Falconbridge

“ Who that has ever lain awake, for hours at a stretch, listening to a blasted cur, not worth to any body the powder that would blow him up—but has felt a desire to advocate the dog-law, so judiciously practised in all well-regulated cities? Who that ever had a sneaking villanous cur slip up behind and nip out a patch of your trowsers, boot top and calf—the size of an oyster, but has felt for the pistol, knife or club, and sworn eternal enmity to the whole canine race? ”

“ The fact is very vivid in the early history of Andrew Jackson—a name that, like that of the great, godlike Washington, must survive the wreck of matter, the crush of worlds, and, passing down the vista of each successive age, brighter and more glorious, unto those generations yet to come, when time shall have obliterated the asperities of partisan feeling, and learned to deal most gently with the human frailties of the illustrious dead. ”

“ Boston lost a good citizen by those bell-pulling, gate-whacking, back-door-pounding infernal collectors of time and care-worn boots. The old boot gatherers were almost as diverting as novel to me, when I first located in Boston; but I have long since learned to hate and abhor them, and their co-laborers in the tin-pan, tape, tea-pot, willow work, and white pine ware trade, with a most religious enthusiasm. ”

“ Never aspiring to matrimony among the ladies, he remains an "old bach;" never hoping for office under government, he never gets any; and when, at last, both youth and energies are wasted, Diddler dons a white neckcloth, combs his few straggling hairs behind his ears, and, dressed in a well-brushed but shocking seedy suit of sable, he jines church and turns "old fogie," carries around the plate, does chores for the parson, becomes generally useful to the whole congregation, and finally shuffles off his mortal coil, and ends his eventful and useless life in the most becoming manner. ”

“ And so he had, many thousands of dollars in good gold and silver; he hobbled up stairs, got nine half dollars, and tried to get off fifty cents less than the countryman's bill; but the countryman was stubborn as a mule, and would not abate a farthing—so the old miser had to hobble up stairs and fetch down his fifty cents more, and the whole operation was like squeezing bear's grease from a pig's tail, or jerking out eye-teeth. ”

“ When grim death strikes a blow, whenever so near and dear a friend is levelled, cold, breathless, dead—we see, we know there is the end! Grief has its season, the bitterest of woe then calms, subsides, or ceases; but lost—which hope prevents mourning as dead, and whose death-like absence almost precludes the idea that they live, engenders in the soul of true affection, a gloomy, torturing and desponding sorrow, more agonizing than the sting actual death leaves behind. I have endeavored to depict what must have been, what were the feelings of Peter Houp's wife. ”

“ The philosophy of the present age is peculiarly the philosophy of outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats beneath a cambric front? or who imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid? What Prometheus was to the physical, the tailor is to the moral man—the one made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of broadcloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears. ”

“ It was hard for a parent to invoke blessings on a portion, but not all, of his own flesh and blood; it was hard to return thanks for those dear ones present, and wonder whether the absent and equally dear had aught to be thankful for, whether instead of health and comfort, they might not be sorrowing in disease, poverty, and despair! Such things as these, when they obtrude upon the mind, the soul, are not likely to make merry meetings. And such was the position and nature of the re-union upon the late Thanksgiving days, at the Newschool mansion. ”

“ Everlasting creation! let me go-o-o—stop, hold on-n-n!" as the Doctor bored, screwed, and plugged away at the tooth.
"All done, sir; let the patient up, Michael," says the Doctor, with a confident twirl of his perfumed handkerchief. "There, sir—there was science, art, elegance, and dispatch! Now, sir, your tooth is safe—your life is safe—you're a sound man!"
"Sound?" echoes poor Bill, "sound? Why, you've broken my jaw into flinders; you've set all my teeth on edge; and I've no more feelin'—gall darn ye!—in my jaws, than if they were iron steel-traps! ”

“ Culture takes the grocer out of his molasses and makes him genial. We pay a heavy price for those fancy goods, Fine Arts and Philosophy. No performance is worth loss of geniality. That unhappy man called of genius, is an unfortunate man. Nature always carries her point despite the means!"
If that don't convince you of Ralph's high-heeled, knock-kneed logic, or au fait dexterity in concocting flap-doodle mixtures, you're ahead of ordinary intellect as far as this famed lecturer is in advance of gin and bitters, or opium discourses on—delirium tremens! ”

