University of Virginia Library

MEMOIR
OF THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR.

It hath been so often remarked by persons aiming
at originality, that the pleasure of the reader
is wonderfully enhanced by knowing something
concerning the writer of the book he is about to devour,
that the good natured world actually begins to
believe it true, notwithstanding it hath so often
grievously yawned over the lives of divers great
authors. It is for this reason, that almost every
work of any pretensions hath prefixed to it certain
particulars concerning the writer, which in ordinary
cases would be considered exceedingly frivolous,
but inasmuch as they appertain to distinguished
persons, partake in the dignity of the
association, and like buttons of cheese paring on
a satin doublet, become illustrious by the company
they keep. Nothing indeed is more certain and
irrefragable, than that every thing connected with
or appertaining to an important gentleman, must
of necessity be proportionably important. The
world has nothing to do with the motions of ordinary
men, on ordinary occasions; whether they

have a good appetite, a good digestion, are in a
good or bad humour, is a matter of not the least
consequence. But it is far otherwise with great
persons, whose every motion and impulse is felt
like a pulsation running through the universe.
Should a tailor prick his finger with a needle; or
a worthy citizen invite his friends to a dinner, nobody
is the worse or the wiser but themselves. But
such matters appertaining to kings and people of
consequence, are thought worthy of the most minute
record. Hence it is that the most trifling
acts of illustrious persons are matters of profound
interest to ordinary people, and that the literary
world hath received such singular satisfaction from
being credibly certified that my Lord Byron drank
gin and water, and tied his collar with a black
ribbon, and that the Great Unknown is wonderfully
addicted to Scotch herrings and whiskey
punch.

We disclaim all pretensions to originality when
we observe that the lives of literary persons are
for the most part destitute of interest and adventure.
In days long past, they lived in garrets, and
nothing was more common than to find them
starved or frozen to death of a cold frosty morning.
Now, however, in this golden age of authors, we
find them figuring in drawing-rooms, drinking
toasts, and making speeches at public meetings,
and performing all those great actions, which
cause a man to be wondered at while living, and

forgotten when dead. But still it is doubtless no
small satisfaction to the curious reader to know,
that there is nothing to be known worth knowing
concerning the author whose work he is about devouring.
It is to gratify this laudable propensity,
that we proceed to detail the following particulars
respecting the person who is shrewdly suspected
of having indited the following Tales.

Concerning his family we regret to say little is
known. Mr. Abraham Acker, of Staaten Island,
the only person living who recollects any particulars
concerning our author, thinks he remembers
to have heard him say, that he came of the same
stock with the Grand Turk, the Great Mogul, the
emperor of China, Prester John the king of England,
and divers other illustrious persons; but of
this Mr. Acker, who we regret to say has nearly
lost his memory, has great doubts. The same uncertainty
rests on the place as well as the time of
his birth. When questioned as to the first, he
usually replied, that he was born in the Republic of
Elsewhere; but as we cannot find such a place on
any modern map, we are inclined to believe the
worthy gentleman was partly mistaken.

So with respect to the time of his birth, which
he once boasted was on the very day of the very
year, that the Dutch took Holland; but in what
year of our Lord that happened, we profess ourselves
ignorant. But although neither the time
or the place of his birth can now probably be

ascertained, still there is only the greater elbow
room for conjecture. From his well-remembered
fondness for hasty pudding and pumpkin pies, it
might be inferred that he was a native of Connecticut.
Mr. Abraham Acker has a notion that he
has some idea of hearing his father say that this
was the case; but cannot be certain whether it
was hasty pudding and pumpkin pies, or plumb
pudding and apple dumplings, to which our author
was so incontinently given. We will therefore
content ourselves with stating the doubt, and
leaving the courteous reader to draw his own conclusions.
All we shall say is, that seven villages,
that will no doubt live to be great cities, have
long hotly disputed the glory of his birth; an honour
we consider quite equal to the contest of
seven ruined cities for the nativity of Daniel—
or as he hath been flippantly called, Dan Homer.

