[LETTER XXVII.]
JONATHAN SLICK IN NEW YORK.
Jonathan attends the President at the Howard House—Visits the Park Theatre with the President and his Handsome Girl—Goes with Mr. Robert Tyler to have his Hair Cut at Clairhugh's—Takes Refreshments with the Ladies at the Howard House—Bed-chamber Scene with the President—Serenade, &c.
Dear Par:
I begin tu feel a leetle sort of better, but nothing to brag on yit. I raly believe that I'd a been a gone sucker, if it hadn't been for the mustard plasters and the onions that Captin Doolittle kept a filling into me, outside and in, till I can a'most feel myself sprouting out greener than ever, and twice as strong. My gracious! when this ere influenza does git hold of a feller, it aint a critter that you can scare off in a hurry. It's the worst kind of a Down East cold, double and twisted strong; and if you don't humor it like a cosset lamb, jest as like as not it ups and goes off, stuboy, into a galloping consumption; and the worst on it is, it carries you off with it, whether you will or no.
Let me see; I was a telling you about the President, and how he seemed tu enjoy the doughnuts and switchel aboard the sloop. The old chap took tu it like a nussin baby, and if he wasn't clear grit, and no mistake, arter it, I don't know the symptoms of prime living.
Wal, we went back to the Howard Hotel, and the President he jumped out of the carriage as spry as a kitten, and both on us run up the steps that open out of Maiden Lane, to git rid of a hull swad of office-holders that was a hurraing at the front door in Broadway.
The President he took off his hat, and slicked down his hair a leetle in the entry-way, and I pulled up my dickey a trifle, and hauled out a corner of my yaller hankercher, and sez I—
"Captin, go ahead, I'm all ready."