University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
OF THE EXQUISITES, AND THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN AT
THE SPRINGS.

Happy the man who is born with whiskers, for he
will not be under the necessity of buying a goodly pair,
without which it is impossible to live. As the May Fair
poet we have quoted heretofore with reprobation, most
insolently sings:—

Rule 1. Next to whiskers, dress is all important to
the success of a young gentleman, at all places, especially
at the springs. Not manners, but the tailor
makes the man in the present improved state of the
world, and nothing is more certain than that success in
life mainly depends on the cut of the coat, the exuberance
of the whiskers, and above all the tie of the
cravat. We know several young fellows, who have
carried off heiresses, solely by virtue of superior excellence
in this last indispensable requisite.

2. Be sure you pay no attention to that musty old
saw, about cutting your coat according to your cloth,
except it be to reverse the ignoble maxim by cutting
it directly the contrary. N. B. For the cut of your coat,
and for the most approved attitudes, see the figures in
the windows of the men mercers and man milliners in
Broadway.

3. Never get any article of dress from a cheap tailor,
for he will be sure to make you pay for it; whereas a
real fashionable, expensive tailor, always charges his
good customers in advance, to pay for his bad ones;
for it would ruin him irretrievably, and frighten half his
customers to the uttermost ends of the town, were he to
be guilty of the ill manners of sueing one of them. He
must never do this till he is about leaving off business.

4. Never stop to inquire whether you want a new
coat, or whether you can pay for it. If the tailor trusts
you, good—it is at his own risk, and if you dont pay

him, somebody else must, after the manner hinted at in
the preceding rule.

5. If you happen to see a wretch coming down the
street, to whom you have been indebted three or four
years, you have only to stop short, consider a moment,
then turn suddenly around and trot off in a contrary
direction. People will take it for granted you have
forgot something.

6. Never pay any debts if you can help it, but debts
of honour: such as tavern bills, and generally all bills
for superfluities. By the law of nature, man has a
claim on society for the necessaries of life, and therefore
is not bound to pay for them.

7. Never be deterred from going to the springs by
any sordid motives of economy. All that is necessary
is to pay your way till you get there. Once there, you
have only to play at cards, pocket your winnings and
pay none of your losings, and it will go hard if you dont
create a fund for indispensable necessaries. Failing in
this, you have only to tell mine host, that you have been
disappointed in remittances, and are going to Albany or
New York to see about them. Never mind his blank
looks, he wont dare to arrest you, for fear of losing one
half of his lodgers, who would not fail to resent such an
unfashionable procedure, not knowing how soon their
turn might come, if such unheard of enormities were
tolerated in fashionable society.

8. Never pay any attention to the ladies, and they
will be sure to pay attention to you; that is, if you have
plenty of whiskers, plenty of cravats, and know how to
tie them; plenty of coats, a curricle or gig and tandem,

and look grim. N. B. Heiresses are excepted; they
expect to be sought after.

9. It is needless to caution you to avoid the desperate
imprudence of falling in love with a lady who is
poor in every thing except merit. Nobody commits
such a folly now a days, especially since the vast improvement
in taste, and the prodigious advances made
by the spirit of the age. Formerly, in the days of outer
darkness, “when Adam delv'd and Eve span,” poor
people might marry without coming upon the parish.
But it would be the extreme climax of folly to do it
now, when it is impossible to fit out a wife of the least
pretensions for a walk in Broadway, under a sum, that
in those miserable days of delving and spinning, would
have purchased independence for life. Since the age
of paper money, brokering, speculating, and breaking,
and ever since the great encouragement of “domestic
industry,” women of decency, never spin any thing
but “street yarn,” a fashionable article, which has all
the fashionable requisites to recommend it, being entirely
useless. What would be the fate of an unfortunate
youth, who is without a penny, and without the
means or arts to gain one, who should marry a fashionable
young lady, who possesses but one single art, that of
spending thousands? How would he get a three story
house with folding doors and marble mantel pieces?
how would he obtain the means of purchasing hats at
fifty dollars—pelisses at a hundred—veils at twice as
much—and shawls at ten times? How would he be
able to keep a carriage, give parties, and drink Bingham,
or Nabob, or Billy Ludlow? Without these

