"J'y penserai. Time to go. Vamos." And Benson carried off his friend.
"You were a little taken aback, weren't you?" he asked, as they went in quest of the wagon. "When you saw these men figuring in the German cotillion, and helping to lead the fashion at Oldport, you hardly expected to encounter them in such a place. Well, now, let me tell you something that will astonish you yet more. So far from its being against these brothers in society that they are, what you would call in plain English a superior order of grocers, it is positively in their favor; that is to say, they are more respected, better received, and stand a better chance of marrying well, than if they did nothing. They might do nothing if they chose. They had enough to live very well on en garçon. The Bleeckers are of our best known and most thoroughly respectable families. The sons had no taste for books; they have a very good taste for wine and cigars, and have undertaken what they are best fit for. It's better than being nominal lawyers?"
"Pecuniarily, no doubt; but is it as good for the whole development of the man? Was it you, or your friend Harrison, who instanced Richard Bleecker as a man who had made no progress in any thing manly for fifteen years?"
"That is the fault of his natural disposition, which would not be bettered by his making believe to be a professional man, or being an avowedly idle one. He is frivolous and ornamental for a part of his time—during the rest, he has his business to occupy him. If he had not that, he would spend all his time in elegant idleness, and know no more than he does now. His pursuits bring him in money, which will be a comfort to his wife and family when he marries—though, to be sure, he is rather ancient for that; a single man at thirty-five is with us a confirmed old bachelor. But his brother is in a fair way to form a nice establishment."
"Now tell me another thing. Suppose the Bleeckers had chosen to become jewellers, or merchant tailors—they might be good judges of either business, and make money by it—how would that affect their position?"
"Unfavorably, I confess," replied Benson. "But we Gothamites have so thorough a respect for, and appreciation of, good wine and cigars, that the importation of them is considered particularly laudable."
Any further discussion was stopped by their arrival at that dreary triangular square (more hibernico loqui) called the Park, where Benson's wagon awaited him—not the red-wheeled one; this vehicle was of a uniform dark green, furnished with a top (a desirable appendage when the thermometer stands 85° in the shade,) and lined throughout with drab. The ponies were carefully enveloped to the very tips of their ears in white fly-nets. As the groom saw Benson approaching, he put himself and the top through a series of queer evolutions, which ended in the latter being lowered—a very necessary operation, to allow any one to get in with comfort; and after Benson and Ashburner were in, he put it up again with some ado, and then went his way, the concern only holding two. Then Benson turned the wagon round by backing and locking, and making it undergo a series of contortions as if he wanted to double it up into itself, and run over himself with his own wheels, and drove to the Fulton Ferry; for to arrive at the Centreville Course on Long Island—familiarly designated as the island—you first pass through Brooklyn, that trans-Hudsonian suburb of New York, which thirty years ago was a miserable little village, and now contains upwards of ninety thousand inhabitants.
"And how did the ball go off?" asked Ashburner, as they rolled up the main avenue of Brooklyn, at the slowest possible trot, according to the well known rule, always to take a fast horse easy over pavement. On board the ferry-boat there had not been much conversation, the horses being so worried by the flies as to require all Benson's attention.
