For the New-York Weekly Magazine.
TO TYRUNCULUS.
Your elevated and most distinguished reflections on the grand topic of segar smoaking, affords a charming field for speculation. It appears in the eye of reason to be truly self-partial, and the allusion to bucks alone, leaves an undescribable scope for contemplation, such as must here lay dormant for want of a palatable penetration to its merits or demerits.—---If, friend Tyrunculus, segar smoaking is found such a disagreeable and obnoxious weapon in your presence, does that sanction your divulging its bad effects to exist on the rest of mankind? Has experience, the grand teacher of science, actuated you to a confirmation of its being a poisonous twist? Or is its source derived from your physical knowledge and sound reasoning? If the former, it must be admitted, that your title is good for a public demonstration, if the latter, it must be concluded that you are a professed physician and a man of eminent learning, in which case your annunciation in respect to its bad or good effects might have had some weight, and at the same time would have been considered an act of great charity. There are people, who by nature cannot withstand the powerful effect of smoak, and there are others who, by reason of their faculties being much impaired, are not able to bear it, which of these ought to be attributed to you, is best known to yourself—I say, it is an amusement not altogether so fashionable as beneficial, because it tends to support the constitution, and is a bar against receiving the ill consequences arising from those disagreeable stenches, which reign almost in every part of the city, and therefore, is of immense utility to smoakers at large. “This, the learned doctors and physicians will prove.”---To divert myself any longer on this very interesting subject would only be expending time, too precious for me at present to let glide away, as such I have only to add, that in order to avoid being again incommoded and insulted by segar smoak, it will not be amiss if you take a piece of good council from your friend the subscriber, that is, to refrain from imposing on any society either public or private, as, probably, the consequence may be attended with a piercing stroke of this woeful dagger.
Yours, &c.
SEGAR.
ACCOUNT OF A NEGRO-WOMAN WHO BECAME WHITE.
This woman was cook-maid to colonel Barnes of Maryland; she was born in Virginia, and is about forty years old, remarkably healthy and robust, and originally as black as the blackest African. About fifteen years ago, the skin next adjoining to the nails of the fingers became white, her mouth soon after suffered the same alteration, which gradually extended over the whole body, though not quite in an equal degree; four parts in five of her skin are as white, smooth, and transparent, as in a fair European; the neck and back along the vertebræ, are least changed; her face and neck, in which the change is complete, discover the veins under the skin; and are suffused with blushes, when any accident excites the passions, either of anger or shame.