On, however, questioning Mr. Acker still farther
and more closely, we gathered that our author
was deeply read in the Dutch language and antiquities;
and that he not only smoked mortally,
but spoke reverently of St. Nicholas and Admiral
Van Tromp. He likewise affected Dutch sermons
and Dutch psalms. We ourselves are for these
reasons, rather inclined to the supposition of his
having been originally derived from Holland; and
in this we agree with Mr. Acker, who thinks he
once heard his father hazard a supposition that he
was of “Dutch distraction,” as Mr. Acker is pleased

to express it. But against this supposition
there is another fact remembered by Mr. Acker, to
wit: that he had a most pestilent and arrant propensity
to grumbling and finding fault upon all
improper occasions, whence it might reasonably
be inferred that he had some affinity with the English
blood. As however we cannot learn that he
ever obfuscated his intellectual faculties with
small beer, or attempted to hang himself even in
the most gloomy period of his fortunes, but on the
contrary did demean himself like a sober man,
taking the ups and downs of life as they came, we
consider the above theory as untenable, and the
matter again resolving itself into its original uncertainty.

In our early interviews with Mr. Acker, he related
a fact that he was almost sure he heard from
somebody, which served to settle this interesting
point at once—namely, that our author's death was
partly laid to his having gone twenty miles in a
snow storm to hear a Dutch sermon, and finding
on his arrival, the vestry had decided upon having
their preaching ever after in the English tongue.
But what was our mortification, when on a succeeding
interview with Mr. Acker, we found he
could recollect nothing of the matter, and was inclined
to believe his memory was not as good as
it was in the Old French War. It is therefore
with no little regret as well as mortification, that
we are compelled to sit down under the painful

conviction, that the parentage, as well as the time
and place of our author's birth, are matters now
for ever beyond the reach of detection.

Having thus proved to the satisfaction of the
reader, that nothing is to be gathered worth knowing,
concerning the birth and parentage of our
author, we shall proceed to discuss his life, character,
and actions, of which, as very little is known,
we shall have occasion to say a great deal. It appears
from the testimony of Mr. Acker, that the
Alma Mater of our author was a log hut, which
was standing about fifty years since, at the crossroads,
about half a mile from Castleton. Here he
was taught by the best of all possible teachers,
self; the school master, a gallant bachelor and
somewhat of a roue, for the most part spending
the school hours in social chat, with a winsome,
black eyed dame, who lived just by, and whose
husband, being a pedlar, was frequently abroad,
speculating in old iron and goose feathers. The
scholars were thus left to follow the bent of their
genius, and Mr. Acker affirms that the excellence
of this system was in after times demonstrated, not
only in the vast genius of our author, but in like
manner, in he himself having risen to the rank of a
justice of the peace, while three or four of his school
mates became members of the legislature. There
is little doubt but they would have become still
more illustrious, had not the school been suddenly
dissolved, by the elopement of the master with the

black eyed pedlar's wife, whom he carried off triumphantly
in one of the honest man's own tin
carts. Hereupon the sprightly younkers set up a
great shout, and scampered home right glad of
releasement from such durance vile.

Our author after this, pursued the bent of his
genius a year or two in doing nothing; being, according
to tradition, a most determined idler,
whose principal amusement, was to join in those
little parties so common in country villages, where
you may see one man at work, and half a dozen
looking on. This however soon gave way to the
delight of all delights, to the contemplative philosopher,
to wit: angling. He would sit on the
rocky projection of some bold promontory jutting
out into the unparalleled Hudson, the chief of all
rivers, and put Job himself to shame. Morning,
noon, and evening, there he sat watching the end
of his pole, and buried in that delicious vacuum,
when the mind as it were resigning its bright
sceptre, an interregnum succeeds and one calm
nothingness pervades existence. Tradition says,
he sat so long at last, that he actually grew to the
rock, and in the attempt to extricate himself, was
happy to escape with a whole skin, by leaving a
most consequential portion of his breeches sticking
to a projection of Horneblende, a monument to
his immortal glory.

