I am to be the umpire, then I say,
As did the Baratarian king, of sleep-
My blessing on the man who first the art
Divine invented! Ay, let the pure flour
Be like the driven snow, bright to the eye,
And unadulterate. So jovial sons
Of Bacchus, with electric joy, behold
"The dancing ruby;" then, impatient toss

The clear unsullied draught. But is there aught
In the inebriate cup, to be compar'd

To the attractive object of my love,

The Buckwheat Cake? Let those who list, still quaff

The madd'ning juice, and, in their height
bliss,

Believe that such she of the laughing eye
And lip of rose, celestial Hebe, deals
Among the Gods; but O, ye powers divine!
If e'er ye listen to a mortal's prayer,
Still give me my ambrosia. This confers
No "pains arthritic," racking every joint,
But leaves the body healthful, and the mind
Serene and imperturb'd.-A nicer art
Than all, remains yet to be taught; but dare
I venture on the theme? Ye Momus tribes,
Who laugh even wisdom into scorn-and ye,
Authoritative dames, who wave on high

of

Pour in the tepid stream, warm but not hot,
And pure as water from Castalian spring.
Yet interdicts she not the balmy tide
Which flows from the full udder, if preferr'd;
This, in the baking, o'er the luscious cake,
Diffuses a warm golden hue-but that
Frugality commends and taste approves;
Though if the quantity of milk infus'd
Be not redundant, none can take offence.
Let salt the liquid mass impregnate next,
And then into the deep, capacious urn,
Adroitly sift the inestimable dust,
Stirring meanwhile, with paddle firmly held,
The thickening fluid. Sage discretion here
Can best determine the consistence fit,

Nor thin, nor yet too thick. Last, add the barm-
The living spirit which throughout the whole
Shall quickly circulate, and airy, light,
Bear upward by degrees the body dull.

Be prudent now, nor let the appetite Too keen, urge forward the last act of all. Time, it is true, may move with languid wing, And the impatient soul demand the cake Delicious; yet would I advise to bear A transient ill, and wait the award of Fate. The sluggish mass must be indulg'd, till, wak'd By the ethereal spirit, it shall mount From its dark cell, and court the upper air; For, bak'd too soon, the cake, compact and hard,

To the dissolving butter entrance free

Denies, while disappointment and disgust

Prey on the heart. Much less do thou neglect

The auspicious moment! Thee, nor business

Catastrophe so dire, the griddle smooth,

Like steely buckler of the heroic age,
Elliptical, or round-and for not less
Illustrious use designed-made ready quick.
Rubb'd o'er the surface hot, a little sand
Will not be useless; this each particle
Adhesive of the previous batch removes,
And renders easy the important work,
To gracefully reverse the half-bak'd cake.
With like intent the porker's salted rind,
Mov'd to and fro, must lubricate the whole:
And this perform'd, let the white batter stream
Upon the disk opaque, till silver'd o'er
Like Cynthia's it enchants the thoughtful soul.
Impatient of restraint, the liquid spreads,
And, as it spreads, a thousand globules rise,
Glistening, but like the bubble joy, soon burst,
And disappear. Ah! seize the occasion fair,
Nor hesitate too long the cake to turn;
Which, of a truth, unsightly else must look,
And to the experienc'd nicer palate, prove

Distasteful. See! 'tis done: and now, O now
The precious treat! spongy, and soft, and brown;
Exhaling, as it comes, a vapor bland;

While, all emboss'd with flowers (to be dissolv'd,
Anon, as with the breath of the warm South,)
Upon the alluring board the butter gleams-
Not rancid, fit for appetite alone

Of coarsest gust, but delicate and pure,

And golden like the morn. Yet one thing more ;

The liquid amber which, untir'd, the bee

From many a bloom distils for thankless man.

For man, who, when her services are o'er,

The little glad purveyor of his board

Remorseless kills. But to the glorious feast!

Ye Gods! from your Olympian heights descend, And share with me what ye, yourselves, shall cwn Far dearer than ambrosia. That, indeed, May haply give a zest to social mirth, And, with the alternate cup, exhilarate The sons of heaven; but my nepenthe rare, Not only cheers the heart, but from the breast Care, grief, and every nameless ill dispelsYielding a foretaste of immortal joy!

TOLL for Sam Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no more, This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead! The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore

Of dark futurity, he would not tread.

No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepp'd

Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed;The mighty river, as it onward swept,

In one great wholesale sob, his body drowned and kept.

