University of Virginia Library

10. CHAP. X.

The steam-boat in which I embarked, as stated
in the last chapter, conveyed us across the East
River to the Jersey shore, without bursting her
boiler, which was considered little less than a miracle,
as there is scarcely a day passes without a
catastrophe of this kind, which is fatal to a dozen
or twenty people. Yet the people go on board
these vessels with as little hesitation as they would
enter their own doors. Indeed, their carelessness
of their own lives is equal to their disregard of
the lives of others, and they encounter the risk of
being scalded to death, with as little hesitation
as they feel in dirking an intimate friend, or burn

ing him on a pile of logs for not drinking.[1] For
my part, I took the precaution previous to my embarkation,
to settle my affairs and make my will.
It proved, however, unnecessary in this instance,
as we were safely landed in the city of Communipaw,
the capital of that state.

The first thing that struck me in roaming about
here waiting for the stage, which was delayed for
the purpose of giving the driver time to get drunk,
was the vast proportion of people upon crutches.
Almost every person I met had lost his feet and
a part of his legs; some at the ancles, some at
the calves, and a few at the knee. On inquiring
of a person who was to be my fellow traveller
the cause of this singularity, he gave me the following
details, than which nothing can more brilliantly
illustrate the manner in which the Sabbath
is kept, or rather profaned, among “these bundling,
gouging, spitting, swearing, dirking, drinking,
blaspheming republicans.”[2]

“You must know, sir,” said my informant,
“that the people of this city and its neighbourhood,
are notorious all over the country for dancing.
Such is their fondness for the amusement, that they
don't know when to stop, and if it happens to be
Saturday night, they are pretty sure to dance till
day-light on Sunday morning, let what will happen.
About three years ago there was a grand
ball given, in which the mayor, aldermen, and all

the fashionable people of the town were present.
Unluckily it happened to be Saturday night, and
the company continued dancing till the clock struck
twelve. But not a soul heard it, they were so busy
in shuffling `hoe corn' and `dig potatoes,' and
if they had, nobody would have abated a single
shuffle. Just as the clock struck, there came in a
little black gentleman, with gold ear-rings, a mahogany
face, and dressed in a full suit of black,
except that he wore dimity breeches.”

“The little Frenchman, by Heaven!” exclaimed
I.

“You shall hear anon,” continued he. “The
little black gentleman cut into a Scots reel without
ceremony, and danced with such extraordinary
vigour and agility, that every body seemed inspired.
The young fellows threw off their coats first,
then their waistcoats, and there is no knowing how
much farther they might have proceeded had not
good manners prevented. The buxom Dutch girls
of Communipaw kicked up their heels, and gamboled
with all the vivacity of young elephants,
and bundling came to be very seriously contemplated.
But it would have done your heart good
to see the fiddler, a gentleman of colour, belonging
to Squire Van Bommel, who gradually got
his fiddle locked fast between his breast and chin,
where he wedged it up with both knees, while his
mouth gradually expanded from ear to ear, as he
played Yankee Doodle as if the d—l was in him.
The little black gentleman was the life and soul

of the party; bowed to every body, danced with
every lady, complimented every body, offered his
box to every body, took snuff with every body, and
sneezed—”

“O! the little Frenchman,” cried I, “I'll bet
a hundred pounds!”

“You shall hear,” continued my companion.
“All was joy, laughter, capering, singing, bundling,
swearing, gouging, dirking, and hilarity, when
by degrees the young damsels and lads began to
find their bare feet coming to the floor, which reminded
them it was time to stop dancing, But it
was too late now. There was a spell upon them,
and they continued to dance away by an irresistible
impulse, till, by-and-by, first went the skin off
the soles of their feet, then the feet themselves.
Still they continued dancing, and the shorter their
legs grew, the higher they capered, and the faster
the fiddler played Yankee Doodle, the black gentleman
vociferating all the while, in concert—

“But how did it happen,” said I, “that the
black gentleman, alias the little Frenchman, did
not lose his feet and legs too?”

“I have not said he didn't yet,” replied
my companion. “But, however, your suggestion
is correct. He kept capering away without
either feet or legs diminishing any more than if
they had been of steel. But no wonder, as you
will find in the sequel. The company continued
to caper and jig it, till the legs of many were entirely
danced away, and it has been asserted that
the fiddler's chin was more than half gone. Nay,
there have been those who do not scruple to affirm
that several heads, without either feet, legs,
or body at all, were seen cutting pigeon wings and
taking the partridge run with all the alacrity imaginable.
But of this there is some contrariety of
opinion.

“Certain it is that the dancing continued with
unabated vigour, the little black gentleman still
setting the example, and the fiddler, having entirely
wore out his fiddle-strings, was sawing away
tooth and nail upon the edge of his fiddle. And
here I must remark a most extraordinary circumstance,
which is that the longer they danced, the
shorter they grew, by reason of their wear and
tear of feet, legs, &c., so that beyond all doubt
had they danced much longer, there would have
been nothing left of them, not even the hair of
their heads. Luckily, however, an old one-eyed
rooster, who sat upon one leg on a pole that lay
across the crotches of two trees, and where they
generally hung up their pigs by the hinder legs—”

“What,” interrupted I, “do they hang pigs in
this country?”