things what man or woman in their senses will marry?
And then the children! How are they to be furnished
with artificial curls, and necklaces, and bracelets, and ear-rings,
and pink hats of immeasurable size, and pelisses,
and silken hose, and ruffles, and laces, and made to look
like Lilliputian ladies? How are they to be taught the
art of arts, the art worth all the arts, the indispensable
art of spending money, unless there is money to spend?
We know of but one way, and that is by running in
debt, and getting white washed. This cant be done
above eight or ten times, without people beginning to
grow shy of trusting you for any sum that will make it
worth while to go into the limits. It is however hoped
that the wishes of the philanthropists will soon be realized,
by the passage of a law to do away with this inhuman
necessity, and that the time is not far distant when
the march of mind and the spirit of the age, will lead to
the consummation of all things, when people may indulge
in all the luxuries of life without money, and run
in debt without the disagreeable alternative of paying, or
going into retirement. Then every body will be rich—
then every body can live in a three story house with folding
doors and marble mantel pieces, give parties, live luxuriously,
get the dyspepsia as well as messieurs the
brokers, run in debt without the necessity of running
away, get married, be happy, and dress their little girls
for a walk in Broadway as fine as a fiddle! Until then,
however, we repeat our caution not to marry any body
that labours even under the suspicion of being poor,
the worst of all possible suspicions for a young lady;
it is enough to ruin her reputation past all recovery.
Until then, the young gentlemen must be content with
looking all the horrors of bachelorism in the face; and
the young ladies riot in the anticipations of single blessedness,
which melancholy as it may be, is better than
living in a house without folding doors and marble
mantel pieces, and giving no balls. While the old gentleman
lives, he must work, and shave, and speculate,
and turn his pennies ten times a day, to keep the young
ladies in the costume becoming the march of mind and
the spirit of the age; and when he fails, or dies, they
must trust to providence and the orphan societies.
There is but one remedy for all this, but it is ten times
worse than the disease—economy. As it is, bachelors
will multiply prodigiously, marrying for love will go out
of fashion, and there will not be a sufficiency of apes in
all Africa, to supply the place of the dandies of this life,
in the life to come.

10. After singling out the lady who possesses the
sine qua non—to wit, not less than a hundred thousand,
it behooves the young gentleman to be particularly attentive
to the—mother—if the young lady unfortunately
has one at the springs. Daughters are all so dutiful,
that they never reject the recommendation of their parents
in cases of this kind, especially if they threaten to
disinherit them. He must be always on the alert; dip
her water, offer his arm, sit next her at table, run
down all the rest of the married ladies, praise the
daughter for looking so like the mother, perfume his
whiskers, and take every opportunity of looking at the
young lady tenderly, playing with his watch chain, if he
has one, or in default, fiddling with his cravat, at the

same time; there is nothing like suiting the action to
the look. He must be pensive, abstracted, and distracted;
affect solitude, and drink enormously—we
mean of the waters. He must wander in the woods,
lose his appetite in public and make it up in private,
bite his thumbs, chew his lips, knit his eye brows, and
grow as pale as he possibly can. Should all this fail,
if he can afford it, he must give a ball, or a collation, or
a party on the lake, and upset the boat, on purpose to
have an opportunity of saving the lady's life. But if even
all these fail, he must resort to the desperate expedient
of the hero who gave name to the famous rock, of
eternal memory, near Ballston, known, and ever to
be known, by the appellation of the Lover's Rock.
The story is as follows, on the best possible authority.

A young gentleman of good family, who could look
back at least two generations without tracing his pedigree
to a cobbler, or a shaver—we dont mean a barber—
but whose fortune was in an inverse ratio to his birth,
having the good luck to raise the wind by a timely hit,
visited the springs in a gig and tandem. He had received
the best education the country could afford;
that is, he had learned enough Greek, and Latin, and
natural philosophy, and mathematics, to forget it all in a
year after leaving college. He had learned a profession
which he did not practise, and he practised many
things which he did not learn from his profession. He
had a vast many wants without the means of supplying
them, and professed as lofty a contempt for all useful
occupations, as if he had been rich enough to pass for
a fool. He was always well dressed, well mounted,

and well received on the score of these recommendations,
added to that of his ancient descent; for as we
said before, he could trace back to a great grandfather,
whom nobody knew any thing about, so nobody could
deny his having been a gentleman. Nothing is so
great a demonstration of ancient descent, as the utter
obscurity of the origin of a family.

