The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 No.
5, May 22, 1858, by Stephen H. Branch

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Title: Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 No. 5, May 22, 1858

Author: Stephen H. Branch

Release Date: May 22, 2015 [EBook #49020]

Language: English

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                                 CONTENTS
                                                          PAGE

  LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH.                                 2

  LET THE FIREMEN STAND TO THEIR GUNS!                       3

  LAMENTATIONS OF A GRAHAMITE.                               7

  FOR AMERICAN YOUTH TO READ, AND FOR THIEVES AND
    TRAITORS TO PONDER.                                     12




[Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.

Volume I.—No. 5.] SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1858. [Price 2 Cents.]




      Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

                          STEPHEN H. BRANCH,

 In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for
                  the Southern District of New York.




Life of Stephen H Branch.


very silly, as ointment will soon cure it.” He said: “I knew a man
who applied ointment five years, and his itch got worse every year.”
This was a bomb that quickened my pulsation. I then said: “Perhaps
you have got the salt rheum, and I advise you to consult Dr. Plympton
immediately.” He said: “I’ll go now, and I want you to go with me.”
As Plympton was the Superintendent of my itch, I did not know what
response to make. But as he might be absent, or if at home, determined
to remain without while Terry went in, I at length said: “Well, I will
go with you,” and over we went to the Doctor’s, who, to my great joy,
was not in. I then told Terry that I must go to my room, and get my
lessons, but that he mast remain until Dr. Plympton returned, and he
said he would. Terry rushed into my room in about an hour, a shade
paler than a ghost, and exclaimed:—“Branch! the Doctor says that I
must have caught the itch from you, as it is precisely like yours.” If
a cannon ball had entered the window, it could not have thrilled my
frame like the disclosures of Plympton, which I regarded as safe with
him as myself. But the old cat was out, and I had to face her sharp
claws. So I told poor Terry the whole story, and that if he had not
locked the door, and forced me to sleep with him, he would not have
caught the itch. He mildly chided me for not disclosing that I had the
itch, as, if I had, he certainly would have unlocked the door with much
pleasure, and let me out. But he forgave me, and asked me to room with
him, so that we could apply the itch ointment together, before the same
fire, and talk the matter over, and compare symptoms, and sympathize
with each other, and eat and sleep together with impunity, and read
distinguished itch authors, and go to Dr. Plympton’s together, until we
got cured. I told Terry that if we did all that, we would so thoroughly
inocculate each other with the itch, that all the doctors of the globe
could not wrench it from our blood, and that we would transmit the
itch to our posterity for ten thousand years, and then it would not
be entirely out of the system. Terry looked amazed, and said he felt
faint, and called for gin and water, and stared like an

  Egyptian Daddy,
  Or Tiemann Granny,
  Or Peter Mummy,
  Or Edward Sonny,
  Some five thousand years old,
  Whose wills were never sold,
  Nor their offices for gold,
  As we oft have been told;
  Who loved their constituents
  Far better than stimulants,
  Or their sons and brothers,
  And a good many others.
  O, fiddle-de-dee,
  Ye Coopers three,
  You’ll not cheat me,
  No, sirs-ree,
  While I’m free,
  As you’ll see![pointing-hand symbol]

And Terry said he hoped I would excuse him, as he felt nervous, and
would like to go to bed, and I bade him good night, and went to see
Plympton, and assured him that if he told the students I had the itch,
it would mortify my feelings, and spread, and terrify all Cambridge,
and I might be mobbed, and he most solemnly vowed that he would make no
further disclosures. And I returned to the College, and saturated my
body with ointment, and retired, and sweat, and scratched all night,
and did not close my weary eyes until the Cambridge rooster crowed.

 (To be continued to our last loan.)




Let the Firemen Stand to their Guns!

 _And Never Surrender their Glorious Volunteer System to the Corrupt
 Politicians, and with it their Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund._


We wrote and published the following document in the _New York
Herald_ one year before we opened our batteries against George W.
Matsell’s alienage. But it is more appropriate now than in 1854, as
the enthusiastic champions of a Paid Fire Department are inclosing
and about to overwhelm the adversaries of that fatal system, like the
allied armies the great Napoleon at Waterloo. Although we had written
the Annual and Special Fire Reports of Alfred Carson in 1851, ‘2, and
‘3, yet we wrote and published this document without his consultation,
as he was in _Troy_, New York, when it appeared in the _Herald_;
but when he read it in the cars between Albany and New York, he was
delighted with it, as he informed us on his arrival in this city. The
Firemen will perceive that it was written soon after the destruction
of Jenning’s Clothing Store in Broadway, and the loss of human life;
and that we hurl back the ungenerous charges of almost the universal
press of New York, that the firemen were a gang of thieves, because
some cheap and scorched and wet clothing was placed over the chilly and
mangled and dying firemen by their weeping comrades on that mournful
occasion, and found on their dead bodies in the City Hospital.

