The body of my friend was slight, and easily injured; like the outside of people’s pocket-watch when she walk against the sun (that is, an injured watch that goes wrong.) But my dear friend for whom I shed these tears had a head with many eyes.
Howqua knew what to do with his unnecessary gold. He built a temple to Buddha, and thus made the god a present of 2,000,000 dollars, to the excessive delight of his Essence and Image.
Also, Howqua gave 800,000 dollars to assist the ransom of his beloved Canton from the fangs of the late war; to the excessive delight of the Fighting-minded Barbarians.
Weep, then, for Howqua, even as I weep. He was the friend of my youth. Together we grew old, walking toward our fathers’ tombs. We might have died together; but it is well that one old friend should be left a little while to weep.’
The paper upon ‘American Interior and Exterior Architecture’ we are quite certain would not have the tendency which the writer contemplates. It would discourage rather than foster that better taste which is gaining ground among us. In this city, how great have been the improvements in the exterior and interior decorations of our dwellings, within the last eight years! We remember the time as it were but yesterday, when the beautiful muslin window-shades, first introduced among us by Mr. George Platt, were considered a luxury of interior decoration—as indeed many of them were. But from these small yet promising beginnings, our accomplished artist has gone on, until his extensive establishment is filled with specimens of rich and elaborate architectural decorations, for the various styles of which the reigns of French and English sovereigns have been put under the most liberal contribution. Our wealthy and tasteful citizens have vied with each other in the enriching and beautifying of their mansions; while, also emulous, a kindred class in our sister-cities have laid requisitions upon Mr. Platt’s architectural and decorative genius, (for in him it is genius, and of no intermediate order,) which have convinced him at least, that the ‘laggard taste’ which our correspondent arraigns, is ‘not so slow’ as he seems to imagine. ••• Who was ‘Dandy Jim from Caroline,’ of whom every boy in the street is either whistling or singing, and whom we ‘have heard spoken of’ by musical instruments and that of all sorts, at every party or ball which we have found leisure to attend during the gay season? We are the more anxious to glean some particulars touching the origin and history of this personage, because his fame is rife among our legislators, and the ‘lobby-interest’ at Albany; if we may judge from a quatrain before us, which hints at a verbal peculiarity of our excellent representative, Alderman Varian, whose v always takes the form of a w, especially in his rendering of a foreign tongue; as witness his being ‘just on the qwi-wi-we for the capitol,’ on one occasion, and the subjoined versification of another of his Latin sentences, with cockney ‘wariations:’
‘Then here’s a health to Wari-an,
That ‘Weni, widi, wici’ man!
He talk de grammar werry fine,
Like Dandy Jim o’ Caroline:
For my ole massa tol’ me so,’ etc.