Be this as it may, our hero was excessively fond of
style, good living, and gentlemanly indulgencies of all
sorts; but his taste was cramped by the want of the
one thing needful. 'Tis true, he got credit sometimes;
but his genius was consequently rebuked by frequent
dunnings of certain importunate people, who had the
impudence to want their money sometimes. If it were
not for this, living upon credit would be the happiest
of all possible modes of life, except that of a beggar,
which we consider surpassingly superlative. Beggars
are the true gentlemen commoners of the earth; they
form the only privileged order, the real aristocracy of
the land—they pay no taxes—obey no laws—they toil
not, neither do they spin—they eat when they are not
hungry, and drink when they are not dry—they neither
serve as jurymen, firemen, or militiamen—nor do they
work on the highways—they have neither country to
serve, or family to maintain—they are not obliged to
wash their hands and faces, or comb their hair every
morning—they fear nothing but the poor house—love
nothing so well as lying, except drinking—and eat what
they please in Lent:—In short, as the Old Song says:

Truly it is a noble vocation; and nothing can afford a
clearer proof of the march of mind and the improved
spirit of the age, than the multiplication and daily increase
of this wise commonwealth of beggars, who
have the good sense to know the difference between
living by the sweat of their own brows, and that of
other people. Next to the wisdom of begging, is that
of borrowing—or, as the cant phrase is, living upon
tick.

The outward man of our hero was well to look at,
especially as it was always clothed in the habiliments of
fashion. He was tall, straight, stiff, and stately; his
head resembled the classical model of a mopstick; and
his whiskers would have delighted the good Lady Baussiere.
The ladies approved of him; and if he had only
been able to achieve a three story house in Hudson
Square or Broadway, with mahogany folding doors and
marble mantel pieces, together with certain accompaniments
of mirrors, sofas, pier tables, carpets, &c. it was
the general opinion, that he might have carried a first
rate belle. But alas! without these, what is man?
Our hero felt this at every step, and his spirit rose manfully
against the injustice of the world. At one time,
he had actually resolved to set down to his profession,
and by persevering attention, amass a fortune that
would supply the place of all the cardinal virtues. But

alas! the seductions of Broadway, and the soirées, and
the sweet pretty belles, with their big bonnets and bishops—there
was no resisting them; and our hero abandoned
his profession in despair. Finding he could not
resist the allurements of pleasure, he resolved within
himself to kill two birds with one stone as it were—
that is, to join profit and pleasure—and while he was
sporting the butterfly in Broadway, to have an eye to
securing the main chance—a rich wife—at the same
time.

In pursuance of this gallant resolution, he made demonstrations
towards every real or reputed heiress that
fell in his way. Every Jack has his Gill—if one wont,
another will—what's one man's meat, is another man's
poison—there is no accounting for tastes—and he who
never gets tired will come to the end of his journey at
last—quoth our hero, and continued to persevere in the
midst of eternal disappointments. He might have succeeded
in some instances, but for the eternal vigilance
of the mamas, who justly thought, that having brought up
their daughters to nothing but spending money, the least
they could do was to provide them with rich husbands.
Either the pursuit itself, or the frequent failures of our
hero in running down his game, began to lower him in
the estimation of the world—that is, the little world in
which he flourished. Success only can sanctify any
undertaking; and a successful highwayman, or prosperous
rogue, is often more admired than an unlucky
dog who has nothing but his blundering honesty to recommend
him. Besides, there is, we know not for what
reason, a prejudice against gentlemen who pursue fortune

in the shape of a young lady of a hundred thousand—charms,—we
mean dollars. Men labour their
fortunes in various ways; some by handicraft trades—
some by shaving beards, and some by shaving notes—
some by long voyages by sea, and others by long perilous
journeys by land. They spend the best part of
their lives in these pursuits, and at last, when worn with
care, hardships, and anxieties, they sit down in their old
age, to nourish their infirmities and pamper their appetites
with luxuries, that carry death in their train. Now
we would ask, is it not better to carry fortune by a coup
de main, and achieve an heiress off-hand, than to chase
her all our lives, and only be in at our own death, instead
of the death of our game? The prejudice
against fortune hunters, as they are called, is therefore
unjust; and we advise all young fellows of spirit to
hunt away bravely, rather than drudge through the desperate,
long, lingering avenues of a profession.