Toll for Sam Patch! he scorned the common way That leads to fame, up heights of rough ascent, And having heard Pope and Longinus say,

That some great men had risen by falls, he went And jumped, where wild Passaic's waves had rent The antique rocks;-the air free passage gave,And graciously the liquid element

Upbore him, like some sea-god on its wave;
And all the people said that Sam was very brave.

Fame, the clear spirit that doth to heaven upraise,
Led Sam to dive into what Byron calls
The hell of waters. For the sake of praise,
He wooed the bathos down great water-falls;
The dizzy precipice, which the eye appals
Of travellers for pleasure, Samuel found

Pleasant, as are to women lighted halls,
Crammed full of fools and fiddles; to the sound
Of the eternal roar, he timed his desperate bound.

Sam was a fool. But the large world of such,
Has thousands-better taught, alike absurd,
And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much,
Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard.
Alas for Sam! Had he aright preferred

The kindly element, to which he gave

Himself so fearlessly, we had not heard That it was now his winding-sheet and grave,

Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the brave.

He soon got drunk, with rum and with renown,
As many others in high places do;-
Whose fall is like Sam's last-for down and down,
By one mad impulse driven, they flounder through
The gulf that keeps the future from our view,
And then are found not. May they rest in peace!
We heave the sigh to human frailty due-
And shall not Sam have his? The muse shall cease
To keep the heroic roll, which she began in Greece-

With demigods, who went to the Black Sea

For wool (and if the best accounts be straight, Came back, in negro phraseology,

With the same wool each upon his pate), In which she chronicled the deathless fate Of him who jumped into the perilous ditch

Left by Rome's street commissioners, in a state Which made it dangerous, and by jumping which He made himself renowned, and the contractors

rich

To long conclusions many men have jumped
In logic, and the safer course they took;
By any other, they would have been stumped,
Unable to argue, or to quote a book,

And quite dumb-founded, which they cannot brook;

They break no bones, and suffer no contusion,
Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook,
In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion;
But that was not the way Sam came to his conclusion.

He jumped in person. Death or Victory

Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die,

A blunder which the wisest men will make.

The fiend that from the infernal rivers stole
Hell-draughts for man, too much tormented him,
With nerves unstrung, but steadfast in his soul,
He stood upon the salient current's brim;
His head was giddy, and his sight was dim;
And then he knew this leap would be his last,-
Saw air, and earth, and water, wildly swim,
With eyes of many multitudes, dense and vast,
That stared in mockery; none a look of kindness
cast.

Beat down, in the huge amphitheatre,

"I see before me the gladiator lie," And tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace, without one pitying eyeHe was a slave-a captive hired to die;

And while Niagara prolongs its thunder,

Though still the rock primæval disappears, And nations change their bounds-the theme of

wonder

Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years; And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his pluck had fled.

Who would compare the maudlin Alexander,

Blubbering, because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled

With its own agony, when he the grand Natural arrangements for a jump beheld,

And measuring the cascade, found not his courage quelled.

His last great failure set the final seal

Unto the record Time shall never tear, While bravery has its honor,-while men feel The holy natural sympathies which are First, last, and mightiest in the bosom. Where The tortured tides of Genesee descend,

He came his only intimate a bear,

(We know not that he had another friend), The martyr of renown, his wayward course to end.

The hopeless issue have refused to try;

No! with true leap, but soon with faltering flight,—

Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged to endless night."

But, ere he leapt, he begged of those who made
Should perish, such collection should be paid
Money by his dread venture, that if he

As might be picked up from the "company To his Mother. This, his last request, shall be,Tho' she who bore him ne'er his fate should know,— When all the streams have worn their barriers low, An iris, glittering o'er his memoryAnd, by the sea drunk up, for ever cease to flow. On him who chooses to jump down cataracts, Why should the sternest moralist be severe ? Judge not the dead by prejudice-but facts, Such as in strictest evidence appear. Else were the laurels of all ages sere. Give to the brave, who have pass'd the final goal,The gates that ope not back,-the generous tear; And let the muse's clerk upon her scroll,

In coarse, but honest verse, make up the judgment roll.

Therefore it is considered, that Sam Patch

Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; His name shall be a portion in the batch Of the heroic dough, which baking Time Kneads for consuming ages-and the chime Of Fame's old bells, long as they truly ring, Shall tell of him; he dived for the sublime, And found it. Thou, who, with the eagle's wing, Being a goose, would'st fly,-dream not of such a thing!