It was thus that buried in reveries and abstractions,
he attuned his mind to the depths of philosophy,

and learned the most important of all arts,
that of thinking. But his course of philosophy
was too soon interrupted, by his being sent to another
school in Jersey, about ten miles from his
home, as he hath frequently mentioned to Mr.
Acker, with tears in his eyes. Here he staid with
an old relative who lived by himself, about three
miles from the school. The way was by a solitary
“turpentine walk,” as Mr. Acker expresses
it, which led along the devious windings of a
pretty stream, running at the foot of a hill. If
any of our readers have ever in their boyish days,
been condemned to a solitary walk like this, in
their way to and from school, they can judge how
tedious, how irksome, how endless it is to a sprightly
lad, full of life, health, mischief, and wantonness.
Man was not born to live alone, nor more especially
boys. Often, as he said to Mr. Acker, has
he sat down at the foot of some old tree, and
played truant all day in weeping over his loneliness.
His only resource, as Mr. Acker expresses
it, was “to wrap himself up in himself,” by which
we understand that he tried to forget the past and
the present, by looking forward to the future
alone. His sole companion in those lonely walks
was a poor dumb girl,—for the honest folks of that
day considered schools as great nurseries of idleness,—who
is believed to be the heroine of the
story of Phœbe Angevine, in the following collection.

Our author, agreeably to his own account, delivered
at various times, in desultory conversations
with his friend, Mr. Acker, continued this mode
of life, passing and repassing to and from school,
with no other companion, except his own melancholy
thoughts, for upwards of three years. During
this period, his leisure hours were principally
passed in reveries, abstractions, wool-gathering,
and the cultivation of the noble science of castle
building. His winter evenings he spent for the
most part, by the kitchen fire side, in listening to
the traditionary lore of an old black sybil almost
blind, but wonderfully fond of frightening delighted
youngsters and listening country maids, with
stories of witches, goblins, Indians, and revolutionary
horrors. By listening to the frequent repetition
of these rural romances he appears to have been
imbued with that not uncommon species of credulity,
in which the mind sometimes sinking under,
at others triumphing over, the delusions of the
imagination, alternately derides and trembles,
laughs at, and believes, according as we happen to
be in sunshine and society, or alone and in darkness.

At the expiration of three years, he left school,
or the school left him, we cannot ascertain which,
and here, as he was wont to say, ended his scholastic
studies. He often hinted to his friend, Mr.
Acker, that he was early thrown upon the world,
in one of our great cities, the name of which Mr.

Acker does not recollect, where his skill in castle
building was held in little or no estimation, when
put in comparison with that of a tolerable mason
or carpenter. His first vocation was that of junior
clerk to a dry-goods store keeper, in which he distinguished
himself, by running his nose against
lamp posts, and being run over by carts, in going
upon errands—in selling goods and forgetting to
take pay for them—and in blowing a cracked flute
behind the counter of evenings, so villanously, that
he drove all persons of common sensibility to the
other side of the street. His master, who despised
philosophy, abstraction, and the fine arts, as desperate
enemies to the first of all arts, that of making
money, lectured him daily, and finally turned
him out of the shop, as an incurable blockhead,
because he refused to give his honour that a piece
of chintz, which a lady was cheapening, was actually
offered at less than the first cost.

Here we lose sight of our author for some years,
until we find him, according to his friend Mr.
Acker's recollection, in some business or other, the
precise nature of which he does not recollect.
He remembers however, sufficient to know, that
our author made but a poor business of it, whatever
it was. He was one of those unlucky people,
who, destined as they are to immortality, seem good
for nothing in this world while living. He took
every thing by the left hand, and his fingers were
all thumbs. He believed every body, and trusted

every body; and this species of implicit faith, is
of no great value in temporal things. Such a man
is always a mark for the little rogues of this world,
and never fails to allure about him a circle of petty
depredators, that are sure to bring him to ruin at
last. Such appears to have been the case with
our author, who as it would seem, lost his money,
if he ever had any, his credit and his patience, and
suddenly turning from the extreme of credulity to
that of scepticism, became a hater and despiser of
the world. Like the rest of mankind, he judged
of it as he found, or rather made it himself; and
converted the little swarm of plunderers whom his
easy credulity had attracted from the general
mass to fatten upon him, into the representatives
of the whole hive.

