A TROT ON THE ISLAND.
BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED.
Ashburner did leave Oldport, after all, before the end of the season, being persuaded to accompany a countryman and schoolmate of his (whom he had last seen two years before in Connaught, and who now happened to pass a day at Oldport, on his way Canada-ward from the south) in a trip to the White Mountains of New-Hampshire; though his American acquaintances, especially the ladies, tried hard to dissuade him from starting before the grand fancy ball, with which the season terminated, assuring him that most of "our set" would come back, if only for that one night, and that it would be a very splendid affair, and so forth. Nature had more charms for him than art, and he went away to New Hampshire, making an appointment with Benson by letter to meet him at Ravenswood early in September. But a traveller cannot make sure of his movements a fortnight ahead. On his return from the White Mountains, Ashburner had his pocket picked at a railway station (these little incidents of highly civilized life are beginning to happen now and then in America. The inhabitants repudiate any native agency therein, and attribute them all to the swell-mob emigrants from England), and, in consequence, was obliged to retrace his steps as far as New-York to visit his banker. Almost the first person he ran against in the street was Harry Benson.
"This is an unexpected pleasure!" exclaimed the New-Yorker. "I never thought to see you here, and you, I presume didn't expect to see me." Ashburner explained his mishap. "Well, I meant to go straight over to Ravenswood after the ball, but we had to come home—all of us this time—on business. Lots of French furniture arrived for our town house. Mrs. B. couldn't rest till she had seen it all herself, and had it properly arranged. So here have I been five days, fussing, and paying, and swearing (legally, you understand, not profanely) at the custom-house, and then 'hazing'—what you call slanging upholsterers; and now that the work is all over, I mean to take a little play, and am just going over to see Lady Suffolk and Trustee trot on the island. Come along. It's a beautiful drive of eight miles, and I have a top-wagon. It is to meet me at the Park in a quarter of an hour." Ashburner assented. "I want to buy some cigars; you have no objection to accompany me a moment."
So they turned down one of the cross-streets running out of the lower part of Broadway (which, it may be here mentioned, for the benefit of English readers and writers, is not called the Broadway), and entered a store five or six stories high, with two or three different firms on each floor; and Benson led the way up something between a ladder and a staircase into a small office, with "Bleecker Brothers" dimly visible on a tin plate over the door. Three-fourths of the apartment were filled up with all manner of inviting samples, every wine, liquor, and liqueur under the sun, in every variety of bottle or vial, thick with the dust of years, or open for immediate tasting; and through the dingy panes of a half glass door a multitudinous array of bottles might be seen loading the numerous shelves of a large store-room beyond. In a small clearing at one corner, where a small desk was kept in countenance by a small table, and three or four old chairs, with a background of shelves groaning under the choicest brands of the fragrant weed, sat the presiding deities of the place—the two little Bleeckers—the dark brother of thirty-five, and the light brother of twenty, like two sketches of the same man in chalk and charcoal; both elegantly dressed—white trousers, patent leather shoes, exuberant cravats, massive chains, and all the usual paraphernalia of young New-York—altogether looking as much in place as a couple of butterflies in an ant-hill.
"Good morning, gentlemen," said Benson. "Here's our friend Ashburner," and he pushed forward the Englishman. The brothers rose, laid down the morning journals over which they had been lounging, and welcomed the stranger to their place of business. "What's the news this morning?"
"Nothing at all, I believe," replied the elder. "South Carolina has been threatening to dissolve the Union again—and that's no news. Stay, did you see this about Bishop Hughes and Sam Thunderbolt, the Native American member of Congress from Pennsylvania?"
"I haven't seen even a newspaper for the last three days."
"Well, '+ John of New-York,'—cross John, as your brother Carl used to call him—was in the same rail-car with Thunderbolt, coming from Philadelphia to New-York; and the Congressman didn't know who he was, but probably suspected he was a priest."
"Yes, you can generally tell a priest by his looks. Even an intelligent horse will do that. Once I was riding with one of our bishops near Boston, and his nag shied suddenly at a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Says the right reverend (we don't call 'em 'my lord' in this country, you know, Ashburner), 'I shouldn't wonder if that was a Romish priest;' and we looked again, and it was. There was a Protestant horse for you! What a treasure he would have been to an Orangeman!"