The Orpheus C. Kerr [Pseud.] Papers (Volume 1)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 Excerpt: ...he said I reminded him of a comet just come out of a feather-bed, with its tail done up in papers. My Magnus Apollo, says he, the way you bear that white cravat shows you to be of rich but genteel parentage. Any man, says he, who can wear a white cravat without looking like a coachman, may pass for a gentleman-born. Two-thirds of the clergymen who wear it look like footmen in their graveclothes. We then took a hack to the White House, my boy, and on arriving there were delighted to find that the rooms were already filling with statesmen, missstatesmen, mrs-statesmen, and officers, who had so much lace and epaulettes about them that they looked like walking brass-founderies with the frontdoor open. The first object that attracted my special attention, however, was a thing that I took for a large and ornamental pair of tongs leaning against a mantel, figured in blue enamel, with a life-like imitation of a window-brush on top. I directed the general's attention to it, and asked him if that was one of the unique gifts presented to the Government by the late Japanese embassy? Thunder! says the general, that's no tongs. It's the young man which is Captain Villiam Brown, of Accomac. Now that I look at him, says the general, thoughtfully, he reminds me of an old-fashioned straddle-bug. Stepping from one lady's dress to another, until I reached the side of the Commander of the Accomac, I slapped him on the back, and says I: How are you, my blue-bird; and what do you think of this brilliant assemblage? Ha! says Villiani, starting out of a brown study, and putting some cloves in his mouth, to disguise the water he'd drank on his way from Accomac-- I was just thin...