Be this as it may, our hero began to be held rather
cheap by the young ladies, who used to compare notes,
and find out that he had made the same demonstrations
towards some score or two of them. It is observed by
deep philosophers, that the last thing a man or woman
will pardon in others, is the fault of which they are
most guilty themselves. All these pretty belle-butterflies
had flirted with divers young men, and intended to
do it again; but they were exceedingly indignant at our
hero, and turned their backs—no, their bishops—to him
on all public occasions. Some ignoble spirits would
have turned, in grovelling despair, to a profession, and
quit forever the pursuit of these fatal beauties. But

our hero was not the man to despair. He mustered all
his credit, and made a dead and successful set at his
tailor, who furnished him with two full suits, the price of
which he apportioned equally among his punctual customers,
who, he justly thought, ought to pay something
for being in good credit. He blew a desperate blast,
and raised the wind for a gig and tandem, which he obtained
by means which have puzzled us more than any
phenomenon we ever witnessed in all our lives. He did
all this, and he triumphantly departed for the springs,
where the quo ad hoc hook catches many an inexperienced
belle and beau, and where the pretty rice-fed
damsels of the south do congregate, whose empire extends
not only over the whole region of beauty, but
likewise over divers plantations of cotton, and divers
scores of gentlemen, both of colour and no colour.

The arrival of our hero at the springs occasioned
quite a sensation. The young ladies inquired who he
was, and their mammas what he was worth. The answer
to this latter question was by no means satisfactory;
although nothing absolutely certain could be gathered
for some time, as to the precise state of his finances.
Meanwhile he singled out a daughter of the sun, of
whom fame reported that she was heiress to a great
dismal swamp of rice, and plantations of cotton, and
feudal lady over hundreds of serfs, who bowed to her
sway with absolute devotion. Our hero baited the quo
ad hoc hook, and angled for the fair lady of the rice
swamp, with more than the patience of a professor of
what Isaac Walton calls the “gentle craft.” The
young lady was quite unknowing in the ways of the

bon ton. She had been bred up in the country, where
she studied romance in books of religion, and religion
in books of romance. She had never run the gauntlet
through a phalanx of beaux, every one of whom gave
her a wound; nor had she lost the sweetest inheritance
of a woman—that willing, wilful credulity which almost
loves to be deluded, and which had rather be deceived
into a conviction of worth, than be obliged to believe
it has been deceived. She was in truth deplorably
unsophisticated in the ways of men and of the world.
She did not even dream that money was actually necessary
to supply our wants, much less did it enter into her
innocent fancy, that it was utterly impossible to be married
at present, without the indispensable requisites of
mahogany folding doors and marble mantel pieces, silver
forks, satin curtains, Brussels carpets, and all those
things which constitute the happiness of this life. In
short, she had no tournure at all, and was moreover a
little blue, having somehow imbibed a notion, that no
man was worth a lady's eye, unless he was distinguished
by something of some sort or other—she hardly knew
what. It never entered her head—and why should it?
for this is the result of experience alone—it never entered
her head, that good sense, a good heart, and a
good disposition, were far more important ingredients
in the composition of wedded bliss, than a pretty turn
for poetry, or a decided vocation to the fine arts.

But her lady mother, under whose guardian wing our
heroine now first expanded her pinions, was another
sort of “animal,” as the polite Johnnies say of a woman.
She was perfectly aware of the ingredients necessary

to the proper constitution of a rational wedding.
None knew better than herself, that money only
becomes the brighter for wearing, and that a vast many
other things especially valued by inexperienced young
ladies, not only lose their lustre and value, but actually
wear out entirely in the course of time. Experience
had taught her, that Cupid was only the divinity of
youth, whereas honest Plutus never lost his attractions,
but only fascinated his votaries the more strongly as
they grew in age and wisdom. In short, she had a
great contempt for merit, and a much greater veneration
for money.