I KNOW not in what particular place or on what occasion I was honored with an introduction to Lord Barrymore, but we were thrown together in various convivial societies; and his Lordship was pleased to express so much satisfaction in my company, that I became a frequent guest at his table.

a ball with as much ease and brilliance, as he could bespatter "a blood" in a cider cellar. Had he lived some centuries previous, there is no doubt he

would have been a prime favorite with Prince Hal, and the "maddest wag" of Sir John Falstaff's acquaintance.

To keep around him a choice collection of convivial and eccentric spirits, his Lordship instituted the "Blue-Bottle Club," or, as it was more commonly termed, "The Humbugs," which numbered Hanger, Morris, Arabin, Taylor, Carey, Hewardine, and many others, and was held at a tavern under the Piazzas.

The name of "Humbugs" was given it on account of the manner in which every new member was initiated. The system was to introduce two candidates at a time, and to set them quarrelling as soon as they were seated. It did not signify in how trivial a point the difference originated: the members, expert in roguery, would, by taking opposite sides, aggravate the matter till it assumed the aspect of insult; and the disputants were urged from arguments to proceed to epithets, and from epithets to blows; when the noble supervisor of this farce interfered, took the strangers by the hand, and told them "they were both humbugged," and had become members.

My reader can infer the spirit of a Club possessing this for one of its regulations. The most whimsical effects I ever witnessed were produced by Charles Incledon's introduction, who had the honor of being proposed alone.

Barrymore was extremely pleased with Incledon's conversation as well as singing, and had long wanted to enroll him among the members. The "Son of Song" expected therefore an unusual degree of attention when he came. He was then extremely popular in the ballad of "Black-eyed Susan," for which the first call was unanimous; but he had not finished the first line, before a member exclaimed, "Oh! Charles, Charles! come, it's too bad to fool us in this way!" Incledon stared, and asked what his friend meant. The person beside him joined in the inquiry: others however interposed, and begged Incledon to proceed :

All in the Downs the fleet lay moor'd"Incledon, Incledon," cried a dozen voices, "recollect, you are singing to gentlemen, not the Covent Garden gallery."

Incledon looked round in the utmost bewilderment: the manner of the members was so judicious that he could not suspect the motive; they were all good comedians at table-not a face betrayed a double meaning; whilst a roar of voices round him whelmed those of the malcontents.-"It's a d-d shame- Ungentlemanly interruption-Order, order!" etc. etc. At their request, Incledon was persuaded to proceed again.

All in the Downs the fleet lay moor'd"Stuff, stuff-(hiss)-Incledon, Incledon, you're drunk!"-"Who says I'm drunk?" shouted Incledon. Twenty voices espoused his cause, and twenty swelled the chorus of reprehension; whilst the cries of "Order, order!" tended only to increase the confusion." "I'll give any man twenty pounds," said Incledon, "who'll say I'm drunk, or give me the lie."-"You're drunk-you lie." In another instant Incledon had quitted his seat, stripped his coat, and was offering to fight any man in the room for the value of his Benefit. Lord Barrymore had now his cue to interfere,-and sufficient cause, for Incledon

The instant, however, that his Lordship said "he was humbugged," the Club, which before presented a state of universal irritation, burst into a roar of deafening laughter; the rule was then explained at large, and every member came up to shake hands with him.

"Why, Incledon," said Barrymore, "didn't you know we were called the Humbugs?"-"Humbugs," he replied, with a returning smile-" yes, (using his favorite substitute for sanguinary) - Humbugs."

1

This amicable result, however, did not always friends to be "humbugged," who were both natives ensue. Major Hanger one evening brought two

of the "Sister Isle." The members succeeded in

setting them at variance, as usual; but the Hibernians, having been drinking pretty freely before they came, were in that critical condition when a slight thing will put a man in the best humor in the therefore changed to the pugnatory-when the world, or the worst. The convivial feeling being all this while; their indignation was excited in a tenmembers explained that they had been humbugged fold degree towards the Club for the liberty it had taken. Vengeance was denounced on the whole assembly, and a riot à la Donnybrook commenced, which involved every thing animated and tangible in the room. Tables were upset, bottles flew about in every direction, and "such method" had the strangers in their madness, that in less than five minutes the apartment was completely cleared. On the servants running up, they found Lord Barrymore and one of the Hibernians stripped to their shirts, to dispute their respective prowess,-the floor covered with a mass of plates, fruits, and glasses, and Dicky Suett in one corner of the room entrenched under a table, ejaculating his everlasting Oh, la!