But read, Firemen, read, and unite to a man against all who would
destroy the _Volunteer Fire System of New York_, which is the best
ever devised since the forests and Indians yielded to civilization and
freedom.


_From the New York Herald of May 14, 1854._

FIREMEN OF NEW YORK:—The columns of almost every public journal are
closed against you. The hand of almost every editor is uplifted to
strike you down. The scurvy politicians, to a man, are against you,
and the insurance corporations are spending their money freely to
distract and subvert your organization, for the first time since the
Indians transmitted their fire department to the pale faces. And why
this unhallowed alliance of the press, politicians, and insurance
corporations, for your demolition? I will tell you. The press would
blot out Alfred Carson, because he dared attack them, and silence
their base libels on his good name; the corrupt politicians would bury
yourselves and Carson in one common ruin, because you have driven
their Aldermanic cronies back to their dreary abodes of reflection
and remorse, and the biting neglect of meritorious citizens; and the
insurance companies have secretly united to destroy you, because you
and your predecessors have been so kind and true to them and their
ancestors for one or two centuries. Ingratitude is of rare occurrence
among honorable men, but from soulless corporations it is to be
expected, although they are composed of creatures who profess to have
souls.

A paid fire department is the ostensible cry of the press; but your
chastisement is their leading motive, because you have clung like
brothers to your Chief, against their maledictions. Their first object
is to render you obnoxious with the people. And how would they effect
this? Not by honorable means, but by branding you indiscriminately
as thieves, even while some of you are imploring, in the name of a
humane God, to be extricated from burning ruins, and when the thrilling
cries of your deceased comrades could be heard in their editorial
closets; and, when extricated, (some dead, and others apparently in
their last gasp,) these editors send you, editorially, to the hospital
or to Greenwood, as a gang of worthless thieves. They thus degrade
and lacerate the bleeding hearts of your distracted kindred; and, to
make sure of their victims, living and dead, they devise a hellish
plot to entrap your noble Chief Engineer to testify against your
departed companions, whose testimony before the Coroner’s Jury, was
most shamefully perverted by almost every press in the city. And these
editors do all this to operate on the people, and in favor of a paid
fire department.

Firemen, you do not merit this degradation and this cruel persecution
from the press, (the safety of whose costly establishments you watch
with such sleepless vigilance,) simply because you have conscientiously
testified your undeviating devotion to your Chief, who has shared
your perils for so many years, while those who would degrade and
destroy you, are sweetly reposing on feather beds, and making glorious
dividends from your gratuitous and perilous labors.

The editors prate about the thievish propensities of firemen, as though
there were no thieves among the editors; but these editors must be a
most infernal set of scamps from their glowing accounts of each other.
And the editors prognosticate no more thefts if the firemen are only
paid good fat salaries, and are called brigadiers, or brigade firemen.
These brigadiers must come direct from Heaven, if there be not, here
and there, a devil among them. Louis Napoleon elected himself Emperor
through his fire brigades, and other similar organizations; and
Matsell, backed by a large portion of the press and the politicians,
may have some mischievous game in view, for he is in his shirt sleeves
for a fire brigade.—Brigadier Matsell! How that would sound! And a
Brigadier of two Departments, viz.: the fire and the police. O, there’s
much in that. Did not Matsell once attempt to wear a white fireman’s
cap? and did not Anderson make him take it off? And did not Matsell
order a general alarm at the fire in Forsyth street the other day? Oh,
firemen, why will you repose on a volcano?

Much is said by the press of the independence of the police, under
its present organization. But does not Matsell report the trembling
policemen for misdemeanor to the Mayor, Recorder, and City Judge, whose
action is final in their removal? This power, in the hands of Matsell,
is a lash, and enables him, in connection with his captains and
lieutenants, to control the city. How easy for a police captain, under
instructions from Matsell, to silence the clamors of their political
opponents at the polls, and to incarcerate, (in the Tombs or station
houses, until the election is over, and the votes are “satisfactorily”
counted,) under the pretext of disturbance, all those who dared oppose
Matsell’s candidates, and the candidates of Matsell’s friends among the
press and the politicians. And if we had another powerful political
organization, in the form of a paid fire department, or Napoleonic Fire
Brigade, that would harmonize in its action with the police department,
and with the leading politicians, and with the press, and with the
insurance and other corporations, what would become of the right of
practical suffrage in the city of New York? It would exist only in name.

With power equally distributed among the nations of Europe, there would
be no cause for war. Nicholas thinks he can resist all Europe in arms:
hence the present war. What mainly preserves the union of the States
is the equality of representation of States in the American Senate,
through which the reserved rights of the States are chiefly protected.
And what will preserve the city of New York from conflagration, and
best protect the ballot-box, and promote the best interests of the
city, will be for the press to be far less grasping in its desires
for universal power, through its advocation of, and its subsequent
intimate connection with, the leading officers of dangerous political
organizations, which must ultimately result in their absorption of the
right of suffrage, and perhaps in the destruction of the city itself.
Let the press and the public organizations studiously move in their
respective spheres, like the States and the General Government,—a
serious collision, or too friendly intimacy, being equally fatal to
both, and to all concerned.

The Press has power enough, and quite as much as the people can safely
allow them. The public corporations have more power than is consistent
with the public safety, and the purity and exercise of the elective
franchise. But I repeat, that with a police department, and paid fire
department, and other public corporations, and the press, all united in
a specified object, God have mercy on the city of New York. Farewell,
then, to the right of suffrage in this city. The paid firemen and
the paid policemen, openly or tacitly sustained by the press, would
utterly block up and control the passages leading to the ballot-boxes,
permitting (as many of the police do now) only those to vote who could
give the countersign. This fearful consolidation of power in the first
American city might lead to the most deplorable results to the whole
country. We have not existed eighty years as a Republic, which is a
very brief period in the silent and trackless footsteps of centuries.
The American eagle might fall to-morrow from his projecting cliff,
never to rise. Rome ruled, and finally destroyed the Roman Empire. So
with Athens and Alexandria, and other ancient cities. Paris, through
political organizations, rules France. These associations, controlled
by a bold, reckless, and accomplished leader, can make France a
republic to-day, and a despotism to-morrow. London, through her public
corporations, which were gradually stolen from the people, controls the
British empire, on whose vast possessions the sun never sets. And why
should not New York, with similar organizations, and controlled by a
crafty, irresponsible, unscrupulous, and unbridled press, ultimately
reduce the Whole country to despotism and degrading vassalage? Some of
our leading and most honorable statesmen will tell you that the city
of New York controls the national conventions of either party, and
the national politics, through half a dozen bloated political scamps,
located in this city and Albany.

Firemen of New York, and other citizens, are you prepared to incur
these perils? If not, arise and resist the superhuman efforts to
disgrace and destroy you! Grasp and hold with giant strength the
little you have left of the right of suffrage;—cling, with undying
firmness and affection, to your noble organization; resist the attempts
to saddle this tax-ridden city with an additional tax of nearly one
million of dollars, for the support of a paid fire department, and
avert the possible contingency that some mushroom scoundrel may, at
no remote day, haughtily dispense the curses of monarchy or unlimited
despotism on the ruins of your country!

A paid fire department, composed of a limited number of hired
mercenaries, could not protect this city so effectually as a voluntary
system. It could be done in the cities of Europe, where the habitations
are composed of bricks, granite, marble, and other substances
impervious to fire, but not in New York, where almost every edifice is
a pile of shavings, or combustible matter. Moreover, hired civilians
are the same as hired soldiers. Both work for pay, and not for public
utility and renown. But the volunteer firemen of New York are as
zealous and courageous as the soldiers of the Revolution, while paid
firemen would evince the slothfulness and cowardice of the British in
that memorable contest. Any man contending for liberty, and his wife
and children, can easily rend to fragments three cowardly mercenary
combatants, and a volunteer fireman of New York, panting for deeds of
valor, and the love and respect of his fellow men, can effect more than
half a dozen paid lazzaroni, who go to their perilous task as slaves go
to the field.

For years the press of New York has disgusted and insulted the
firemen, by striving to make the people believe that the police were
more efficient at fires than the firemen; and most of these puffs are
written at Matsell’s and the Captains’ offices. We now begin to see the
motive of this, which was two-fold. First, to make the police system
popular with the people—and it has required an immense deal of puffing
to make it even tolerable with the people. And, secondly, to prepare
the people for another police organization in the form of a paid fire
department. We shall not recur to the past, but will recur to the
future files of the press, and we will venture the prediction that, ere
many days, it will be publicly announced that poor Matsell has either
broken his thigh at a fire, or had his coat burned entirely from his
back, or that he has saved the lives of seventy-five policemen, by
ordering them down stairs just as the fatal crash was about to come;
or, fancying himself Chief Engineer, he has actually struck a general
alarm, as in Forsyth street. Or it may be announced that Captains
Brennan, Leonard, or some other daring policemen, have quenched a
tolerably large conflagration before the firemen arrived; and that, at
the same terrific fire, they saved the lives of several men, women, and
children, at the imminent risk of losing their own valuable lives.