“Yes,” replied my companion, with a sigh.
“But the less we say about that the better. You
will hardly believe it, but they hang them up with
their heads downwards;” and thereupon he took
out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Well
may you blush and weep over the inhumanity of
your countrymen, thought I. The Quarterly shall
hear of this.

“But,” resumed my companion in a hurried
manner, as if anxious to direct my attention from
this horrible cruelty, “let us go back to the old
rooster, who about daylight clapped his wings and
crowed so loud that you might have heard him
across the river. No sooner had the little black
gentleman heard the clapping and crowing, than
he made one bound up the chimney, without making
his bow to the company, or taking leave of six
ladies to whom he had engaged himself to be married
the next morning. He was heard to sneeze
as he ascended the chimney, which thereupon
burst with a terrible explosion of red hot bricks,
which flew about in the sky like great fire-flies,
hissing like serpents. This was succeeded by a
shower of flour of brimstone, which cured all the
people thereabouts of the Scots fiddle. The fiddler
was found two days afterwards with his head
buried in a salt marsh near Communipaw, and his
stumps dancing in the air scraping Yankee Doodle
like a devil incarnate. The dancers all ran home.”

“What,” said I, “without their legs—how
could that be?”

“I can't say,” replied he, “but run they did
as fast as legs could carry them, although, as you
have ocular demonstration, they must have done
it without legs. To conclude, the doctors hearing
of this catastrophe, came over in shoals from
New-York, thinking they would have some profitable
job, but, to their great mortification, found all
their stumps perfectly healed by what seemed to
be the application of a red hot iron, so that they
paid their ferriage across the river and ran the risk
of the bursting of the boiler for nothing. It is observed
that the dancers all continue to smell of
brimstone to this day. The windows of the house
in which the dance took place, sometimes, particularly
during storms of thunder and lightning at
night, seem as if the whole was on fire, and
some have said they saw the little black gentleman
dancing there surrounded by old women on
broomsticks. This is doubtful; but certain it is
that the old one-eyed rooster was killed the following
christmas night in a battle royal between
the Harsimusites and the Hobokenites, in which
the former were worsted.”

“I suppose,” said I, “this cured them of dancing
on Sunday mornings?”

“Not in the least,” replied he. “These very
people you see upon crutches, are eternally jigging
it and frisking their tails. You shall see.”

So he began whistling Yankee Doodle, and in

the space of five minutes, at least thirty people,
without a single leg between them, gathered round
us dancing most incontinently. I turned in disgust
from this incorrigible race of impious republicans,
whom the loss of legs cannot restrain from
a breach of the Sabbath, and who persevere in
their enormities even in despite of miracles, as the
Quarterly says. But my reflections were interrupted
by the arrival of the stage, the driver being
at length “prime bang up,” that is to say, as
drunk as a lord.

In the course of my travels, I have often reflected
on the causes of that universal and inveterate
propensity to drunkenness, which is the characteristic
of this people, and the result is, that it is another
of the delectable offspring of the turbulent
spirit of democracy. Nothing is more certain than
that a people will be restrained in proportion to
the restraints under which they labour. In proportion
to the freedom they enjoy, will be the freedom
of their indulgences. It is only by taking
away the freedom of action, and the means of obtaining
these indulgences, that you can make the
vulgar either tolerably religious, or decently moral.
The right of self-government is another word for
the freedom from all moral and religious restraints,
and it is a clear deduction to say, that a man who
don't honour the king will seldom fear his Maker.
Again—the consciousness of freedom generates
among the vulgar, and all free people may be called

vulgar, a certain degree of impudence, a hardy
confidence which carries a man above those salutary
restraints which the opinion and influence of society
impose upon mankind. Lastly, where a
large portion of the people can earn a superfluity,
above the wants of themselves and families, they
will be almost certain to devote their substance to
riot and debauchery.

It is thus with this wretched spawn of democracy.
Boasting, as they do, of the right of making
their own laws, they naturally claim and exercise
the right of breaking them whenever they please.
Being free from the salutary restraints of European,
and Oriental despotism, they naturally throw off
all restraint; having plenty of money beyond the
necessary wants of life, they naturally become
wasteful; and feeling themselves equal to any
and every man they meet, they naturally and inevitably
become insolent and intemperate. It would
be considered a proof of a most mean and abject
spirit, for a genuine republican to show his respect
for any society whatever, by behaving with decency
and keeping himself sober.

Such being the case, happy thrice happy are
those who have no voice in making the laws, for
they will be the more likely to obey them. Happy,
and four times happy are they, who never taste
the unhallowed cup of freedom, for they will not
be ruined by the absence of all restraints. Happy,
and six times happy, are the people who have no

taste of that fatal equality which generates a vulgar
confidence that disdains all subserviency to
rank, dress, and equipage—and happy above all
happy people are those, who, being stinted in the
means of procuring even the necessaries of life,
will never be able to indulge in enervating pleasures,
or the excesses of intemperance.