It appears from circumstances, that our author
resented his misfortunes so seriously, that he quarrelled
with the world outright, and to revenge
himself the more effectually, retired into the bosom
of Staaten Island, where he took lodgings at
an obscure inn, on a bye road leading from the
Narrows to the Blazing Star Ferry, where he lived
upon the lean, or rather picked the bones of the
land. This house, which has lately been pulled
down, was at that time kept by a whimsical old
bachelor, who having in early life been jilted by a
buxom little Dutch damsel, in revenge put up the
sign of a woman without a head, which he called
“The Good Woman,” thereby maliciously insinuating

a horrible libel on the whole sex. Never
man, according to Mr. Acker, who resided about
a quarter of a mile from the “Good Woman,”
never man lived upon so little, or made a suit of
clothes last so long as did our author. Nobody
could exactly tell how he lived, for he neither
begged, borrowed, or stole, nor did he labour with
his hands, except in writing, which he did great
part of the day, deducting the long intervals,
when he sat with pen suspended in his hand,
watching as it were the smoke as it curled from
the landlord's pipe, in a state of perfect “distraction,”
as Mr. Acker expressed it. We ourselves
are of opinion he meant abstraction; but the difference
is not material. It is not our business to
solve the mystery how authors manage to exist in
this world; we mean those who are condemned
to live by thier wits, without the aid of fashionable
friends, fashionable reviewers, and fashionable
readers. We leave the solution to Him who
watches over the fall of a sparrow, and who sent
the ravens to feed the prophet in the wilderness.
There are certain invisible means, inscrutable to
the fat kine, by which the lean kine, among which
we emphatically reckon the class of authors alluded
to, manage to live, and move, and have a being,
as it were in spite of nature and fate. Far be it
from us to draw the veil from over the hallowed
retreats of indigent, unpatronized genius, struggling
with the neglect of the world, and its own
worldly incapacities, and finally, perhaps, reaching
the goal of immortality through the gloomy solitudes
of a prison.

Here our author resided during the remainder
of his days, which space of time comprises almost
twenty years. During all this period, he was absent
but three times, as we have taken the freedom
to suppose, for the purpose of disposing of
his writings; for it is difficult to comprehend what
other business he could have. He formed no intimacy
except with Mr. Acker, whose countenance
as a magistrate was convenient in defending
him against the prying curiosity of the neighbourhood,
and those evil suggestions which mystery,
however innocent and unaffected, is sure to excite.
The only remarkable actions he performed in the
course of this long sojourn among the simple children
of the fields and woods, were killing an
opossum and a rattle snake with sixteen rattles,
the last that ever were seen on the island, either
of which exploits, in the opinion of Squire Acker,
fairly entitles him to a biography. Finally, he
died at the supposed age of fourscore and ten
years, without pain, and without fear, as a blameless
old man should die; and slept not with his
fathers, but among the children of strangers, who
knew not even whence he came.

The younger Mr. Acker, as he is called by his
neighbours, and who is now nearly ninety years
old, has unluckily forgot our author's name; neither

is there any person living who remembers it,
so far as we have been able to ascertain. Though
this must of necessity be a great disappointment
to the curious reader, yet we know not that it is a
circumstance much to be lamented. On the contrary,
we are inclined to believe, that the obscurity,
which in spite of all our researches, still hovers in
misty vagueness over his birth, his life, his family,
and his name, may contribute materially to the
interest and popularity of the present work. Obscurity
is held one of the prime sources of the
sublime, and it is a subject worthy of curious inquiry,
how far the sublimity of a work may depend
upon its author being either entirely unknown, or
only suspected by the public. However this may
be, certain it is, that a detected author, like a detected
criminal, does not stand the best chance of
being admired by his friends. Having now told
all we know of our author, we shall proceed to
account for the manner in which the present work
fell into the hands of the editor, who has lost no time
in giving it—as the genteel phrase is—to the world.