This base stuff, and these monstrous lies, which daily fill the
columns of the Press, concocted by the Police Department as early and
valuable news, may have rendered the Police Department a little more
tolerable with the people, but, at the same time, it has created a
breach and a deadly hatred between the policemen and the firemen that
will not be effaced while the present race of editors shall exist.
And if they would atone for the mischief they have thus created, and
would have more friendly relations subsist between the Police and Fire
Departments, the sooner they stop such disgusting nonsense the better
for them, and for the city at large.

  STEPHEN H. BRANCH.

May 14, 1854.

And now, firemen, be vigilant, or you are lost. You are surrounded by
spies and internal foes, who talk in favor of the Volunteer System, and
yet in ambush are toiling unceasingly against it. The Fire Department
swarms with these hypocrites, who are mostly politicians, and employed
to stab your Volunteer System by the chief robbers of the politicians,
who desire to strangle the rights of the people, and rob and oppress
them with taxation, through two such overshadowing political
organizations as the Fire and Police Departments.




Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1858.




LAMENTATIONS OF A GRAHAMITE.


At the advent of Homœopathy a physician said: “There, Branch, take one
drop every hour, and if you feel a twitch in the arms, or fingers, or
toes, describe your electric thrills as accurately as possible, and
let me see your notes when we meet again.” The anticipated twitches
in the far extremities alarmed us, lest our heart might get a slight
twitch, and we be very suddenly twitched into the grim abode of
withered skeletons. We were eating Graham bread at this time with
Horace Greeley, in Barclay street, and averaged about eight loaves a
day between us, exclusive of the mush and stewed apples. An allopathic
physician had assured us that all our fat was gone, save a small chunk
near the spleen, and Horace warned us to take no medicine, but to duck
our carcase every day, which would soon bring to the surface all the
indiscretions of early years, as he had long averaged two baths a day,
which produced two hundred boils, of which only twenty-eight remained.
So, on a winter’s morning, about five o’clock, we entered a little
Egyptian mummy canvas perpendicular box, (before the introduction of
the blessed Croton,) and hooked the canvas pine-frame door, and pulled
the string, and down came the icy water. In our thrilling despair and
unconsciousness, we grasped the string, like a drowning man a straw,
and jerked and re-jerked it, until we broke the entire upper cistern
arrangements, when down came ten hogsheads of rain water on our poor
head, and washed away the mummy box, and us with it. After a Jonah
scuffle, we crawled out of the box, and opened the bath-room door,
and screamed fire, and murder, and sea-weed, and ran down stairs,
with ten hogsheads of water at our heels. We ran into the kitchen,
where the servants slept, who sprang from their beds, and ran into the
street, and yelled, and aroused the neighbors,—and hens cackled, and
cats mewed, and dogs barked, in all directions. We seized a tub and
dashed up stairs against the overwhelming torrent, and found about
forty lean Grahamites, up to their knees in water, and poor MacDonald
Clarke and Horace Greeley among them, bailing for their lives, in their
nocturnal mantles. Chairs, and books, and umbrellas, were floating on
the bosom of the waters, and the scene resembled the devastation of
Noah’s deluge, or the encampment of California miners, at the rise
and desolation of the Sacramento and her tributary streams. The walls
were soon re-plastered, and new carpets laid, and chaos and saturation
departed. We partially recovered from the bathing concussion, but were
slowly wasting, and approaching the Spirit land, when we consulted
an allopathic physician, (who was an old friend of ours,) who told
us that Graham bread and mush had diminished and nearly paralyzed
our kidneys, and that we must drink gin or die. We told him that our
Father was President of the Rhode Island State Temperance Society, and
that we belonged to three Teetotal Societies, and was President of
one, and Recording Secretary of another, and that we could not drink
gin, although we might possibly go ginger pop, without violating the
Constitution of either Society. The Doctor then said: “Well, Branch,
give me both hands, and let me also embrace you most fervently, and
even kiss you, as you will probably die in about three days, and I
shall never see you again, until I come to your funeral. Good by, my
good fellow, and may God bless you in the other world.” “Good Lord,
