Any man or woman walking up or down the sunny side of Broadway, on a pleasant summer day, will see various little bipeds, with thin legs, faded countenances, and jaded air, flourishing little canes, who may, perhaps, bring to mind the following lines:
"Some say there's nothing made in vain,
While others the reverse maintain,
And prove it, very handy,
By citing animals like these—
Musquitoes, bed-bugs, crickets, fleas,
And, worse than all—a dandy!"
But Nature, as the poet adds, "never made a dandy;" he was cast in a fictitious mould altogether.
There is something not over-complimentary to us, magazine-editors, in the remonstrance which "Chawls Yellowplush" makes to his employer against his discharging him from his employ, because he has ascertained that he writes in magazines, and other periodicals:
"'Sir,' says I, claspink my 'ands, and bursting into tears, 'do not, for Eving's sake, do not think of anythink of the sort, or drive me from your service, because I have been fool enough to write in magazeens! Glans but one moment at your honor's plate; every spoon is as bright as a mirror; condescend to igsamine your shoos; your honor may see reflected in them the faces of every one in the company. If occasionally I've forgot the footman in the lit'ry man, and committed to paper my remindicences of fashionable life, it was from a sinsear desire to do good and promote nollitch; and I apeal to your honor—I lay my hand on my busm, and in the face of this honorable company, beg you to say—when you rung your bell, who came to you first? When you stopt out till mornink, who sat up for you? When you was ill, who forgot the nat'ral dignities of his station, and answered the two-pair bell? Oh, sir,' says I, 'I knows what's what: don't send me away! I know them lit'ry chaps, and, bleave me, I'd rather be a footman. The work is not so hard—the pay is better—the vittels incompyrably shuperiour. I've but to clean my things, run my errints, you put clothes on my back, and meat in my mouth.'"
This was written by one who was himself, in his own person, an admirable illustration of what success and honor a true literary man is capable of achieving; but Yellowplush's "lit'ry men" were of a different calibre.
The learned "science-women" of the day, the "deep, deep-blue stockings" of the time, are fairly hit off in the ensuing satirical sonnet: