of Niblo's old stingo as I please; I can reel home, tumble myself into bed, boots and all; no wife to upbraid me for my absence, scold me for a sot, or turn me from my pillow at eight in the morning; my ears are not stunned with her shrill notes, nor my eyes offended by her sour looks. Old Phillis cooks my steaks, makes my bed, smokes her pipe in peace, and is always glad to see me, drunk or sober -that's your sort! A bachelor leads a merry life; Few folks that are wedded live better. Hey, Major, what do you say? Am I right, old "No, sir," said I, with gravity; "I am not with comes infuriated by rum, and basks in the sunbeams in dignified intoxication. No soul feels an interest in you-no soul dares molest him-so far you are equal; but the savage marries, he roves through the woods with his wife by his side; he hunts the fleet deer because his wife partakes of the spoil, and praises his dexterity; he teaches his boys to become warriors, familiarizes them to the bow and arrow, and the pointed javelin; the savage has social relations even in his moments of brutal intoxication; he is, therefore, your superior. If you have no wife to control or direct your movements, you have no friend who feels an interest for your health and happiness, who sighs for your grief, who rejoices in your prosperity, who watches your pillow in the hour of sickness, who administers with her fair and soft hand the medicine for your health, and binds your brows, and soothes your agitations with the sweet kiss of affection. If you are thus free, you have no children whose growing virtues do honor to their sire-whose cheerful prattle blunts the dull edge of care. If marriage brings with it some privations, it amply compensates by the additional comfort, confidence, mutual respect, and influence, which it carries in its train. Why, then, rail at matrimony? Instead of reeling home at night, and encountering the black visage of your wench, as she opens the door for you, and you sneak through your dark hall to your comfortless and solitary bed, walk upright and soberly home, there meet the cheerful smile and cordial welcome of your wife, as she leads you to the ample fire, and there enjoy (which you never will if you retain your present sentiments), the social converse, and innocent hilarity of a lawful and lovely companion." The faces of the old bachelors began to "cream and mantle," as I took my hat to leave them; and as I closed the door, Von Snarl exclaimed, "Harkee! Sir, let us never see your ugly face amongst us again." DYDIMUS DUMPS. BY RICHARD PENN SMITH. 1836. SOME are enamored of the graceful movements of a horse, others of a painted, dancing gipsy; some pass their lives in examining the petal of a flower, or the brilliancy of a bug-some disregard the earth and read the heavens, while others find nothing half so beautiful in all creation as a well-cooked terrapin or partridge pie. Dydimus Dumps belonged to neither of these varieties-he eschewed the beautiful; his taste was for the horrible. might have deceived the dry bones of the valley with the belief that the diapason of universal nature had been rudely set in motion, and that it was time to come forth and attune their pipes to concert pitch. The mother of our hero was a laver out of the dead, and from her calling, she imagined herself a sort of connecting link between this world and the next-a hyphen between time and eternity. DydiThe parentage, education, and pursuits of Dydi- mus, in early childhood, attended her on these mus tended to develop this prominent feature in his solemn missions, and he claimed it as a prescriptive character. His father was a little consumptive right to officiate as chief mourner in all fashionable tailor, who was obliged to ply his needle incessantly funeral processions. It was flattering to his juvefor cabbage, and as tailors are proverbially melan- nile ambition, and that his grief might be rendered cholic, his hard fate, acting on his temperament, ac- the more impressive, his considerate mother invacording to the settled laws of Gall and Spurzheim, riably harnessed him in the longest weeds and weeprendered him as solemn and mysterious as a tomb-ers, and the best black silk gloves that the bereaved stone without an epitaph. Subsequently, he turned to exhorting in the conventicle, which increased the longitude and acerbity of his meagre visage, and also the sonorous bass of his deep-toned nasal organ. Spirit of Slawkenbergius! with such a second, you relatives had furnished to make a public demonstration of their secret sorrow. Such was the serious cast of his mind in his early years, that he despised the restraint of the ordinary system of education, and actually made considerable progress in the alphahet, by conning over the epitaphs on the tombstones, and ultimately acquired as much knowledge of the dead languages as most collegians with the appendix of A. M., LL. D., and A. S. S. to their otherwise insignificant names. Trenck, peeping through the bars of his cage, like Sterne's starling, that they have lost their pungency. The fountain of tears is exhausted, and I am most miserably cheerful. I feel no more pleasure in contemplating the jealous Moor in the act of stabbing his sleeping Desdemona, or Queen Dido preparing to hang herself in her garters, than I do in beholding those immortal worthies, Washington and Franklin, placidly seeming to read unutterable things illegibly scrawled upon a piece of dirty parchment, or the portly William Penn, in the attitude of leading out a fair Quakeress to a country-dance. Nay, you will scarcely credit it, but it is a melancholy fact-I have become so accustomed to the horrible discord of that eternal organ-grinder, who silenced and put the starved treble of fishwenches out of countenance, that it no longer creates any titillation on my tympanum, but sounds as melodiously as the music of the spheres. I am in absolute despair! What shall I do?" Many years ago, I knew Dydimus intimately. He was at that time a middle-aged and independent man, having come into possession of the wholesome accretions of his prudent and watchful mother. He was fond of relating narratives of barbarity, whether fact or fiction, it was immaterial, for he believed all he saw in print, and as I was a patient listenerthe most gratifying compliment that can be paid to all old women of either sex-it afforded him infinite pleasure to bestow all his tediousness upon me. His library was limited-"better have a few volumes," said he, "and digest them well, than, as some pretenders to literature, make a large collection without reading beyond the labels." His library consisted of "The Life and Death of Cock-Robin," with colored sculptures-his mother's first presentwhich time had already rendered exceedingly valuable, for there was no other copy of the same edition extant; Fox's Book of Martyrs, horribly illustrated; the Buccaneers of America, and a History of the Spanish Inquisition. His walls were adorned with pictures in keeping-one of which he highly prized for its antiquity and truth of design. It was the Sacrifice of Isaac, taken from a Dutch bible, published in an age when they weatherboarded books, and put iron clasps upon them, anticipating Locke on the Human Under-dition by his tears of sympathy. standing-which illustration of that most solemn and impressive narrative represented the agonized, yet obedient parent, with a huge blunderbuss presented at the breast of his innocent and unresisting offspring, while an angel, proportioned and apparelled like a well-fed Amsterdam belle, seated aloft on a cloud resembling a featherbed, dropped tears as big as hailstones in the pan of the firelock, while Abraham was in the act of pulling the trigger. "You are a bachelor and rich. Get married." "That would be horrible, indeed; but then it lasts for life. I wish variety; a monotony of horror would pall upon the palate." His regimen was somewhat remarkable. His organ of alimentiveness was largely developed, and his temperament was what phrenologists would pronounce the bilious melancholic, combined with the nervous, and a sprinkle of the lymphatic. This is all Hebrew-Greek to me, but doubtless is correct, for he was an extraordinary man, and richly entitled to all the temperaments referred to by Gall and Spurzheim. He supped every night on clam-fritters, hard-boiled eggs, pickled sturgeon, and raw cabbage, all of which he washed down with an unconstitutional quantity of muddy beer, that he might more fully enjoy the fantastic and horrible caprioles of the nightmare. The profound gravity with which he would attack his nightly repast, would have inspired Apicius with veneration for his gastronomic abilities. One morning, he called upon me, and appearing more dejected than usual, I inquired the cause. He replied: "I have exhausted all the places of rational amusement in the city, wax-work, puppet-shows, and all. I finally purchased a season-ticket of admission to that meritorious institution called the Washington Museum, esteemed as the only exhibition that could awaken the sensibilities of a delicately attuned and cultivated mind. But I have gazed so long upon the headless trunk of poor Marie Antoinette, the dying Hamilton, Moreau, and many others-including the emaciated Baron Yet Dydimus was a kind-hearted man. His benefactions were liberally bestowed. His pensioners were comprised of the lame, blind, and destitute, whom he visited systematically to drop his unseen charity, and though he could not minister to their minds by cheerful converse, he never failed to awaken them to a keen sense of their forlorn con "What's to be done!" continued Dydimus. "This dearth of excitement will drive me to do something terrible!" "Do you never go to the theatre ?" "When Cooke was here I went, but seldom since." 66 "Go now, and you will find the exhibitions most truly awful." "Say you so? You cheer me," he exclaimed, leisurely rubbing his hands and smiling like a caput mortuum. "Pray inform me what sort of shows do they exhibit to gratify a cultivated taste?" "I see it announced that Mr. Stoker will hang himself for the first time, at the circus, this evening, for the edification of an enlightened public." "Hang himself! That indeed approximates my ideas of the interesting. But is there no humbug about it? I despise humbug." "I am assured that it falls little short of a bona fide hanging, and that the exhibition is really delightful to those who take pleasure in witnessing executions of the sort." "I never saw a man hanged in all my life, and as it is probable I never shall, I would not neglect this opportunity of having my ideas enlarged as to the manner of performing this interesting branch of jurisprudence. Will you accompany me?" "With pleasure, as they only hang in jest." "The real thing must be exciting!" "Doubtless, and more especially to the principal performer." We accordingly repaired to the circus at an early hour, and took our seats as soon as the doors were open. Dydimus was impatient until the horsemanship commenced, but as the equestrians performed their feats with so much self-possession, he soon became wearied with the monotony of the exhibition, and emphatically pronounced it to be a popular humbug. At length an artist appeared in the arena, mounted without saddle or bridle, who rode like a lunatic flying from his keepers, who had outvoted him on the score of sanity-throwing himself into all perilous attitudes upon his untamed Bucephalus. "Ha! ha!" exclaimed Dydimus, "this is reality! What was Geoffrey Gambado or the Macedonian compared to him? The progress of the human faculties toward perfection is wonderful. A few riding-masters of that description would soon send harness-makers to the region where the son of Philip no longer obstructs the sunshine of Diogenes. He may have conquered a world, but he would not make salt to his porridge if he were a circus-rider in the present age of improvement. A fig for the ancients and their Olympic games." Mr. Dumps expected every moment to behold the daring rider's brains dashed out, but to his great astonishment, not to say disappointment, the agile equestrian invariably regained his equilibrium when apparently in the most perilous position. The anxiety and all-absorbing interest awakened in the mind of Dydimus, became apparent by the contortions of his countenance, and the gyrations of his nervous system. A lad seated beside him, who was "native and to the manner born," and who for some time had watched his movements with mischievous satisfaction, addressed him in a tone loud enough to attract the attention of those around us: "Stranger, there's no use in fretting your innards to fiddle-strings; I know that 'ere covey, and he would see the whole house, managers and all, in a place unfit to mention, before he would break his neck for the amusement of a levy spectator. Remember we are in the pit, and he can't afford such a show as that for a shilling every day. He will break it on his benefit-night; you can go then and get the worth of your money, and encourage merit." This remark excited the risible faculties of those who overheard it, and Dydimus, disconcerted and looking unutterable things, stammered out: "Pshaw! Fudge! Do you take me for a greenhorn? I know it all to be catch-penny-consummate humbug-imposture!" "You wouldn't have him break his neck for a shilling? Posterity, I grant, has never yet done any thing for us; but then, only think, how could posterity possibly get along without that man? Let posterity know that we foster genius and patronize the fine arts." To escape the impertinence of the boy, Dydimus, turning to me, remarked: "That equestrian would have been distinguished among the Persians. To be a great horseman with them was second only to shooting with the bow and speaking the truth."' "The horse jockeys of the present day differ from those of Persia. Ours draw a much longer bow, and seldom speak the truth." The horsemanship being over, Mr. Stoker made his appearance, and as he ascended to the rope, suspended from the roof of the theatre, Mr. Dumps' pulse could not have throbbed more rapidly if he had been placed in similar jeopardy. He was all eye. The gymnic commenced operations, and when at full swing he sprang headlong from his scat-thirty feet from the floor. "Huzza!" shouted Dumps, starting to his feet. "Huzza! there he goes! Not a plank between him and eternity!" There was a spontaneous burst of applause, which the showman modestly appropriated to his own credit, though Mr. Dumps was entitled to more than an equal division of the honor. Fortunately for the rope-dancer, though to the chagrin of some of the spectators, he had taken the precaution of fastening his right leg in a noose attached to the swing, and thus he was suspended, head downwards, like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth. He was greeted with a more hearty and spontaneous burst of applause than Newton received when he illustrated the laws of gravity. But what was Newton and all his discoveries, in popular estimation, when brought in juxtaposition with the science of a ropedancer! Mr. Stoker, soon discovering that it was an unpleasant position for the blood to circulate through the human form divine, that wonderful work-"Finxit in effigiem moderantûm cuncta deorum "-than he hastened to regain his former position, which he effected without even dislocating a limb, and recommenced his operations with a self-complacency, which plainly demanded of the spectators-" Ladies and gentlemen, what do you think of me?" After various feats of surprising agility, he arrived at the acme of the exhibition-the be-all and the end-all-which was to hang himself by the neck. It was with difficulty that I could prevent Mr. Dumps from making another ridiculous display of his excited feelings, as he beheld him adjusting the noose around that ticklish part of the human frame. Having fixed it to his satisfaction, he set his swing in motion, and when at the height, he slipped from his seat, and to the inexpressible delight of all true admirers of the sublime and beautiful, there he was, sus. per. col., as natural as life— no fiction, but the true thing, hanging dingle dangle. A shriek of horror burst from the uninitiated; but Dydimus, a true admirer of the beauties of nature, in the ecstasies of the moment, sprang to his feet, and clapping his bony hands, shouted in a sepulchral voice: "Beautiful! wonderful! Encore, encore! Do it again!" "If the rope had broke," suggested the boy seated beside Dydimus, "the laws of the land would compel