Doctor, don’t go—but bring on your gin, and I’ll drink a gallon to
begin with, and more if you say so. I’m not prepared to die, and dam
the Temperance Societies, where life and death and decayed kidneys
are involved.” He then went to the Astor House, and got a quart of
the purest gin, and told us to drink freely of it, which we did, and
soon felt so happy that we arose from our bed, and went to Mitchell’s
Olympic Theatre, where the sweet Mary Taylor was placarded for the
Child of the Regiment, and Mitchell for Jem Bags. The gin had now got
the better of us, and we talked, and laughed, and hissed the actors,
until Mitchell approached the foot-lights, and made an inflammatory
speech against us, when a deafening shout arose: “Put him out! put him
out!” and out we went, in a mighty hurry, over the heads of ladies and
gentlemen. On reaching the outer door, a policeman saw us, whom we had
learned to read and write, who accompanied us to the Graham House, and
left us at the street door. We staggered up stairs, and got into the
bed room of two nervous old maids, who were rigid Grahamites, and as
thin as shads, who screamed so frightfully, that we got out as soon as
possible, lest they would scratch our eyes out, and tear us to bleeding
tatters. We then got into the bed room of Horace Greeley, who poked
out his bald head from his straw pillow and scanty Graham bed-clothes,
and exclaimed: “Who’s there?” “Thou pale and ghastly shadow! what
dost thou in my bed? How dare you enter the sacred precincts of my
domestic castle?” “Yon dam drunken vagabond! you are a liar, if you
say I’m in your bed. This is my room, and my couch, and if you don’t
leave, I’ll throw my boot at your bewildered skull.—Hence! thou
miserable sot! Away!” We then approached him, and sat on the side of
his narrow cot, and stroked his chin, when he gave us a tremendous
blow, in the face, and made our nose bleed copiously. He then arose,
and perceiving who we were, expressed the deepest sorrow, and bathed
our nostrils, and led us to our room in the attic, and undressed us,
and put us to bed, and tucked in the blankets, and after a scathing
lecture against intemperance, he left us with a fond good night. We
sent for our gin physician, who said that whoever cured us, must cure
our nerves, and he could not do it. This we regarded as our final
knell, and we began to read the Bible and hymn book, and prepare for
death. But a homœopathic physician was strongly recommended, whom we
consulted, who gave us phosphorus and aconitum, which revived us like
galvanic batteries, and he then told us to exchange Graham bread and
mush for beef-soup and tenderloin, and we recovered rapidly. We were
teaching a lad, whose dear little sister had the dysentery, with two
allopathic butchers in attendance, who, after bleeding, and leeching,
and blistering, and suffusing her system with mercury, recommended
brandy as a last resort. The little angel had her last fit, as was
supposed, and as her father was exhausted and bed-ridden with grief and
a burning fever, we went for a coffin towards midnight, and entered
a store where there was a lamp in its expiring rays, and rang the
bell, when in the drear and narrow perspective, we beheld the lank
and greedy grave-digger in his shirt and pants, and black nightcap,
approaching us, in about the measured pace of “Hamlet’s Ghost.”—He
had a dark lantern, and seemed a hideous spectre emerging from the
regions of the dead. We were extremely nervous, and awfully dyspeptic,
and unusually depressed from the protracted storm, and could endure
his fearful aspect no longer, and when within five paces of our
trembling person, we darted from the coffin store, and ran as though
the evil Nicholas was after us. The sexton suspected us for a thief,
and chased us several blocks, but we flew like a whirlwind, and the
devil himself could not have caught us. On reaching the abode of the
suffering innocent, we found that she had emerged from the last fit,
and off we scampered for the homœopathic physician who had saved our
life with phosphorus, and aconitum, and beef soup, and tenderloin.
We aroused him from his couch, and we were by the side of the little
invalid in twenty minutes, when the Doctor removed a tooth, (her jaws
being apparently closed in death,) and deposited about four drops of
medicine in her mouth, which was continued during the night, and at
twelve, meridian, she ate egg and potato combined, with milk, and
in five days she rollicked all over the house. While conducting the
Matsell Investigation, we wrote a Disquisition on Worms, and Mrs.
Doughty, (the amiable wife of Mr. Doughty, who was long connected with
the New York Street Department, and whose lovely daughter married a
