 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
THE LITERARY GIRL.
The Boston young lady has arrived
in New York. I mean the real literary
young lady—the Siege of Troy girl.
She grew up in Boston and graduated
at Vassar College last year. She wears
eye glasses, and is full of wisdom.
She scans Homer, rattles the verb
“lipo” like the multiplication tables,
sings Anacreon to the old Greek melodies, and puts up
her hair after the Venus of Milo. There is no end to
her knowledge of the classical dictionary, and when it
comes to Charles Lamb or Sidney Smith—who never
wrote much, but got the credit of every good joke in
England—she can say their jokes as a Catholic says
his beads. If you ask her how she likes babies, she
answers:
“`How?' Well, as Charles Lamb remarked, `I like
'em b—b—boiled.”'
Ask her anything, and she will always lug in a
quotation from some pedantic old fool like Dr. Johnson
or Swift or Jack Bunsby, just to show you that
she is up in literature, and that you are—green.
Not a single original idea, but one constant “as
Socrates said,`' or “as Pluto remarked,” or “as Diogenes
observed.”
Yesterday one of our absurd and ignorant New
and suggests this wretched paraphrase on Miss Boston's
language:
“Do you love music, Miss Julia?” asked Jack Astor.
“Well, `yes,' as the poet observed.”
“How many times have you been engaged since Christmas?”
“`Six,' as Mr. Daball pathetically remarked in his arithmetic.”
“Do you dance the round dances?” continued Mr. Astor.
“`No,”' said Julia, and then she remarked, “as the Lord Mayor
of London quietly observed as John Ruskin asked him for the loan
of four dollars.”
The Boston girl is so well posted that she wins
triumphs over you by a sort of literary “bluff” game.
She attributes sharp quotations to distinguished men,
and, conscious that you dare not question their authenticity,
of course she “bluffs” you right down.
When you go to your home and read up, and find
she has really “bluffed” you, of course you are too
genteel to mention it, and so this Boston girl goes on
pluming herself at the expense of New York gallantry.
Yesterday the Boston girl was at it again. Somebody
asked her who was the oldest, Methuselah or
Deuteronomy?
“Why, Barnes, the commentator, says `Deuteronomy
came before Numbers'—and of course he's too old
to be computed.”
Now, I knew she lied, but still I had a doubt
about it. I didn't want to break out and say Deuteronomy
came after Numbers, and then have those
miserable Boston fellows say, with that terrible upward
inflection, “How are you, Eli Perkins?” O!
no. But when I got home I sent over to a gentleman
on Fifth Avenue, who I understood had a
enough, just my luck, that miserable, pedantic, spectacled
Boston girl was right. The fact is, they are always
right, and that is what produces so much profanity in
New York. Then how they can show off their Biblical
knowledge and bug-and-spiderology!
The other night Miss Boston took off her eye-glasses
and asked me three square catechism questions which
displayed a Biblical knowledge that made my head
swim.
“Who is the shortest man mentioned in the Bible,
Mr. Perkins?” she commenced.
“The shortest man?” said I. “Why, I know. It
was Nehemiah or Mr. What's-his-name, the Shuhite. It
was—”
“No, sir, it was Peter,” interrupted the Boston girl.
“He carried neither gold nor silver in his purse.
“Who was the straightest man?”
“Was it Joseph,” I asked, “when he didn't fool
with Mrs. Potiphar?”
“No, it was Joseph, afterwards, when they made a
ruler of him.
“But, now, tell me, Eli, what man in the Bible felt
the worst?”
“Was it Job, Miss Boston?”
“No, sir; it was Jonah. He was down in the
mouth for days.”
It was this same Boston girl who years ago said
Cain never could sit down on a chair,” and when
they asked her “Why?” she said: “Why, because he
wasn't Abel.”
Then one of our wicked New York fellows got
mad, and asked Miss Adams, “Why is it impossible
to stop the Connecticut River?”
“Is it owing to the extreme heat and density of
the atmosphere?” asked Miss Adams.
“No, but because—why, b-e-c-a-u-s-e—dam it you
can't!
“And speaking of rivers, Miss Adams, do you know
why there will never be any chance for the wicked
to skate in the next world?”
“Because the water will be too warm and thin?”
“No; but because how in H—H—Harlem can
they?”
If you sit down by this Boston girl and don't
behave like a minister, she don't get mad and pout.
O! no. She says, “Mr. Perkins, shall I repeat you a
few lines from Saxe?” and then she goes on—
I don't like men's arms on my chair.
Be still! if you don't stop this nonsense,
I'll get up and leave you—so there!
And when you take out a solitaire ring, or try “to
seal the vow,” or something of that sort, as New
York fellows always try to do with almost every.
Boston girl who comes here, she looks up blushingly,
and, in the language of Swinburne, poetically remarks:
Get up on your own chair again—
Can't you seem as if nothing had happened?
I ne'er saw such geese as you men!
| Eli Perkins (at large) | |