To Mr. MICHAEL DE MARIBUS,
In answer to his Grammatical Epistle addressed to Miss SALLY SYNTAX.
Sir,
The charitable construction which has been put upon your grammatical epistle, has rendered me declinable to your complex proposition. As your presumptuous address, wholly precludes the necessity of an apology for this abrupt preface; I shall be thereby relieved from an embarrassment, which the delicacy of the subject would have otherwise occasioned. The various contradictions visible in your letter, argue a defect of sincerity. In the first place, you say you would be superlatively happy to agree with me in the subjunctive mood; then you seem disposed, with an assuming air, so throw in a conjunction disjunctive, and disunite us into various moods and tenses. Again you say that you do not wish to be a noun adjective; then, that it is the optative of your soul, to become a relative.—What is a relative pray, but a noun adjective? You say also, that you trust I will not opiniate you singular: if you are not in the singular number, you must necessarily be in the plural. If, then, you have already formed the plural number, by the interjection of a copulative conjunction, connecting you to a noun substantive, you cannot expect, or even wish from me, an accession to your proposition. I candidly declare to you, that a noun substantive in the singular number, is the only part of speech to which I would willingly subjoin a copulative conjunction. Lest you should be disposed to charge me with assuming the prerogative of your own sex, I shall pass over many expressions in your letter, which might properly afford a field for criticism. But let me add, Sir, that as it was an impolite, so was it a very impolitic thing for you to make use of such unwarranted freedom, as to make proposals of so immensely great consequence, to a person, with whom you had so slight an acquaintance. If, previous to the exhibition of your bold letter, you had perfectly learned my disposition, you must have been sensible, that it would be far from being consonant with my feelings to admit of a concord with you, upon conditions so disagreeable as those you offered. Beside, it would have been by no means a bad plan for you, to have been a little conversant with my sister analogy; as she might have been of considerable advantage to you in an attempt of this nature: She might, at least, have supplied you with a rule, by which two noun substantives might have agreed with each other, without transforming either into a noun adjective.
SALLY SYNTAX.
OBSERVATION.
Sensible objects, which were any way connected with an absent or departed friend, impress their idea more forcibly on our minds, than bare reflections can; and then, like the pressure of the moon on the sea, they create a fulness of sorrow or tenderness, which can only be relieved by flowing from our eyes.
NEW-YORK.