member of the great Banking House of Prime, Ward, & King,) called on
the noble and supremely beautiful Mrs. Alderman John H. Briggs, and
said: “I reside near Newark, New Jersey. My husband’s name is Samuel
S. Doughty, (who was Street Commissioner of the City of New York in
1844 and ‘45,) and is very wealthy, and has erected a mansion that will
compare with any in New Jersey. We have spacious grounds, and gardens,
and orchards, and horses, and carriages, and all that can render us
happy in the evening of our days, and yet we are very miserable. A dark
cloud hovers over our magnificent abode, that we fear will soon belch
the elements of destruction, and overwhelm us all in one common ruin.
I have a sweet, and intellectual, and generous-hearted daughter, whose
rare conversational powers, and vocal and instrumental music, cheered
us in other days, who has been chained to a couch of illness more than
two years. So disconsolate is her heart, that she will not permit her
rosy and curly children to enter her apartment, nor a solitary mortal,
save myself and husband. Her stomach rejects every species of food, and
she has the piles most awfully, and several other diseases. Doctors
Parker and Mott, and other eminent Americans, and two distinguished
European physicians, have crossed the Atlantic, and toiled long and
hard for her restoration. Now, my dear Mrs. Briggs, please listen
very attentively to what I am about to disclose. A week since, I
discovered a long article on Worms in the _New York Daily Times_,
signed by Stephen H. Branch, and read it to my daughter, to elicit,
if possible, a smile from her sad face. But I had scarcely closed it,
ere she partially arose in her bed, and fixed her excited eyes upon
me, and most terribly alarmed me, as she had not arisen in her bed for
months, without assistance, and I said: ‘Why, my dear child, did you
arise without my aid, and why, dear Caroline, do you stare so at your
mother?’ She waved her hand, and faintly cried: ‘Go on, dear mother,
go on, and let me again hear the delightful music of those words. I
am saved, mother, I am saved, and Stephen H. Branch is my deliverer.
Read, mother, read, and gladden the heart of poor Caroline.’ And I
read it again, and she alternately wept and laughed until I closed
it, and then she softly laid her head upon her pillow, and crossed
her arms on her excited and swelling bosom, and breathed a prayer to
God for the preservation of Mr. Branch, until she could behold him.
Her words were perfect inspiration, and I cried until my eyes were
highly inflamed, and until I almost fell upon the floor, and I dared
not cry more, and I had to leave her and call my husband, who came and
relieved me. She had not slept without laudanum for months, but in ten
minutes after I closed Mr. Branch’s article on Worms, she passed into
a gentle and natural slumber, and did not awake until the following
day at meridian. And her repose imparted a rainbow glow to her icy
cheeks, and exchanged roses for lilies. And she beckoned me to her
bedside, and softly said: ‘Mother: I want you to visit Mr. Branch, as I
believe I have got worms, and I am sure, from his glowing and truthful
Dissertation on this novel theme, that he fully understands my case,
which the most eminent physicians have failed to fathom.’ I smiled,
and assured her that it would be useless. But for several days she has
afforded me no peace, such have been her importunities for me to see
Mr. Branch. And as I conceived it very dangerous to oppose her will, in
her critical condition, I have come, and I desire you to exert all your
influence to induce Mr. Branch to accompany me to my residence in the
suburbs of Newark, and see my beloved child, who will salute him like
a brother and deliverer, and who is nearly distracted to behold him.”
Mrs. Briggs sent for us, and we personally responded on the following
day, when we told her that we were chasing Matsell night and day, and
could not spare the time to visit Newark invalids; nor did we desire
to, as we were not a practical physician, and if we assumed the awful
responsibility of treating chronic piles and worms, if a patient died
while under our care, we might be arrested for murder, and be tried
by a jury packed by Dick Connolly, as County Clerk, and be condemned
and hung. So, in comes Mrs. Doughty again, and again, and through her
tears, and those thrilling and irresistible apostrophes of a devoted
mother, she touches the magic cord in the heart of Mrs. Briggs, who
resolved to get me to Newark, if possible. So, she comes at me like
General Putnam’s or Samson’s wives, and demands me to visit Newark to
gratify the invalid’s curiosity to see me, as a matter of humanity, and
said that if I did not go, the daughter might die in a fit, and I would
