Salmagundi Author:Washington Irving Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NO. III.—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1807. FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR. As I delight in every thing novel and eccentric, and would at any time give an old coat for a new ... more »idea, I am particularly attentive to the manners and conversation of strangers ; and scarcely ever a traveller enters this city, whose appearance promises any thing original, but by some means or another I form an acquaintance with him. I must confess I often suffer manifold afflictions from the intimacies thus contracted: my curiosity is frequently punished by the stupid details of a blockhead, or the shallow verbosity of a coxcomb. Now I would prefer at any time to travel with an ox-team through a Carolina sand-flat, rather than plod through a heavy unmeaning conversation with the former; and as to the latter, I would sooner hold sweet converse with the wheel of a knife-grinder than endure his monotonous chattering. In fact, the strangers who flock to this most pleasant of all earthly cities are generally mere birds of passage, whose plumage is often gay enough, I own, but their notes, " heaven save the mark," are as unmusical as those of that classic night bird, which the ancients humorously selected as the emblem of wisdom. Those from the south, it is true, entertain me with their horses, equipages, and puns : and it is excessively pleasant to hear a couple of these four-in-hand gentlemen detail their exploits over a bottle. Those from the east have often induced me to doubt the existence of the wise men of yore, who are said to have flourished in that quarter; and as for those from parts beyond seas—oh! my masters, ye shall hear more from me anon. Heaven help this unhappy town !—hath it not goslings enow of its own hatching and rearing, that it must be overwhelmed by such an inundation of ganders from other climes ? I...« less