Acting under these opposite conclusions, it is little
to be wondered at, if the old lady and the young one
drew different ways. Our hero made daily progress
with the daughter, and lost ground with the mother
faster than he gained it with the other. The old lady
watched him intensely, and always had something particular
to say to her daughter, whenever he occupied
her attention for a moment. She could not stir a step
without the young lady, and grew so weak and infirm,
that at length she could not walk across the room without
the aid of her arm. Our hero entered the lists in
the art of mining and countermining, but he was no
match for the old lady, who, though she had but two
eyes, and those none of the brightest, saw all that Argus
could have seen with his fifty. The opposition of
currents is sure to raise the froth; and opposition in
love hath the same effect on the imagination, which is
Cupid's prime minister, if not Cupid himself.

In this way things went on; our hero was in the situation

of a general with two frontiers to defend, and
lost ground on one as fast as he gained it on the other.
With the young lady he was better than well; with the
old one, worse than bad. About this time, another
pretender entered the lists against our hero, equally
well dressed, equal in whiskers, equal in intrepidity,
and equally in want of the sine qua non. A rival is
sure to bring matters to a crisis, except in the case of
a young lady who knows and properly estimates the exquisite
delights of flirtation. The good mother saw
pretty clearly, that this new pretender would infallibly,
by the force of repulsion, drive her daughter to the opposite
side—that is, into the arms of our hero. She
therefore cut the matter short at once, and forbid the
young lady to speak, walk, sit, ride, or exchange looks
with our hero. The young lady obeyed in all except the
last injunction; and, if the truth must be told, made
up in looks for the absence of all the others. The old
lady saw it would not do, and forthwith sending for our
hero, peremptorily dismissed him, with the assurance
that her daughter should never marry him—that if she
did, she would never see or speak to her more, but hold
her alien to her heart forever. She then quitted our
hero with tears in her eyes, leaving him with his eyes
wide open.

He took his hat and stick—paid his bill—no, I am
wrong; he did not pay his bill—and casting a look at
the window of his “ladyé love” that cracked six panes
of glass, proceeded in a fit of desperation to the rock
then without a name, but now immortalized as the Lovers'
Rock. This rock frowns tremendously, as all

rocks do, and hangs in lowering majesty over the stream
of Kayaderosseros—a name in itself sufficient to indicate
the presence of something extraordinary—if not
actually terrible. On arriving at this gloomy, savage,
wild, and dreary spot, our hero took out a pocket-glass
and adjusted his whiskers to the nicety of a hair—he
then deliberately drew forth his pen knife with a pearl
handle and silver springs, and cleaned his nails. After
this he pulled up his neckcloth five or six times, and
shook his head manfully; then he took off his coat,
folded it up carefully, laid it down, took it up, kissed
it, and shed some bitter tears over this object of his dearest
cares: then after a solemn and affecting pause, he
tied a white pocket handkerchief about his head, cast
his eyes upwards, clasped his hands, took one farewell
look at himself in the pocket glass, then dashing it into
a thousand pieces, he rushed furiously to the edge of
the precipice, and turning a sommerset by mistake backwards,
fell flat on his bishops, on the hard rock, where
he lay motionless for sometime—doubtless as much surprised
as was poor Gloster, when he threw himself as he
supposed from Dover Cliff, to find that he was not dead.
The truth is, our hero could hardly believe himself alive,
until at length he recognized to his utter surprise and
disappointment, that he had committed an egregious
blunder in throwing himself down on the top, instead
of the bottom of the rock.