be responsible to God and man, and to woman also, for she, herself,
would forever hold me responsible for the premature demise of the pale
divinity of Newark. So, we proposed to go, if her husband, Alderman
John H. Briggs, would accompany us. We then winked to Jack, and he
hesitated, which pleased us well, and we peremptorily declined to go.
But Mrs. Briggs then flew at Jack with a fork and pepper box, and Jack
yielded like a docile lamb, and we also had to go, or perhaps receive
the perforation of a fork, or a gill of pepper in our eyes, or listen
to a tongue that might have blistered our conscience. So we saw our
extraordinary physician, who had ejected eleven worms from our belly,
(one of which was tied in a square knot,) and over we went to Jersey
City, where Mr. Doughty, and the most beautiful horses and carriage,
with driver and postilion, anxiously awaited our arrival, and on we
go to the suburbs of Newark, crossing a stream in a ferry boat, that
strongly reminded us of the immortal river Styx. We reach Mr. Doughty’s
elegant residence, and drove through the meandering paths, and cull
pretty flowers, and luscious peaches, and enjoy a rural dinner, and
are escorted by Mrs. Doughty into the presence of her daughter, who
extends her skeleton fingers, and archly lays them in ours, whose icy
coldness thrills the fibres of our bowels. She strives to smile, and
casts tender glances, and looks down into our soul, for a deliverer.
Our eyes reflect the fondest hope, and as she beheld this cheerful
word, on the surface of our vision, she sweetly smiles, and presses our
palm with tenderness and love. And then she breathes patient words of
her afflictions, and touching soliloquies, and sings plaintive verses,
and eclipses the sad Ophelia, when moaning for Hamlet, or scattering
withered flowers, or on the rosy margin of the glassy brook, where
she meets a watery grave. In her lucid intervals, we describe her
symptoms and emotions with such minuteness, that we quickly win her
confidence, and she is ready to show us her piles and half a dozen
other diseases, including worms, and she directs her mother to remove
the bed clothes, and let us behold her scabs and frightful probes
and lacerations, and inhuman mutilations, by the leading physicians
of Europe and America. But we very emphatically direct Mrs. Doughty
to replace the sheets, and quilts, and blankets, as we were not a
physician, and had no license, and as the authorities of New Jersey
(which were rather severe when they caught a foreign barbarian in
their dominions) might cage us, if they learned that we were examining
female patients without a Jersey permit. But we assured both mother and
daughter, that the gentleman below, in company with Alderman Briggs,
was the very physician who drove eleven worms from our stomach, and
that he could critically examine her diseases, as he was a licensed
physician. So, although the invalid abjured her own lovely children,
and her dear kindred, and doctors, and all save her father and mother,
yet she had such confidence in us, that she permitted our physician
to enter her chamber, where he critically examined her person, and
immediately assured her that he could not only save, but cure her in
six weeks. She spooned at this thrilling intelligence, and did not
recover her consciousness for two hours, when ourself, and the Doctor,
and Alderman Briggs, returned to New York. Two months afterwards, we
called on the Doctor, who informed us that he had just returned from a
very large party in Lafayette Place, where he had passed the evening
very pleasantly with Mr. and Mrs. Doughty and their lovely daughter,
who was entirely restored to health, and who played the great piano
music of Thalberg and Lizt for him, and sang nearly equal to Alboni,
and that he had the pleasure of a waltz in her graceful and bewitching
embraces, who darted through the parlor in a dance, like an eagle
through the air, and that the father, and mother, and daughter, warmly
inquired for Mr. Branch, whom they regarded as the saviour of their
earthly happiness. And thus closes the lamentations and humanities of
a ghastly Grahamite, whose narrative on Worms restored a marble statue
to vitality, and her parents, and children, and kindred and friends,
to the divinest hilarity and joy. And for miles around the residence
of the Doughtys, invalids have been rescued from early graves by this
supernatural physician, who recently was compelled to conceal himself
from the regiments of skeletons who applied for his magic skill and
medicines, which is the only reason why we do not disclose his mighty
name, lest his patients waste him to the mournful realms of Greenwood,
where his slender frame will soon repose forever.