him to do it again, if it was the real thing and no gammon-the people's majesty is not to be trifled with on such occasions-but by the laws of the playhouse, if you are dissatisfied, your only redress is to apply to the box-office for the return of your shilling. You couldn't expect a man to hang himself all night to procure the means of getting a breakfast in the morning." "You be-dashed," exclaimed Dydimus, adopting from a sense of decorum a different word from that which was uppermost in his thoughts, but the expression of his countenance plainly indicated that he by no means intended to mollify the asperity of his denunciation by the change of a consonant. The showman coincided in opinion with the mischievous persecutor of Mr. Dumps, and accordingly, after hanging long enough to satisfy any reasonable spectator, he manifested his disinclination to terminate his illustrious career in this ridiculous manner; and scrambling up the rope as gracefully as circumstances would admit, he regained a position of comparative security. The breathless suspense that had pervaded the theatre during his suspension, was succeeded by an unanimous burst of applause, which made the sounding-board in the dome vibrate with ecstasy, and the hero of the night, having made his obeisance with a solemnity becoming the important occasion, withdrew from the scene of his triumph, as full of the conceit of dignity as Sancho Panza when installed governor of Barataria. And this is fame." Sempiterno nominabitur.” On leaving the circus I inquired of Mr. Dumps how he was pleased with the entertainment. "It is the very place for me," he replied. "He escaped to-night miraculously, but I shall live to see that fellow hanged yet. I shall purchase a season ticket to-morrow morning, and attend regularly until some mischance puts a check to his proud ambition." "You certainly would not be present at such a melancholy occurrence?" "He is bound to be hanged. His death-warrant is already signed and sealed, and there is no reason why I should not enjoy the exhibition as well as another. If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, you could not give me one." He accordingly purchased a season-ticket, and became a constant attendant at the circus, in expectation of witnessing some appalling accident; but after wasting much time in this way, and nothing serious occurring, he became dissatisfied, for though hanging he admitted to be a very rational amusement for a week or so, yet by constant repetition it was deprived of its stimulating properties, until it dwindled to a mere burlesque upon the impressive sublimity of the real thing. "I despise humbug," said Dydimus, in conclusion, "and shall never again cross the door of a circus." Some months after, I walked with him along a street, when his attention was suddenly arrested by an organ-grinder and an immense placard, which exhibited, in woodcuts, humanity more brutal than the ravenous animals over which, by the first law, man had been placed as the shepherd, and in bloodred characters was emblazoned the attractive advertisement "The Horrors of the Inquisition Illustrated." "There is something to be seen here," exclaimed Mr. Dumps, "which will enlarge the mind of the uninitiated, as regards the progress of humanity and Christianity in the civilized world." "The quackery of charlatans to aggravate the diseased imagination of ignorance, at the moderate price of a shilling a dose." "You are skeptical; but observe, sir, the illustrations are said to be by the best artists, and there is a full description in print of each particular case -and by the best authors. You would not doubt what you see in print? Certainly not, if printed on hot-pressed vellum, with a spacious margin. Swallow the Talmud and the Koran, and all the elaborate lucubrations of insane philosophers, that repose on the dusty shelves of every well-selected library, and your cranium will soon become a more miscellaneous menagerie than nature originally intended to confine within so limited a compass; a sort of rotating kaleidescope, where beautiful images have but a momentary existence, crumble in giving place to others more attractive, and no power on earth can ever reproduce them." Dydimus paid little attention to my remarks, but was intently reading the various placards strewed about, like bills of fare, to stimulate a morbid appetite, when a man approached and invited him in, at the same time assuring him that he could not fail | being pleased-" As it was the most diabolical exhibition ever presented to a Christian community." "Enough!" he exclaimed, throwing himself into the attitude of Hamlet, in his first interview with his father's shadow, clad in a coat of mail-which incorporeal vestment must unquestionably have been reduced to pig-iron, if there was any truth in the statement of the ghost as to the temperature of the regions whence he had ascended, and the ghost was an honest ghost-Truepenny could not lie"Go on," said Dydimus, in a sepulchral tone-" Go on, I'll follow you." We entered an apartment which had been carefully fitted up to represent the infernal regions, and was doubtless as accurate in the main, as the descriptions by Dante, Quevedo, Bunyan, and others, who have published their travels to that interesting country-but, strange is the inconsistency of man, who freely pays to understand the fabricated accounts of impudent impostors, when he has a reliable promise, reiterated once a week, that he has already commenced his journey there, and will