Heavens! “can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer cloud,
Without our special wonder.”
And this is actually put out in the bills, before a Christian country, in the nineteenth century, and the police look on, and are silent!
Ah! this comes home to “our hearts and our bussums.” What do we read? “All the distinguished writers and authors of this country and Europe are engaged.” The deuce they are? Oh Lord!—Our office then may be closed, during business hours hereafter, we suppose.
Overlooked, by George!—News! news! “The acknowledged Blackwood of America, 1850.” Now is that old vagabond coming back again, after having enjoyed our hospitalities for two seasons—’42 and ’43?
If Blackwood were to come in spirit shape, this I think would be his story, Jeremy:
“You see I was coming along, when a tall fellow, our old friend, cries, ‘How are you, Mr. Blackwood?’
“ ‘Come in here,’ says he, seizing my elbow, and in an instant I found myself deceived, swindled, jostled in among the wrong set. A parcel of puritanical looking dogs, sitting cheek by jowl, with long gowns, play actors, medical students, penny-a-liners, seedy old boys and silly school girls. I suppose they took me for a Mormon or a Shaker, or perhaps a clown, and dragged me in, to add to the novelty of the collection. But Scotch manners wouldn’t allow me to be rude, so I said, very politely, to the tall gentleman, if that is whisky-punch you have on the stove, I’ll take a tumbler of it. Heavens! you should have heard the yell that went up, and seen the horrible faces; so seeing the way the wind set, I gave one or two of them a knock over the skull with ebony—bestowed my parting benediction upon the whole company—ladies excepted—and came at once to head-quarters.”
Now, Jeremy, I don’t know what you may think of this business, but I say I have been silent long enough under various aggressions, and hereafter, I take the cudgel and trounce any son of a gun who poaches on my manor. Why do you know that people have the audacity to say that theirs is the oldest magazine, when the Casket, which we bought, and on which Graham was based, started in 1826, and had its colored fashions and wood engravings printed on tinted paper long before any of them opened their eyes. The mezzotints I was the first to put to magazine use on a large scale; and Burton’s Magazine, which was incorporated with this, gave the first that Sartain ever did for a magazine of large circulation; and yet these young fellows, with the down yet upon their chins, affect the experience of years, and learnedly talk about teaching their grandfather how to snuff. I care nothing about this, but that it has gone far enough; and they will after a while begin to believe their own stories—a bit of self-deception that it is a pity they should be subjected to.