senior editor of our country, and James Gordon Bennett is close at his heels, whose venerable and majestic forms will soon descend the dismal steps of the tomb, and their extraordinary souls appear in the awful presence of a Judge, from whom there is no appeal. Solemn thought! and almost paralysing in its contemplation. Webb was born in America, and Bennett on the mountains of Scotland, where one of his parents survives, to enjoy the success and protection of her faithful son. With James Watson Webb we never exchanged a word, which we can scarcely realise in view of our intimate relations, for twenty years, with other metropolitan editors. But with James Gordon Bennett we have had the closest relations, and we proclaim, with no ordinary emotions of pleasure, that he has treated us more like a brother than a stranger. In our memorable mnemotechnic controversy with Professor Francis Fauvel Gouraud, in 1843, when almost every editor in America was arrayed against us, and eternal ruin seemed inevitable, James Gordon Bennett came to our rescue, and, with George W. Kendall, of the New Orleans Picayune, George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, and Mrs. Walters, of the Boston Transcript, we were sublimely victorious in that scholastic disputation. In consideration of his magnanimous conduct, we wrote to the Herald about one hundred columns from Panama and California, when the civilized world was rocked, to its profoundest basis, with the dazzling gold discoveries, and on our return, he gave us money, and ever cheered us in our illness and penury. When we wrote the inflammatory Report of the noble Alfred Carson, against the Common Council of 1850, we gave it to Mr. Bennett, to the exclusion of the other editors, because he had been true in our adversity, when the hands of all mankind seemed uplifted to annihilate our pale and feeble frame. We had boarded with Horace Greeley, for seven years, at the Graham House, in Barclay street, and all our relations had been of the most friendly character; and yet we deemed it our sacred duty to send our Pilgrim letters to Mr. Bennett, and also give him Carson’s famous Report, to the exclusion of Greeley, because Bennett’s fidelity was next to our Father’s. Greeley was a formidable candidate for the Mayoralty, when Carson’s Report appeared, and if we had given it to him instead of Bennett, he would have been the successor of Mayor Woodhull. But in giving it to Bennett for publication one day in advance of Greeley, so exasperated the latter against Carson and ourself, that he attacked the Report like a ferocious bull dog, and slew himself, whose name was hardly whispered in the Mayoralty Convention that soon followed. Alderman Morgan Morgans, (President of the Board of Aldermen,) Alderman Robert H. Hawes, Alderman George H. Franklin, and Mayor Woodhull himself were also candidates. But as they were all severely denounced in Carson’s Report, for discharging culprits without examination or trial, and for other offences common to Aldermen in those days, they were all rejected by the Convention, when the oily Ambrose C. Kingsland entered the arena, and was nominated and easily elected, which proved to be the saddest municipal calamity of that period, as he was in collusion throughout his term with official scoundrels, and made more money than any Mayor who preceded him, as one of our Aldermanic pupils often assured us; and if Kingsland will publicly deny our accusations, we will adduce our informant’s name, and paralyse him. And to be briefly explicit, our informant was connected with Kingsland and Draper’s operations to rob the city of the Gansevoort property. Kingsland’s appointment of Matsell as Chief of Police partially corroborates the assertion of the Alderman who imparted his precious information. Kingsland’s appointment of Matsell was effected thus: According to his custom, with Mayors elect, Matsell invited Kingsland to a ride into the Metropolitan suburbs, on the morning after his election, and in passing a gaudy edifice, the Brandon Chieftain halted and exclaimed: “Kingsland, my boy, is not that a fascinating mansion?” Kingsland crimsoned, and gazed rapiers and scabbards, and in baffled accents, mildly ejaculated in the expressive language of Jemmy Twitcher: “Vell, vot of it?” “O, nothing,—only I thought I would inquire how you enjoyed yourself in its rainbow halls on Friday evening last. And, by the way, how about the appointment of Chief of Police? Have you resolved whom to appoint?” “Certainly I have. You well know my ancient love for you, and that you are my choice for Chief, beyond any being living or dead. I was elected to eject you, but I shan’t do it, my boy. ‘Thou art the man!’ Ha, ha, ha! Give us your hand, old boy. Ha, ha, ha! A very fine day, ain’t it Matsell?” “Kingsland, you have really got a magnificent Palace in the Fifth Avenue, but I think your front parlor requires a five thousand dollar clock, to render it thoroughly gorgeous and enchanting.” “Chief, what in the name of mud are you driving at?” “I am driving for my life to Burnham’s, for his choicest brandy and Ice Cream.”
More delicious Ice Cream next week.