shortly witness the real thing without fee or reward. Our guide, perceiving the astonishment of Dydimus, turned to him, and remarked in a lachrymose and nasal tone, which would have elicited tears from monumental alabaster, upon which no tears had ever been shed: "Ah, sir! I see you have a soul to enjoy these matters. Man, who was placed as the pastoral protector of all animated nature, "becomes the tyrant, and finally directs his inhumanity to man, and makes-" "Oh! Burn the quotation. I am in the pursuit of facts and not ethics-go on with your show, and let me understand what entertainment you can afford an inquiring mind." "Look you here, sir," continued the showman, "and observe the operation of this wheel. This gentle motion delicately disengages the thigh-bones from the sockets-and this dislocates the armsnever was there invented a more perfect piece of mechanism-this is the exact expression while the wheel was in this position. The portrait was taken from life-or rather between life and death, by Albert Durer-an exceedingly clever sketcher in his day, and wonderfully endued with a proper appreciation of the fantastic and horrible. By this motion, sir, the chest you observe is considerably elevated, but so gradually as not to give any sudden shock to physical endurance, until by this additional turn of the wheel, we dislocate the spine. Every thing complete, you perceive, sir. Take a turn at the crank, and you will see how systematically it operates." "Beautiful!" exclaimed Mr. Dumps. "Equal to a modern corn-sheller. Man's talent for mechanics is wonderful! Even in his instruments of torture he manifests refinement. That machine must have cost the ingenious inventor much deep reflection before he could have rendered it so perfect. It moves like clock-work.” "Beats it all to nothing," said the showman; "for no one who has tried that machine ever stood in need of clock-work afterward. Here, sir, is the ingenious process of filling the bowels of an obstinate witness with water for the purpose of washing out the truth. If the proverb be correct, that truth lies at the bottom of a well, the surest way to get at it is to fill a man's bowels with water and then pump it out of him.” "In vino veritas, is a proverb of equal authority," said Dydimus; "they should have filled him with wine. But truth hath many hiding-places, and is hard to be discovered." "Look this way, sir. Here are two children whose feet were roasted to a coal in the presence of their parents, and the instrument of torture in which they were confined. This is the exact expression of the countenance after ten minutes roasting; and this, after the lapse of half an hour. If 't were done when 'tis done, then 't were well Thus he went on, describing the various modes of torture in the exhibition, and perceiving the interest felt by Mr. Dumps in his exaggerated narrative of blended fact and fiction, concluded by informing him that, in the course of a few days, he would have it in his power to afford him inexpressible pleasure, for he hourly expected "The Virgin Mary and her hundred lances," so celebrated in the history of the infernal inquisition. "Here is the punishment of the iron boot, celebrated for being the most dreadful ever invented; by which the bones in the legs are crushed, and the marrow forced from them." Mr. Dumps continued his visits here for several weeks, to study out the complicated machinery of the hundred lances with which the victim was transpierced, while expecting to receive a benediction and maternal embrace. He admired the refinement and humanity of dispatching a wretch from this world, when his mind was wholly occupied with serious thoughts of another. Finally, even this scene of complicated horrors, became "flat, stale, and unprofitable," and his mind could find no food to fatten on but itself. He was now indeed a melancholy man. I had missed him for some time, and on inquiry learned that he was dead. As his departure from this mundane sphere was rather unceremonious, for a gentleman remarkable for his rigid observance of decorum, a coroner's inquest was held to ascertain the cause of his hasty exit, but more especially to put money in that worthy officer's pocket. It appeared that on the evening previous to his death, his mind being much depressed, he indulged to excess in his favorite repast of clams and sturgeon, in order to keep up his spirits, from which some conjectured he had died of a surfeit, but as they found in his chamber a wheelbarrow load of the writings of modern French novelists, a volume of which was open before him, one of the jurymen exculpated the transaction, for, as he remarked, "Those books are clams and sturgeon from all participation in the a vast deal harder of digestion, and in truth, if taken in large doses, would be enough to kill the -dickens. There was a difference of opinion in the minds of those jurors, who flattered themselves they had minds, as to the cause of the death of Dydimus, and as they found it impossible to agree, they buried him without a verdict, and the county paid the coroner his costs. TO JOHN BULL. I WONDER John, if you forget, some sixty years | You didn't like their manners, John, you couldn't stand their tea, thought it got into their heads, and made them quite too free; You didn't count us much, John, and thought to But make us run, you got very tipsy, John, (you drink a little still,) But found out your mistake, John, one day at Lexington. The day you marched across the Neck, and ran down Bunker Hill. |