At the close of his second year our hero, having completed only half of Cheselden's article on Osteology, relinquishes the study of medicine in despair, and turns merchant—purchasing “the odds and ends of a fashionable fancy and jobbing concern in Albany.” He is gulled however, by a confidential clerk, one John Smith, his store takes fire and burns down, and both himself and father, who indorsed for him, are ruined.
Mr. Wheelwright now retrieves his fortune by the accidental possession of a claim against government, taken by way of payment for a bad debt. But going to Washington to receive his money, he is inveigled into a lottery speculation—that is to say, he spends the whole amount of his claim in lottery-tickets—the manager fails—and our adventurer is again undone. This lottery adventure ends with the excellent joke that in regard to our hero there “were five outs to one in, viz.—out of money, and out of clothes; out at the heels, and out at the toes; out of credit and in debt!” Mr. Wheelwright now returns to New York, and is thrown into prison by Messieurs Roe and Doe. In this emergency he sends for his friend the narrator, who, of course, relieves his distresses, and opens the doors of his jail.
Chapter IX, and indeed every ensuing chapter, commences with two sentences from Shakspeare. Mr. Wheelwright now becomes agent for a steamboat company on Lake George—but fortune still frowns, and the steamboat takes fire, and is burnt up, on the eve of her first trip, thus again ruining our hero.
“What a moment!” exclaims the author, “and what a spectacle for a lover of the ‘sublime and beautiful!’ Could Burke have visited such a scene of mingled magnificence, and grandeur and terror, what a vivid illustration would he not have added to his inimitable treatise on that subject! The fire raged with amazing fury and power—stimulated to madness, as it were, by the pitch and tar and dried timbers, and other combustible materials used in the construction of the boat. The nightbird screamed in terror, and the beasts of prey fled in wild affright into the deep and visible darkness beyond. This is truly a gloomy place for a lone person to stand in of a dark night—particularly if he has a touch of superstition. There have been fierce conflicts on this spot—sieges and battles and fearful massacres. Here hath mailed Mars sat on his altar, up to his ears in blood, smiling grimly at the music of echoing cannons, the shrill trump, and all the rude din of arms, until like the waters of Egypt, the lake became red as the crimson flowers that blossom upon its margin!” At the word margin is the following explanatory note. “Lobelia Cardinalis, commonly called the Indian Eye-bright. It is a beautiful blossom, and is frequently met with in this region. The writer has seen large clusters of it blooming upon the margin of the ‘Bloody Pond’ in this neighborhood—so called from the circumstance of the slain being thrown into this pond, after the defeat of Baron Dieskau, by Sir William Johnson. The ancients would have constructed a beautiful legend from this incident, and sanctified the sanguinary flower.”
In Chapter X, Mr. Wheelwright marries an heiress—a rich widow worth thirty thousand pound sterling in prospectu—in Chapter XI, sets up a Philomathian Institute, the whole of the chapter being occupied with his advertisement—in Chapter XII, his wife affronts the scholars, by “swearing by the powers she would be afther clearing them out—the spalpeens!—that's what she would, honies!” The school is broken up in consequence, and Mrs. Wheelwright herself turns out to be nothing more than “one of the unmarried wives of the lamented Captain Scarlett,” the legal representatives being in secure possession of the thirty thousand pounds sterling in prospectu.
In Chapter XIII, Mr. Wheelwright is again in distress, and applies, of course, to the humane author of the “Ups and Downs,” who gives him, we are assured, “an overcoat, and a little basket of provisions.” In Chapter XIV, the author continues his benevolence—gives a crow, (cock-a-doodle doo!) and concludes with “there is no more charitable people than those of New York!” which means when translated into good English—“there never was a more charitable man than the wise and learned author of the ‘Ups and Downs.’”
Chapter XV, is in a somewhat better vein, and embraces some tolerable incidents in relation to the pawnbrokers' shops of New York. We give an extract—believing it to be one of the best passages in the book.
To one who would study human nature, especially in its darker features, there is no better field of observation than among these pawn-brokers' shops.
In a frequented establishment, each day unfolds an ample catalogue of sorrow, misery, and guilt, developed in forms and combinations almost innumerable; and if the history of each customer could be known, the result would be such a catalogue as would scarcely be surpassed, even by the records of a police-office or a prison. Even my brief stay while arranging for the redemption of Dr. Wheelwright's personals, afforded materials, as indicated in the last chapter, for much and painful meditation.
I had scarcely made my business known, at the first of “my uncle's” establishments to which I had been directed, when a middle-aged man entered with a bundle, on which he asked a small advance, and which, on being opened, was found to contain a shawl and two or three other articles of female apparel. The man was stout and sturdy, and, as I judged from his appearance, a mechanic; but the mark of the destroyer was on his bloated countenance, and in his heavy, stupid eyes. Intemperance had marked him for his own. The pawn-broker was yet examining the offered pledge, when a woman, whose pale face and attenuated form bespoke long and intimate acquaintance with sorrow, came hastily into the shop, and with the single exclamation, “O, Robert!” darted, rather than ran, to that part of the counter where the man was standing. Words were not wanted to explain her story. Her miserable husband, not satisfied with wasting his own earnings, and leaving her to starve with her children, had descended to the meanness of plundering even her scanty wardrobe, and the pittance for the obtaining of which this robbery would furnish means, was destined to be squandered at the tippling-house. A blush of shame arose even upon his degraded face, but it quickly passed away; the brutal appetite prevailed, and the better feeling that had apparently stirred within him for the moment, soon gave way before its diseased and insatiate cravings.