University of Virginia Library

ADDENDA.

All persons who have occasion to address
themselves to the public, find out, sooner or later,
the advantage of putting their hearers, or readers,
in a good-humour. If a lawyer can induce a jury
to laugh during his exordium, his point is half
gained already; and if a debutante on the political
rostrum can produce a like effect, by a well-told
anecdote, or a witty repartee, his election may
be considered almost sure.

We confess to our kind readers who have travelled
with us thus far (and to none else shall it be
revealed) that we have put forth “the Kentuckian,”
with all his sins upon his head, with some such intention
of betraying them into a smile of good-humour
with us. We trust, therefore, that his adventures
will be taken as nothing more than our introductory
story in this our maiden effort to get into their
good graces. This course was thought the more
necessary by a southern aspirant, as there is evidently
a current in American literature, the fountain-head
of which lies north of the Potomac, and
in which a southern is compelled to navigate up
the stream if he jumps in too far south.

These views may in some measure, perhaps,
apologize for the author's having chosen such a
hero, and such a location, in preference to the Cavalier
Refugees of Jamestown, of his own loved

native soil, around whose jovial memories there
lives such a rich store of traditionary lore, and so
many manuscript relics of antiquity fast crumbling
into oblivion relics want of some competent
adventurer, to weave them into such a shape as
would at once preserve the general features of
historic truth, and throw around these venerable
relics the richer and more attractive hues of romance.
For want of a better and an abler pen, the
humble author has made an attempt to sketch the
lives and manners of these early cavaliers of Virginia,
to preserve, before it is too late, some faint
outlines of these refugees from whom are descended[1]
so many of the illustrious men who have
figured so largely upon this new theatre of human
action and experiment, and from whom were likewise
descended the fox-hunting, horse-racing, and
jovial race of Virginians. These too are passing
away, and will soon be, like their more chivalrous
sires, food for the historian and the novelist.

Should the “Kentuckian in New-York” be received,
therefore, in the same good-humour and
good feeling in which the author makes this his
first embarrassed, and perhaps awkward, bow before
the public, he will very soon lay before them
“The Recluse of Jamestown, a Tale of the Early
Cavaliers of Virginia.”