In the course of last summer, there died in the
neighbourhood of the city a very wealthy old
gentleman, whose heirs, according to a pious and
long established custom, quarrelling about the
division of the estate, it was disposed of at public
auction. Among his most valuable possessions,
was a large library containing many rare
books and manuscripts, which being of no use to

the heirs, were sold for what they would bring.
The manuscript whence the following tales have
been selected, was one of these; it was a prime
favourite with the worthy old gentleman who used
to read it to his family with great effect of a long
winter's evening, and it is recorded that not one
of them ever fell asleep on these occasions, except
when they were very tired. If the reader requires
any other proof of the excellence of the manuscript,
he will doubtless find it in a perusal of the
following tales, which are faithfully printed from
the original, with the exception of a few slight
alterations in the spelling, which we have made
on the authority of Mr. Webster's truly valuable
dictionary, a work honourable to this country.
How the deceased old gentleman came by the
manuscript is not exactly known: but Mr. Abraham
Acker has some remote idea of hearing, or
dreaming he heard, our author about a year before
his death, boast with no small degree of
exultation, that he had sold a manuscript work
which cost him only eighteen years labour, for
fifteen silver dollars, to an old gentleman living in
the vicinity of New-York. There can be no
hesitation in believing this must have been the
identical work, a selection from which is now offered
to the public, especially when we assure the
reader that Mr. Acker assured us, that he almost
recollects crossing the ferry about this time with
our author who carried a large bundle of papers
under his arm. This circumstance fastened itself
on his memory, by the phenomenon which accompanied
the old gentleman's return, to wit, the
jingling of his pockets.

Be this as it may, the deceased gentleman placed
almost as high a value upon this acquisition
as if it could be traced in a direct line from a
Coptic monastery in Upper Egypt. Whether this
was owing to its intrinsic value, or to its being
unquestionably unique, must be left to the judgment
of the reader. However, the fortunate possessor
having deceased somewhat more than a
twelvemonth ago, his property as we before premised,
was sold and has passed into the hands
of strangers. The old house was purchased
and pulled down, by a lucky speculator in gas
stock, who began to build a vast wooden palace
for his posterity to sell, but he unluckily failed,
before it was finished, by dipping a little too deep
in a cotton speculation, whereby he got nearly
smothered, and was fain to go back to his honest
calling of a shipwright.

What was most to be regretted however, was
the sale and dispersion of his library, consisting
among other valuables, of souvenirs, magazines,
romances, novels, tales, lying reports of
societies, orations, biographies and poems, all
of the very latest production. This was done by
the authority of persons, whose names we forbear
to drag before the world, although we cannot but

regret that disposition to slight learning, prevalent
in this busy, thriving, and opulent metropolis.
For our humble part we were not so fortunate as
to inherit any thing from our father, but a good
name, but if we had, we would not have sold his
old mansion house, provided he had left one, so
long as we could have kept it without robbing
others of their due. Far less would we have disposed
of those books that bore his venerated name
—those “dead friends,” as the Indians beautifully
describe them, which were the blessing of his leisure,
the fountains of his wisdom, the companions
of his old age, to purchase all the luxuries of modern
frippery. But we beg pardon of all weeping
heirs, and melancholy legatees for this digression.

It was truly mortifying, as showing the uncertain
tenure of immortal fame, to see the treasures of
fashionable literature knocked down for almost
nothing, by the ignorant, unfeeling auctioneer,
who, it was apparent, had no more respect for
books than a Turk. Some one indeed bid off
Miss Edgeworth at a high price, which seemed to
astonish the man of the hammer, who observed
she had been long out of date. “You are mistaken,”
replied the purchaser, “wit, and a keen
observation of life and manners, based on good
sense, can never be out of date, though they may
be out of fashion.” The English annuals were
struck off to a picture virtuoso, who declared his
intention of cutting out the plates, and throwing

