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1Author:  Mathews Cornelius 1817-1889Add
 Title:  The career of Puffer Hopkins  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: To say that the townspeople of this mighty metropolis were in a state of greater excitement and activity on a certain night in a certain month of November—which it is not necessary more particularly to define—than they are on certain other nights of periodical recurrence, would be to do the said townspeople arrant injustice, and to establish for the chronicler of the following authentic history, at the very outset, a questionable character for truth and plain-speaking. On this immediate occasion, however, there was, it must be confessed, a commendable degree of agitation and enthusiasm visible, in almost every quarter of the city. Crowds were emerging from lane, alley and thoroughfare, and pouring into the central streets in the direction of the Hall; sometimes in knots of three, four or more, all engaged in earnest conversation, in a loud key, with vehement gesture, and faces considerably discolored by excitement. The persons composing these various peripatetic and deliberative groups, could not be said to be of any single class or profession, but mingled together indiscriminately, much after the fashion of a country store-keeper's stock, where a bale of fourth-price flannel neighbors a piece of first-quality linen, and knots of dainty and gallant wine-glasses are brought into a state of sociable confusion, with a gathering of hard-headed plebian stone-bottles. Although all tended the same way and on the same errand, let no man be so rash and intemperate as to imagine that no distinctions were observed; that certain lines and demarcations were not maintained; and that broadcloth was not careful here, as usual, not to have its fine nap destroyed by the jostling of homespun.
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