The great staple of the south has not only "made" some of our first men, but has been discovered to enter largely into the composition of many of our first ladies.
My madness was now over—the intoxication of love was dissipated, and I was once more able to get about my business without having a feminine name constantly present to my eyes. The stages, the dry-goods' boxes, the streets and signs, were once more lettered in sensible characters. I was guilty of no more poetry, went to no more operas—in short, exhibited no longer any of the signs of insanity, but relapsed at once into my former unpoetical condition—the spell was broken—the blind fiend was exorcised—reason got back to her old bunk, and "Richard was himself again."
The difference in my mental condition occasioned my landlady considerable alarm; while I had lived on love, and paid five dollars a week for the privilege of sitting down at table only, she had considered me a profitable boarder; but the disappearance of beef and substantials generally, consequent upon my returning appetite, sensibly diminish her esteem for me. I fancy I can perceive a change in her treatment, for she sets the bread and butter as far away from me as possible.
P. S.—She has raised my board to eight dollars a week, and with a consciousness that I deserve it, I submit.
XV.
Modern Patent Piety—Church-Going in the City
Persons from the rural districts—who are visiting the city for the first time, and who have all their lives been accustomed to no more pretentious religious edifices than the old fashioned country meeting-house, with a "steeple," either of the extinguisher or pepper-castor pattern; with great square hot-house windows, built expressly to concentrate and reflect upon the innocent congregation the hottest rays of the sun, as if religion was a green-house plant, and would only bloom beneath a forced and artificial heat—usually expend no small portion of their simple wonder upon the magnificent temples of the town, which aspiring congregations erect ostensibly for the worship of the manger-cradled Saviour.
It usually too requires some considerable time for such a behind-the-times person to lay aside all his antiquated notions of religion, in which love, charity, and good will to men were essential elements, but which primitive idea of Christianity has, in the more enlightened city precincts, been long since exploded, and adopt the more convenient and showy piety which fashionable city people wear on Sundays—the constituent parts of which are too often only ostentation and vanity, veneered with a thin shell of decency and decorum. Such church-going people are remarkably easy on the Bible—most of the doctrines therein inculcated having been long since explained away by their three-thousand-dollar clergyman, who measures his people for their religion, and fits them with as much nicety as their tailors or dressmakers do in the case of more visible wardrobe. One or two Sundays after my first appearance in this town of patent Christianity, I attended service for the first time.
Having seen the opera with detestation, the theatres with approbation, George Christy with cachinnation, and No. 2 Dey street with affiliation; having visited Castle Garden, the model artists, and the American Museum; in fact, knowing something of almost all the other places of amusement in the city, I resolved to complete and crown my knowledge by going to church, and I hope I may receive due credit for my pursuit of amusement under difficulties. I made known my heroic determination to my new-found friends, and they instantly resolved to bear me company—Bull Dogge by way of variety, and Damphool from force of habit—(Bull Dogge seldom goes to church, and Damphool always does).
Sunday morning came, and the aforesaid individuals presented themselves—B. D. looked pugnacious and pugilistic, and Damphool perfectly marvellous—in fact, majestic as this latter-named person had ever borne himself, and importantly huge as he had ever appeared, his coat tails were now so wonderfully short, his collar so enviably large, and so independently upright, and his hat so unusually and magnificently lofty, that he certainly looked a bigger Damphool than ever before.