University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The first requisite on arriving at either Ballston or
Saratoga, is to procure lodgings. In the choice of a
house, the traveller will do well to consult the newspapers,
to see if the landlord has a proper conception of
the art of puffing himself, without which, we affirm without
fear of contradiction, no man has any legitimate
claim to fashionable notoriety. A fellow who has not
interest to raise a puff, must be something more than a

swindler or a murderer. We are aware that certain
wiseacres, with less money than even wit, and less
knowledge of the world than a bookworm, have been
pleased on divers occasions to ridicule this system of
puffs and recommendations, as exclusively appertaining
to quackery in medicine. But let us tell them to their
teeth, that a system applicable to quack doctors, has
been found by actual experience, to answer just as well
for quack lawyers, quack parsons, quack politicians,
quack philosophers, quack poets, quack novelists, quack
publicans, and quacks of all sorts, sizes, dimensions,
qualities, appurtenances, and pretensions. “Let them
laugh that win,” said the renowned Pedagogus who
once compiled a book in which he made the unparalleled
and gigantic improvement of spelling words as they
are pronounced, instead of pronouncing them as they
are spelled. He got all the schoolmasters—we beg
pardon—principals of gymnasia, polytechnic, philotechnic,
chirographic, and adelphic academies, to recommend
his book, by selling it at a great discount.
Honest Thomas Dilworth forthwith hid his powdered
head, especially when in addition to this, upwards of
three hundred great politicians, who were ex-officio,
scholars and philosophers, recommended the book as a
most valuable work, distinctly marking the progress of
mind, and the astonishing strides of the gigantic spirit of
the age. All the rational people then living, of whom
however there were not above a hundred millions, laughed
most consumedly at the sage Pedagogus and his certificates;
but he only replied, “Let them laugh that
win.” The sage Pedagogus in the course of twenty
years, sold upwards of six million copies of his book,
and made his fortune. Which was the wiser, the sage
Pedagogus or the people that laughed at him?

Therefore it is we say again, and again, repeating it
three thousand times to all who will listen, go to the
house that has the greatest number of puffs to its back,
although it may, and doubtless does sometimes happen
that they are indited by some honest man of the quill,
who has settled his bill by bartering his praise for the
landlord's pudding.