“ Somebody's repugnance to leather—and for sundry quibbles—yea, strong arguments against any blood of hers ever uniting with the fates and fortunes of a boot-maker; with what propriety, her experience has long since taught her. Alice is the happiest of women, mother of many fine children, the wife of a man poverty could not corrupt, if public opinion forced him to mask the means that gave him bread. Rhapsody is no longer a politician, or office-holder, but engaged in lucrative pursuits that yield comfort and position in society. ”

“ A wolf howl, and of all fearful howls, or yelps uttered by beasts of prey, none can, I think, be more alarming and terrific to the ear than the wolf howl as he scents carnage. A wolf howl broke fearfully upon the drover's ear as he lay crouched beneath the sycamore. It was a familiar sound, and therefore, and then the more dreadful. The drover carried a good Yeager rifle, knife, and pistols, but a man laden with arms in the midst of a troop of famished wolves, was as helpless as the tempest-tossed mariner in the midst of the ocean's storm. ”

“ Some twenty-five years had passed, and still the old captain and the mare were about, every-day cronies, for the old man no more thought of walking fifty rods, premeditatedly, than a South Carolina dandy would dream of the possibility of getting a glass of water without the immediate assistance of a son of Ethiopia! The old man had become possessed of wealth as well as years—was likewise the progenitor of a large and flourishing family, of the finest looking men and women in the State, and having gotten all things in this pleasant kind of train, he "laid off" in perfect lavender. ”

“ Beethoven came to America and settled in Philadelphia, where, in the humble capacity of an e-razer of beards and pruner of human mops, he eked out a reasonable existence for the residue of his earthly existence; few, perhaps, dreaming in their profoundest philosophy, that the little, eccentric-attired, grotesque-looking barber, who tweaked their plebeian noses and combed their caputs, once rejoiced in grand heraldic escutcheons upon his carriage panels as a veritable Count, and still later made the throne tremble beneath the feet of a second Alexander! ”

“ Nature seems to have her fitful, frightful, and funny moods, as well as all her children. Now she gets up a stone bridge, the gigantic proportions and the symmetrical development of which attract great attention from all tourists and historians who venture into or speak of "old Virginia." The old dame goes down far into the bowels of Mother Earth, in Kentucky, and builds herself, silently and alone, a stupendous under-ground palace, that laughs to scorn the puny efforts of man in that branch of business. ”

“ It is well, that, though we are all fond of money, not over one in a thousand, prove miserable misers, and go on to amass dollar upon dollar, until the shining heaps of garnered gold and silver become a god, and a faith, that the rich wretch worships with the tenacious devotion of the most frenzied fanatic. ”

“ Fame, I am credibly informed, is not unlike a greased pig, always hard chased, but too eternal slippery for every body to hold on to! I have never cared a tinker's curse for glory myself; the satisfaction of getting quietly along, while in pursuit of bread, comfort and knowledge, has sufficed to engross my individual attention; but I've often "had my joke" by observing the various grand dashes made by cords of folks, from snob to nob, patrician to plebeian, in their gyrations to form a circle, in which they might be the centre pin! ”

“ Ralph Waldo is death and an entire stud of pale horses on flowery expressions and japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and unequivocally wonderful. ”

“ My utter desperation induced me to work for an hour with some percussion caps, powder, and a piece of greased tow linen, to get a blaze of fire, Ingins or no Ingins. I began to wish I was a Camanche myself, or that the red devils would surround me, give me one bite and a drink, and I'd die happy. All of a sudden, I got sight of a blaze! Yes, a real fire loomed up in the distance! It was Mat and his deer, in luck, doing well, while I was cold as Caucasus, and hollow as a flute. I riz, stretched my stiff limbs, and struck a bee line for the light. ”

“ Hotels now-a-days must be showy, abounding in tin foil, Dutch metal and gamboge, a thousand of the "modern improvements"—mere clap-trap, and as foreign to the solid comforts of solid people, as icebergs to Norwegians or "east winds" to the consumptive. Without the show, they would be quite deserted; men will pay for this show, must pay for it, and all this show costs money; Turkey carpets, life-size mirrors, ottomans and marble slabs, from dome to kitchen, draw well, and those who indulge in the dance, must pay the piper. ”

“ In 1800 the most of the State of Ohio, and nearly all of Indiana, was a dense wilderness, where the gaunt wolf and naked savage were masters of the wild woods and fertile plains, which now, before the sturdy blows of the pioneer's axe, and the farmer's plough, has been with almost magical effect converted into rich farms and thriving, beautiful villages.
In the early settlement of the west, the pioneers suffered not only from the ruthless savage, but fearfully from the wolf. Many are the tales of terror told of these ferocious enemies of the white man, and his civilization. ”

