University of Virginia Library

17. LETTER XVII.

[Major Downing.—We were just preparing an article, going
to show that we doubted the authenticity of the remarks of our
friend of the Portland Courier, who claims to be the only publisher
of Major Downing's Letters, by stating what we before
asserted, that we believed ourselves his only publishers, when
by due course of the mail we received the following letter from
the Major himself. We find that we, like our friend in Portland,
were equally hoodwinked by this astute politician, who
led us, by inuendo at least, to believe we individually were his
exclusive publishers; and now it turns out that he, like other
politicians of the day, dealt out his notions to suit latitudes—
`hogs' fat to one, and fresh butter to another.' We but do the
Major common justice in believing that his letters originally
published in this paper (now to the number of about twenty,
and some pretty considerable long ones), embracing his invaluable
Bank Report, contributed mainly, and we had almost said
exclusively, to his present celebrity. We have no other interest,
however, than to see in the event of a publication, that our
hero may not have occasion to say he has been shorn of his
fame by his friends, in publishing his `hogs' lard' and not his
`fresh butter' letters.—Eds.]

Major Downing acknowledges all his juvenile Productions—His
Apology for writing better now than
formerly.

I See by the public papers you are about to
print my letters to you—and you say I have
written no other letters except those I writ to
you. Why, my good old friend, if I had

never quit Downingville, and never looked
beyend your little Courier, I should never
have been so great a man as I now be. Suppose
Mr. Van Buren had never done any
thing out of Kinderhook, do you think he
would be as great a man as he is now? And
the Gineral too—suppose he had stuck to the
Hermitage, do you suppose he would be President?
No, no—this is a pretty considerable
of a country; and what suits one part of it
don't another—and as soon as I saw what a
shocking big place New-York was, says I,
`Now I'll do more than write for Portland;' and
as I knowed my old friend Dwight had about
as big and round a head as most folks in the
printin line, and once a friend is always so, I
took to write to him too; and you and he are
the only ones I ever writ a word to. I didn't
trouble you about many things I thought best
to write to him about; because you don't
know as much your way about some things,
as you do about others. And I got so mixed
up with great public affairs, that you wouldn't
know no more about what I was at, than
if I had got the Gineral to write you in
Latin.

Now, if you want to print my letters in a
book. you had better git my old friend Dwight

to give you all the letters I writ to him too;
for, to tell you the truth, when I writ to him,
I laid out a good deal of pains; and it was
jest like goin to market—you know what
suits Portland won't suit York; hogs' lard
will do for one, but the other won't take nothin
but fresh butter to fry their fish with.

Little and Holden, of Philadelphy wanted
to print my letters to Mr. Dwight, and they
say they will give pictures with them, on eny
most every page, and have my likeness, and
the Gineral's, and Mr. Van Buren's, and
Squire Biddle's, and all the Downingville
folks too. If you can manage with them and
Mr. Dwight, and git them altogether, it would
be better, and then all the kounterfits would
stand no chance.

But you can do as you please about that;
only I now tell you, that my letters to Mr.
Dwight are, if any thing, a leetle better than
my letters to you; and folks think more on
'em than they do of any others I ever writ;
and if it warn't for them I might have been
Major Jack Downing to be sure, but I would
not have been