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expand2003 (1)
1Author:  Landon Melville D. (Melville De Lancey) 1839-1910Requires cookie*
 Title:  Eli Perkins (at large)  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. ‘If you get the best of whiskey, Eli, whiskey will get the best of you.” 627EAF. Page 009. In-line Illustration. Image of Uncle Consider with his hand on his chin. “Shoes are worn high in the neck, flounced with point aquille lace, cut on the bias. High heels are common in Saratoga, especially in the hop room. Cotton hose, open at the top, are very much worn, some of them having as many as three holes in them. Cotton plows are not seen. My dear Nevy—Yours received. While your Uncle Consider was in Afriky your maden Aunt Ruth and I thot wed get up an expedishun to New York to do sum Spring tradin'. The stanza— “I want to be an angel,” which you have just sung will not help you much unless you change your course of life. You must commence dressing more like angels here in this world if you want to be a real live angel in the next. You'd make healthy lookin' angels, wouldn't you? Now, wouldn't you? Angels don't wear pearl powder, do they? and angels don't wear false braids. They don't enamel their faces and smell of Caswell and Hazard's cologne, nor bore holes in their ears like Injuns and put Tiffany's ear-rings in them! Angels don't dye their hair, nor wear big diamonds, and have liveries and footmen, like many of our “shoddy” people. They— I shall never forget how Donn Pirate, a District of Columbia brigand, and I fell out and had a big fight. I shall also long remember the terrible thrashing he gave me. I knew I had been whipped by Donn because I saw the marks on Donn's face and also talked with the doctor who sponged him off and put liniment on him. But oh, it was a fearful castigation! I never want to be whipped again. If ever any man wants to continue to serve humanity—wants to make a martyr of himself—wants to reduce himself to a lump of jelly like the boneless man in the circus, by whipping me, I hope he will read this and reflect. My Darling Julia: First let me tell you all about myself. I'm just lovely, and having such a time! Flirting in Saratoga ain't like flirting in New York— in the horrid box at the opera, or on the atrocious stairs at a party. We have just the whole back balcony all to ourselves—and then we walk over to the graveyard, and pretend to go down to bowl, and stray off into Congress Spring Park. Then the drives! My lovely phaeton—and Prancer, she's just too sweet for anything! Now, the idea of calling a horse sweet! Yes, married Brown's Boys. You will see them in every large city and at every watering-place—men married to suffering, neglected wives, but flirting with scores of young ladies. I will try and see you to-night in the piano corner of the big parlor—at eight. Manage to be there with Lizzie and Charley, for they are spooney and we can “shake” them, and they will take it as a kindness. “Yours informing me that I am engaged in Pottsville is received. Very well; if she is young and wealthy I will keep the engagement. In fact, young or old I'll keep the engagement at all hazards—or rather at Pottsville. Have no fears about my being detained by accidents. I have never yet failed to be present when I lectured. Everything seems to impel me to keep this engagement. Everywhere here in Illinois the people follow me around in great crowds and enthusiastically invite me to go away. Illinois railroad presidents say they will cheerfully supply me with free passage on the trains rather than have me remain in the State another night; and almost every railroad president in Ohio and Pennsylvania, including Mr. Tom Scott, has supplied me with perpetual free passes—hoping I may be killed on the trains. Gentlemen: I received your note this morning, inviting me to go up in the balloon. You say you desire me to go as the representative of the Daily Bugle—to be the official historian of the first great aerial voyage across the Atlantic. You also say: [To the Editor of the Daily Bugle.]
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