"Oh, it was rather a fiasco, but we had some fun. Some predicted that the fashionables would come back, but they didn't, except a few of the young men; and all of our set that were there threatened to go out of costume; but then we recollected that would have been a very Irish way of serving out Mr. Grabster, as by the established regulation in such cases, we should have had to pay double for tickets; so most of us took sailors' or firemen's dresses—the cheapest and commonest disguises we could get; and the ladies made some trivial addition to their ordinary ball-dresses—a wreath or a few extra flowers—and called themselves brides, or Floras, and so on. And some of the crack Bostonians blasphemed the expense, and went in plain clothes. So we had the consolation of making fun of all the outsiders, and their attempts at costume—such supernumeraries as most of them were! And none of the comme-il-faut people would serve on the committee, so Grabster had nobody to get up the room in proper style, and it looked like a 'Ripton' ball-room; and The Sewer reporters were there, in all their glory. The Irishman had borrowed or stolen a uniform somewhere, and the Frenchman was appropriately arrayed in red as a devil, and he went about taking notes of all the people's dresses, especially the ladies'; and as our ladies were not in costume, he thought he must have something to do with them, and so presented some of them with bouquets, which they wouldn't take, of course; and the young men trod on his toes and elbowed him off till he swore he would put them all in his paper. And we danced away, notwithstanding The Sewer and all its works. Tom Edwards was accoutred as Mose the fireman, and Sumner had an old French débardeur dress of his, just the thing for the occasion, only his shoes were too big; and after tripping up himself and his partner four times, he kicked them off clean into the orchestra, and fearfully aggravated the fiddlers; and he took it as coolly as he does every thing—put on a pair of ordinary boots, and was polking away again in five minutes. And we kept it up till two in the morning, polka chiefly, with a sprinkling of deuxtemps, and then had a very bad supper, and some very bad wine, of Mr. Grabster's providing—genuine New Jersey champagne. How we looked after the dancing! Sumner's débardeur shirt might have been wrung out, it was so wet; and Mrs. Harrison—she had got herself up as Undine—was dripping enough for half-a-dozen water-nymphs; and Miss Friskin had a shiny green silk dress; we had been polking together, and my white waistcoat, and pants, and cravat, were all stained green, as if I had been playing with a gigantic butterfly. And then after supper, when there was no one but our German cotillion set left, and just as we had put the chairs in order, the musicians struck work, and would not play any more (you know what an impracticable, conceited, obstinate brute a third-rate German musician is), saying they were only bound to play just so long; so I gave them a good slanging in their own tongue (I know German enough to blow up a man, and a fine strong language it is for the purpose); and White swore it was too bad, and Edwards tried to make them a conciliatory speech—only he was too tipsy to talk straight; and Sumner offered them fifty dollars to go on playing. Thereupon, up and spake the big bass-viol,—'We ton't want your money; we want to be dreated like chentlemens;' and then Frank lost his temper. 'I'll treat you,' says he; and with that he delivered right and left into the bass-viol, and knocked him through his own instrument; and then some one knocked Sumner over the head with a trombone;—then we all set to, and gave the musicians their change (we owed them a little before, for it wasn't the first time they had been saucy to us,) and we thrashed them essentially, and comminuted a few of their instruments. And half-a-dozen of the Irish waiters came out, with their sleeves rolled up, to fight for the honor of the house, and protect Mr. Grabster's property—meaning the musicians, I suppose;—and Haralson of Alabama, one of your regular six-feet-two-in-his-stockings South Western men, who had come North to learn the polka, and become civilized—Haralson pulled out a Bowie and swore he would whistle them up if they didn't make themselves scarce. By Jove! you should have seen the Paddies scud! And I caught The Sewer reporter (the Irish one) in the mêlée, and let him have a kick that landed him in the middle of the floor, telling him he might put that into his next letter, and afterwards go to a place worse even than The Sewer office. Then, after all the enemy were fairly routed, we adjourned to my parlor. I had some good champagne of my own, and a pâté or two, and some Firmezas, and we held a jolly revel till four o'clock, and then the ladies retired, and we quiet married men did the same, and the boys went to fight the tiger, and Edwards lost 1400 dollars, and some of them took to running foot-races for a bet on the post-road. Haralson outran all the rest—and his senses too—and was found next evening about five miles up the road with no coat or hat, and one stocking off and the other stocking on, like my son John in the nursery rhyme, and his watch and purse gone. And The Sewer and Inexpressible said that it was the most brilliant ball that had occurred within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. And that's a pretty fair synopsis of the whole proceedings."
By this time they were off the pavement,—a change very sensible and desirable to man and horse, for an American pavement is something beyond imagination or description, and must be experienced to be understood. The ponies, without waiting for the word, went off on their long steady stroke at three-quarters speed, and though the day was warm and the road heavy, stepped over the first three miles in twelve minutes, as Benson took care to show Ashburner by his watch. They challenged wagon after wagon, but no one seemed inclined to race at this stage of the proceedings, and they glided quietly by every thing. Only once was heard the sound of competing feet, when a black pacer swept up, with two tall wheels behind him, and a man mysteriously balanced between them. "After the sulky is manners," said Harry, slackening his speed, and giving the pacer a wide berth; and the man on the wheels whizzed by like a mammoth insect, and was soon lost to view amid a cloud of dust.