 | Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques |  |
SQUIBOB ABHORS STREET INTRODUCTIONS.
No matter of local interest having occurred, worthy the
pen of history, since the return of the “Congressional
Rifles” from their target excursion at San Mateo, I propose
to devote a few moments to the reprobation of an uncomfortable
custom prevalent in this city, to an alarming extent,
and which if persisted in, strikes me as calculated to destroy
public confidence, and, to use an architectmal metaphor, shake
the framework of society to its very piles. I allude to the
pernicious habit which every body seems to have adopted, of
making general, indiscriminate and public introductions.
You meet Brown on Montgomery street: “Good morning,
Brown;” “How are you, Smith?” “Let me introduce you
to Mr. Jones”—and you forthwith shake hands with a seedy
individual, who has been boring Brown for the previous hour,
for a small loan probably—an individual you never saw before,
see again. Being naturally of an arid disposition, and perhaps
requiring irrigation at that particular moment, you
unguardedly invite Brown, and your new friend Jones of
course, to step over to Parry and Batten's, and imbibe.
What is the consequence? The miscreant Jones introduces
you to fifteen more equally desirable acquaintances, and in
two minutes from the first introduction there you are, with
seventeen newly formed friends, all of whom “take sugar in
their'n,” at your expense.
This is invading a man's quarters with a vengeance. But
this is not the worst of it. Each gentleman to whom you
have been introduced, wherever you may meet thereafter, in
billiard room, tenpin alley, hot house or church, introduces
you to somebody else, and so the list increases in geometrical
progression, like the sum of money, which Colman in his
arithmetic informs us the gentleman paid for the horse, with
such a number of nails in his shoes—a story which in early
childhood I remember to have implicitly believed. In this
manner you form a crowd of acquaintances, of the majority
of whom you recollect neither names nor faces, but being continually
assailed by bows and smiles on all sides, from unknown
gentlemen, you are forced, to avoid the appearance of
rudeness, to go bowing and smirking down the street, like a
distinguished character in a public procession, or one of those
graven images at Tobin & Duncan's, which are eternally
wagging their heads with no definite object in view. This
custom is peculiarly embarrassing in other respects. If you
names, and a decided idiosyncrasy for forgetting faces, you
are continually in trouble as to the amount of familiarity
with which to receive the salutation of some unknown individual
to whom you have been introduced, and who persists
in remembering all about you though you have utterly forgotten
him.
Only the other day, at the Oriental Hotel, I met an
elderly gentleman, who bowed to me in the most pleasant
manner as I entered the bar-room. I wasn't quite sure, but
I thought I had been introduced to him at Pat Hunt's; so,
walking up, I seized him familiarly by one hand, and slapping
him on the shoulder with the other, exclaimed, “How are
you old cock?” I shall not soon forget his suspicious glance,
as muttering, “Old Cock, sir!” he turned indignantly away;
nor my confusion at learning shortly after, that I had thus
irreverently addressed the Rev. Aminadab Sleek, Chairman
of the “Society for Propagating the Heathen in California,”
to whom I had brought a letter of introduction from Mrs.
Harriet Bitcher Stowe. On the same day I met and addressed,
with a degree of distant respect almost amounting to
veneration, an individual whom I afterwards ascertained to
be the husband of my washerwoman—a discovery which I
did not make until I had inquired most respectfully after his
family, and promised to call at an early day to see them.
There are very few gentlemen in San Francisco, to whom
I should dislike to be introduced, but it is not to gentlemen
alone, unhappily, to whom this introduction mania is confined.
barber, and your shoemaker, deem it their duty to introduce
you to all their numerous and by no means select circle of
acquaintance. An unfortunate friend of mine, T—hf—l
J—s, tells me that, stopping near the Union Hotel the
other day to have his boots blacked by a Frenchman, he was
introduced by that exile, during the operation, to thirty-eight
of his compatriots, owing to which piece of civility he is now
suffering with a cutaneous disorder, and has been vi donc-ed,
icid, and g—d ever since, to that degree that he hates the
sight of a French roll, and damns the memory of the great
Napoleon.
My own circle of acquaintance is not large; but if I had
a dollar for every introduction I have received during the
last six weeks I should be able to back up the Baron in one
of his magnificent schemes, or purchase the entire establishment
of the Herald office.
But I have said quite enough to prove the absurdity of
indiscriminate introductions. Hoping, therefore, that you
will excuse my introduction of the subject, and that Winn
won't make an advertisement out of this article,
I remain, as ever, yours faithfully.
| Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques | |