University of Virginia Library

Besides eating, and the various other resources for
passing the time in New York, there are various intellectual
delights of most rare diversity. Exhibitions of
fat oxen to charm the liberal minded amateur—Lord Byron's

helmet—and Grecian dogs, whose wonderful capacity
fully attests to the astonished world, that the
march of mind has extended even to the brute creation,
insomuch that the difference between instinct and
reason, is now scarcely perceptible to the nicest observer,
and it is the opinion of many of our learned
men, that a dog of the nineteenth century is considerably
wiser than a man of the sixteenth. There are also
highly amusing methods of drawing teeth, teaching
grammar and tachigraphy, as well as all sorts of sciences
and languages, by methods and machinery, which
are pretended to be original, but which may be found
in the famous Captain Lemuel Gulliver's voyage to Laputa.
There are moreover an infinite number of highly
diverting inventions for improving the condition of mankind,
and teaching them economy and industry, by enabling
them to live without either at others' expense.
There are taverns, where amateurs may drink and
smoke all the morning, without offence to man or beast.
There is a famous musician, who can imitate the barking
of dogs on his instrument, so as to deceive a dog
himself, and whose “lady” screams exactly like a cat;
so that they make the divinest harmony that ever was
heard. There are the ladies' bonnets and curls, which
are worth travelling a hundred miles to see; and their
—what shall we call them?—bishops or pads, which
are worth a voyage to the moon, to behold in all their
majestic rotundity. There is also—no, there will be,
as we are enabled to state positively on the best authority—there
will be an exhibition, which is better worth
the attention of people of real refined taste, than all
those just enumerated put together. The gentleman
has politely favoured us with a programme of his evening's
exhibition, with permission to publish it, and to
announce to the world of fashion, that he will be here
on or about the first of June.