“ Such people are great nuisances—half the discomforts of life are bred by them; they contaminate and poison the air they breathe, with their noisome breath, like the odor of the Upas tree.
Uncle Josh had annoyed many—he was the dread and disgust of seven-eighths of the town he lived in. He had caused more quarrels, smutted more characters, and created more ill-feeling between friends, neighbors and acquaintances, than all else beside in the community of Frogtown. Uncle Josh was voted a great bore by the men, and a sneaking, meddling old granny by the women. ”

“ All ages, from that of infancy to decrepitude—all conditions of life, from peer to parvenu—from plough to the anvil—pulpit to the bar—orators and beggars, soldiers and sailors, male and female of every grade—men of the most insinuating address, and women of the most seductive ages and loveliness, grace and beauty were enlisted and trained to serve—in what the pot-bellied, bald-headed little monster of war used to call his Cytherian Cohort! ”

“ The wolf stood and snarled with its golden fiery eye bent upon the drover, who never moved his steady gaze from the wolf's face.
There is not a beast in existence that will attack a man if he keeps his eyes steady upon the animal, but will cower and sneak off, and so did the wolf. But no sooner had she turned her head and with a howl started off, than a blue pill from the drover's Yeager split her skull, and brought her career to a speedy termination. ”

“ It is the cause of incalculable human misery, to seem what we are not; to appear beyond want—yea, even in affluence and comfort, when the belly is robbed to clothe the back—the inner man crucified to make the outside lie you through the world, or into—genteel "society." This, though abominable, is common, and leads to innumerable ups and downs, crime and fun, in this old world that we temporarily inhabit. ”

“ It's not your cute folks, who screw, twist and twirl over a smooth fourpence, or skin a flea for its hide and tallow, and spoil a knife that cost a shilling,—that come out first best in the long run. Some folks have a weakness for beating down shop-keepers, or anybody else they deal with, and so far have we seen this infirmity carried, that we candidly believe we've known persons that would not stop short of cheapening the passage to kingdom come, if they thought a dollar and two cents might be saved in the fare! ”

“ Jones dressed—the house was as still as a church-yard—she put on an old hood, and shawl to match, and noiselessly she crept down stairs; and by a passage out through the back area into a rear street. Mrs. Jones at the dead hour of night determined to seek some information of her husband. She had not gotten over a block, or block and a half from her mansion, when she spies two men coming along—wing and wing, merry as grigs, reeling to and fro, and singing in stentorian notes:
"A man that is (hic) married (hic) has lost every hope—
He's (hic) like a poor (hic) pig with his foot in a rope! ”

“ They were engaged nearly an hour, and the bravery displayed by Walker, Lewis, and their men, was worthy of general admiration, and all honor.
Poor Walker! a ball struck him in the left shoulder, passed over his heart, and came out in his right vest pocket!
Thus fell the gallant leader of one of the most formidable war parties, of its numbers, known to history. Walker was a humane, impulsive man; a warm friend, a brave, gallant soldier. His dying words were directed to Capt. Lewis—to keep the town, and drive back the enemy; and that the chivalrous Captain did so, was well proven. ”

“ I am too poor, too busy to think of such a folly as increasing my responsibilities to society!"
"Then, sir," said the farmer, "allow me to congratulate you upon this very fortunate event, rather than a disagreeable joke, for Capt. Figgles is worth nearly a quarter of a million of dollars, sir; and Miss Betsy is no gaudy butterfly, but, sir, she's an excellent girl, whom you may be proud of as your wife." ”

“ We have stopped in houses where we honestly concluded—we got our money's worth, and we have again had reason to believe ourselves grossly shaved, in a "first-class" hotel, at two dollars a day—all hurry-scurry, poked up in the cock-loft, mid bugs, dirt, heat and effluvia, very little better than a Dutch tavern in fly time.
We did not fail to observe at the same time, that cool impudence and clamor had a most mollifying effect upon landlord and his attaches, the tinsel and mere electrotypes passing for real bullion, galvanized hums by their noise and pretensions faring fifty per cent. ”

“ Cities are the only fields subservient to the successful practice of a respectable Diddler. New York affords them a very fair scope for operation, but of all the American cities, New Orleans is the Diddler's paradise! The mobile state of society, the fluctuations of men and business, the impossibility of knowing any thing or any body there for any considerable period, gives the Diddler ample scope for the exercise of his peculiar abilities to great effect. ”