the rest away. The American Souvenirs were
knocked on the head by an unlucky observation
from a spruce Englishman, who observed that they
had not cost one tenth as much as “the Keepsake,”
which had been got up at an expense of
eleven thousand guineas. The fortunate purchaser,
of the Keepsake, on hearing this, fancied he
had got possession of a treasure, though he had
only gained the sweepings of English literature,
sanctioned by popular names, and embellished
with a parcel of engravings, from worn out plates.
Don Juan was bought by a young gentleman in
whiskers, who was educating himself for a roue;
and the Corsair, by a black looking, weather beaten,
mysterious person, who was shrewdly suspected of
being one of the gang of pirates, dispersed and
annihilated by the gallant Commodore Porter.
The Loves of the Angels, Little's Poems, and
divers others of the same author, were purchased
for little or nothing, by a middle aged lady, dressed
in the extravagance of the mode, who I afterwards
recognized at the police, as the mistress of
a disorderly house. Another, but staid, grave female
in a plaid cloak secured a bushel of the latest
popular English poetry, for the use of her nursery,
observing that such had been the rapid “developement”
of mind within a few years past, that the
little children turned up their noses at Giles Gingerbread
and Goody Two-Shoes. In short, a
fashionable author, who thought himself sure of
immortality, might here have received a mortifying
lesson of the transitory nature of popular applause,
and sighed over the anticipation of speedy oblivion.
The last and most lamentable of these sacrifices,
was that of two copies of the London
Literary Gazette, and Blackwood's Magazine,
which were bought for six cents a volume, by a
famous grocer, who, comparatively speaking, hath
destroyed more valuable works, in the course of
his business, than were consumed in the Alexandrian
Library.

It may be asked why we ourselves did not appropriate
some of these ineffable varieties. But
we had reasons for declining, which however old
fashioned and obsolete, are not the worst in the
world. We were fain to limit ourselves to the
purchase of the manuscript to which we have
so frequently alluded, for a sum which will
be kept a profound secret. Whether it was so
large as to amount to an imprudency on our part;
or so small as to entitle the work to the scorn of
all fashionable readers, is a mystery between ourselves
and the auctioneer, who hath sworn by his
hammer not to reveal it except to posterity.

Previous to concluding this interesting portion
of our editorial labours, we will pause one moment
in order to anticipate the cavils of certain
critics, who we foresee will be inclined to make
themselves amends for not being able to find fault
with the work itself, without doing violence to

their consciences, by denying the claims of our
author to his own labours. Doubtless they will
insist that there is nothing in the history and character
of our author, or in the scanty information
derived from Mr. Acker, to justify the assumption
of his being capable of inditing tales, displaying a
knowledge of life, and an acquaintance with the
fashionable world, such as is found in the following
work.

But let these gentlemen cavillers, who think
they are marvellously conversant with high life,
because they have read Pelham and Almacks, and
perhaps figured at the tea parties of some rich
broker—let them be quiet as becomes them.
They know no more of fashionable life, than the
authors of these works, or the broker himself; and
may be likened to the mouse who fancied he had
tasted the cream of the cheese, when he had only
nibbled at the rind. Let them be told, and shut
their mouths thereafter for ever, that there is no
place in which a keen observer can attain to a
clearer knowledge of the foibles and peculiarities
of fashionable women, than a fashionable store, or
tip-top milliner's. Where is it that they are so
often found, and where else do they exhibit their
tastes and propensities so frankly? It is there
that their little caprices, their indecision, their extravagances,
and all the changeable silk of their
characters are exhibited without disguise; and it
was doubtless while blowing his cracked flute behind

the counter, that our author attained to that
intimate knowledge as well as nice perception of
character, so agreeably exhibited in the following
work, which from having been written in that paradise
of musquitoes, Staaten Island, at the sign
of the “Good Woman,” he hath sportively called
“Tales of the Good Woman.”

To that class of ill-natured and prying readers,
which is ever finding out personal allusions and
individual characters, in the most innocent generalities,
we will content ourselves with stating, that
our author certainly died at least ten years ago, according
to the testimony of Mr. Acker, who has
some idea of having attended his funeral. This single
fact, we trust, will serve to do away all suspicion
of any allusion to the fashionable society of
the present day, since every body knows that a
very large portion of those who figure as leaders
in the beau monde, at present, were utterly unknown
at that time.