He determined, in his own mind, to do the thing better
next time, and was preparing to avoid a similar
blunder, when through the dim, wicked, enticing obscurity
of the pine grove, he thought he saw a sylph like

figure, gliding—not walking—swiftly in the direction of
the rock. He gazed again, and it assumed the port of
a mortal woman. A little nearer, and it emerged from
the glossy, silver foliage, in the form of the sovereign
lady of his heart, the mistress of the rice swamps. She
had seen him depart with murder in his eye, and desperation
in his step; she had heard from her mother of
his summary dismissal, and had no doubt he had gone
to that rock, where erewhile they had looked unutterable
things, to kill himself as dead as a stone. Taking advantage
of the interregnum of a nap, she escaped the
maternal guardianship, and followed him at a distance.
She had seen his preparations for self immolation; she
had seen the pathetic farewell between him and himself,
the tying of the handkerchief, the pulling off of the coat,
the wringing of the hands, the rush towards the edge of
the rock; and she had seen him disappear, just as with
a shriek, which he heard not, she had fallen insensible
to the ground. When she came to herself, and recalled
what she had seen, she determined to follow her murdered
lover to the rock, and throw herself down after
him, in the bitterness of her despair. But what can
describe her delight, when on arriving at the fatal spot,
she saw her true lover running towards her apparently
as well as ever he was in his life! An explanation took
place, which was followed by words of sweet consolaon
the part of the lady.

“I swear,” said she, “by the genius which inhabits
this rock, by the nymphs which sport in this babbling
brook, by the dryads and hamadryads that live in these
hollow pines, that I will not obey my cruel mother. I

will marry thee, and should my obdurate parent disinherit
me, and send me forth to beggary, I will share it
with thee. Let her disinherit me if she will; what is
fortune—what is—”

“Dis—dis—disin—disinherit, did you say?” interrupted
our hero, staring in wild astonishment.

“Yes, disinherit,” replied the young lady, enthusiastically,
“I will brave disinheritance, poverty, exile, want,
neglect, contempt, remorse, despair, death, all for you,
so you dont kill yourself again.”

“Dis—dis—disin—disinherit,” continued our hero,
in a state of increasing distraction, “pov—, ex—,
wa—, neg—, con—, re—, des—, death; why what is
all this, angel of my immortal soul?”

“O dont take on so—dont take on so—my own dear
heart: I swear again, and again, a hundred, aye, ten
hundred thousand million times, that I dont care if my
mother cuts me off with a shilling—”

“Cut—cut—off—shilling—why I thought—that is—
I understood—that is, I was assured that—that—you
had a fortune in your own right?”

“No, not a penny, thank heaven; I can now show
you the extent of my love, by sacrificing fortune—every
thing for you. I'll follow you in beggary through the
world.”

“I'll be — if you will,” our hero was just going
to say, but checked himself and cried out in accents of
despair, “And you have no fortune of your own?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“No rice swamps?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“No cotton plantations?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“No uplands, nor lowlands, nor sea island, nor
long staple, nor short staple?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“Nor crops of corn?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“Nor neg—I mean gentlemen of colour.”

“Not one, thank heaven!”

“And you are entirely dependent on your mother?”

“Yes; and she has sworn to disinherit me if I marry
you, thank heaven; you have now an opportunity of
showing the disinterestedness of your affection.”

Our hero started up in a phrenzy of despair—he rushed
madly and impetuously to the edge of the precipice,
and avoiding a similar mistake with that he had just
committed, threw himself headlong down into the terrible
torrent with the terrible name, and floated none knew
whither, for his body was never found. The young lady
was turned into stone—dont be alarmed, gentle reader—
only for a few minutes, at the end of which she bethought
herself of following her lover; then she bethought
herself of considering the matter; and finally
she fell into an inexplicable perplexity, as to what
could have got into our hero, to drown himself in despair
at the very moment she was promising to make
him the happiest of men. She determined to live till
she had solved this doubt, which by the way she never
could do to the end of her life, and she died without
being able to tell what it was that made her lover make
away with himself at such an improper time. Be this

as it may, the landlord and the man-mercer, like the
“devil and the king,” in the affair of Sir Balaam, divided
the prize; one taking the gig, the other the tandem.
From that time the place has gone by the name of the
Lover's Rock, and not a true lover, or true hearted
lady ever visits the springs without sojourning many an
hour of sentimental luxury on the spot where our hero
could not survive the anguish of even anticipating, that
he should cause the lady of his heart to be disinherited
for love of him.