 A MELANCHOLY POSTSCRIPT!—We called last evening to read these
 lamentations to the Doctor of Mrs. Doughty’s daughter, and we learned
 that he was reposing in the dark and silent caverns of the globe.
 O, the rats and mice and pigmies and shadows and phantoms of life’s
 funny and tearful and mysterious fandango. We open our eyes in the
 sweet twilight of the morning, and behold the gorgeous panorama of
 the Universe, and form the warmest attachments, and go to our rest
 at sunset, never to awake! Peace to the soul and ashes of Dr. David
 Perry, who is the lamented Physician of our narrative, who was the
 student of Dr. Cheesman, and preserved the life of ourself and brother
 and other kindred and friends.




For American Youth to Read, and for Thieves and Traitors to Ponder.


With the Declaration of Independence in his right hand, John Adams, on
the Fourth of July, 1776, rose and said:

“Mr. President:—Read this Declaration at the head of the Army; every
sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered to
maintain it or perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit:
religion will approve of it, and the love of religious liberty will
cling around it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it
to the public halls—proclaim it there—let them hear it who heard
the first roar of the enemy’s cannon—let them see it who saw their
sons and their brothers fall on the field of Bunker’s Hill, and in
the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out
in its support. Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but I
can see—see clearly through this day’s business. You and I may not
live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good,—we may
die—die colonists—die slaves—die, it may be, ignominiously and on
the scaffold.—Be it so—be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven
that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim
shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that
hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the
hope of a country, and that a free country. Through the thick gloom
of the present I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in
Heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are
in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with
thanksgivings, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return
they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears—not of subjection and
slavery—not of agony and distress—but of gratitude, of consolation,
and of joy. And I leave off as I began—that live or die—survive or
perish—I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the
blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment—Independence now, and
Independence forever!”


Reflections at the grave of CHARLES A. JESUP, who reposes in the
suburbs of Westport, Ct.; written by Stephen H. Branch, in his early
years:—

  To thy loved tomb I’ve come to day,
  To sing of thee a mournful lay:
  Not in the strain I used to sing,
  For life is now a weary thing.

  As I came here, I gladly found
  A pretty bird upon thy mound:
  It lingered long, and sang as though
  Departed worth reposed below.

  By thy lone grave, in this strange land,
  ‘Neath April skies, I hapless stand:
  While num’rous flocks and herds I spy,
  With honest farmers ploughing nigh.

  I can but think, as I look round,
  That you once played upon this ground:
  The hills! the stream! the velvet lawn!
  E’en house I see where thou wast born!

  Where thou wast born? Alas! where died,
  And all our best affections tried:
  Aye, on that drear, autumnal day,
  When, round thee, dying, all did pray.

  That was, indeed, a cruel year,
  To cut down one to kin so dear;
  So full of promise, and so young,
  To whom we all so fondly clung.

  Was’t not enough, with fatal blow,
  A nation to o’erwhelm in woe?
  In that fell year, a chieftain died—
  Brave Harrison—his country’s pride.

  But we’ll not chide—’twas God’s decree:
  Thy day was come—He wanted thee:
  Thy sudden death spread gloom—indeed,
  Caused many a manly heart to bleed.

  Yon weary farmers cease to plough,
  To mingle with sweet twilight now,
  Which warns me to depart this place,
  And wend my way at rapid pace.

  Hear Charley! all the past I see!
  Our fav’rite walks! thy happy glee!
  O God! farewell! in tears I leave!
  My heart would here forever cleave!




The following meritorious gentlemen are wholesale agents for the
Alligator.


  Ross & Tousey, 121 Nassau street.
  Hamilton & Johnson, 22 Ann street.
  Samuel Yates, 22 Beekman street.
  Mike Madden, 21 Ann street.
  Cauldwell & Long, 23 Ann street.
  Boyle & Gibson, 32 Ann street and
  Hendrickson & Blake, 25 Ann street.




Advertisements—One Dollar a line

IN ADVANCE.


THE RED FLAG (JOBSON’S JOURNAL) will be unfurled on Saturday, May
15th, with most terrific cuts, by the sanguinary editor, at Bennett,
Sickles, Rynders, Old Buck, and even BRANCH, though to that Dear Boy
he is in no degree a “stern parient.” Give your orders—down with the
dust—3 cents each—at the office, 102 Nassau street.


  THERE IS SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS
  IN THE
  PICAYUNE.

  You are sincerely warned not to look at THE PICAYUNE.

  AVOID THE PICAYUNE!

  SHUN THE PICAYUNE!

  Or if you must have it, STEAL it.


P. C. GODFREY, STATIONER, BOOKSELLER and General Newsdealer, 831
Broadway,

  New York, near 13th street.

  At Godfrey’s—Novels, Books, &c., all the new ones cheap.
  At Godfrey’s—Magazines, Fancy Articles, &c., cheap.
  At Godfrey’s—Stationery of all kinds cheap.
  At Godfrey’s—All the Daily and Weekly Papers.
  At Godfrey’s—Visiting Cards Printed at 75 cents per pack.
  At Godfrey’s—Ladies Fashion Books of latest date.


AUG. BRENTANO, SMITHSONIAN NEWS DEPOT, Books and Stationery, 608
BROADWAY, corner of Houston street.

Subscriptions for American or Foreign Papers or Books, from the City or
Country, will be promptly attended to.

Foreign Papers received by every steamer. Store open from 6 A. M. to 11
P. M throughout the week.


EXCELSIOR PRINT, 211 CENTRE-ST., N. Y.




                         TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been
 produced and added by Transcriber.





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No. 5, May 22, 1858, by Stephen H. Branch

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