_Being a curious, elaborate and sublime_ DISSERTATION,
_never before published._
By _YANKEE DOODLE, Esquire._
(_In Continuation._)
CHAPTER.--HOW AND ABOUT NAMES.
_Nugaeque canorae._ Hor.
I LOOK upon it as the greatest happiness of my life, that
fortune has given me _a name_ that corresponds with my
nature and constitution. Patriotism is the strongest
passion; and I glory in being a _Yankee_.--A _Yankee_ is any
man born in New-England--and New-England contains the three
northern States, and a certain _little, pestiferous, pseudo
Island_. My countrymen generally have the credit of being a
good-natured, psalm-singing, religious kind of men, very
honest, but plaguy hard in their dealings--insomuch that a
_Carolinian_ or a _Georgian_ frequently swear that the very
_Satan_ himself could never get to windward of them.
This puts me in mind of a story.--A certain Boston sea
Captain, of a sloop of 60 tons burthen, coming with a cargo
of New-England rum, shoes, cheese, potatoes, and other
valuable commodities, into _Broadway_, which you must know
is a very _narrow_ passage in the _Appomatax_, a branch of
_James River_ in _Virginia_.--Before I proceed I must
acquaint the serious reader--and who is there but must be
serious in reading the solemn truths I am about to
declare--that every _iota_ of what I shall delineate in in
these sacred depositories of facts, is TRUTH.----I am now
about to elucidate the psalm-singing, religious character of
_Yankees_, by a TRUE STORY, _never before
published_.----When our Boston sea Captain, therefore, came
into Broadway, a Virginian comes a-board of him--and as he
goes down into the cabbin, had to stoop a little, because
the cabbin was low--for, as I said before, the sloop was 60
tons, although our religious sea-captain _entered_ but 40
tons at the Naval-Office: Howsomever he had a reserve of
conscience, for the Naval-Officer charged him for _light
money_, when there was not one light-house in all the
ancient dominion.--But this is nothing to my story.
_N.B._ I mean to give the good-natured reader a whole
chapter on _the art of_ STORY-TELLING.
Well, as I was saying, the Virginian being obliged to
stoop--the _stooping_ caused h
|