Anxious to become familiar with the people
in their assemblies and public gatherings—
to learn how crowds are excited and assuaged,
and made to do the bidding of cunning men;
now that which would be folly and sheer madness
with one, may, practised upon many in a
confused mass, take the hue of profoundest wisdom
and justice; and having at heart, withal,
the suggestions of his strange old friend of Fogfire
hall, Puffer Hopkins now made it a point
to haunt meetings and congregations of every
sort, anniversaries, wharf crowds and lectures,
and to detect how the leviathan populace is
snared in a fair net of silvery words and pleasant
speeches.

At the lower extremity of the great thoroughfare
of Chatham street, just below the theatre,
lies an oblong, deep shop, into which is drawn,
between the hours of seven and nine, evening,
a portion of the metropolitan life, where it is
kept raging and fuming—pent up in a close
mass—and struggling with the black-haired demon
of the place. The genius of the oblong
warehouse is none other than a gloomy-looking
auctioneer, who hangs over a counter fixed on
a raised platform, calling on the individuals before
him—who are chiefly clerks, newsboys,
journeymen, and innocent gentlemen from the
country—to sustain him in his disinterested desire
to advocate the elegance of binders, the instructive
and entertaining qualities of authors,
and the gorgeous genius of colorists, engravers,
and paper-rulers.

This gentleman is ably sustained and seconded
in the performance of these arduous duties,
by a sable-haired associate, who makes it his
business to stroll cheerfully up and down the
enclosed space behind the counter, rubbing his
hands from time to time, as in token of internal
satisfaction at the success of their joint efforts,
and dashing down upon the counter such
wares as a sagacious glance at his audience
satisfies him are most likely to be competed for.

On some occasions one or other of the black-haired
gentlemen behind the counter condescends
to be facetious, and says remarkably funny
things for the special benefit and solace of
the citizens underneath. This department properly
belongs to the auctioneer, but is incidentally
filled by the feeder, with such chance morsels
of humor as may suggest themselves to him
as he rambles to and fro.

Into this oblong region of sale, as one of the
resorts where his plans might be furthered, Puffer
one evening made his way.

“Gentlemen,” cried the black-haired auo
tioneer, with inereased animation as Puffer
Hopkins entered—discovering, perhaps, in the
peculiar costume and manner of that excellent
young gentleman some indications of a melo-dramatic
tendency—“gentlemen, here's the
primest article I've offered to-night; this is
`Brimstone Castle,' a native melodrama, as
performed one hundred nights at the Bowery
theatre, Bowery, New York. The hero of
this piece, gentlemen, is a regular salamander,
and could take out a policy in any company in
this city at a low hazard; he's fireproof. In the
first act, he appears sitting on a log, meditating;
is suddenly surprised and taken by a band of
savages of a red-ochre complexion, from whom
he escapes by ruthlessly cutting off the right
leg of every mother's son of them—rushes over
a bridge—rescues a lady with dishevelled hair,
and a small boy in her hand; climbs up a cataract,
waves his cap to the rescued lady, loses
his appetite, and is finally retaken by the savages,
and burnt at the stake for an hour—when
he walks out of the flame, advances to the

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

foot-lights, and, with a very cheerful smile on his
countenance, announces `Brimstone Castle'
for the next twelve nights, with an extra savage
and fresh fagots every night. How much,
gentlemen? Going, going. How much?—it's
a masterpiece, gentlemen—a perfect work of
art. How much?”

The melo-drama was bandied about for more
than a quarter of an hour among sundry young
gentlemen in round-crowned hats, with sleek,
shining heads of black hair and broad-skirted
blue coats, but finally fell to the lot of a bidder
with a stout voice, just one of those voices that
are irresistible in an auction-room, and a terror
to gentlemen who desire cheap purchases.

“I now offer you,” cried the auctioneer, “one
of the most astonishing and wonderful works
of the present day. It's full of thought, gentlemen,
expressed in the very happiest words
out of Todd's Johnson and Noah Webster, as
clear as a moonbeam, gentlemen, and profound
as the Atlantic. It treats of various subjects,
such as”—here the auctioneer turned the pages
of the book in his hand rapidly, after the manner
of a quarterly reviewer, with the hope of
gleaning a comprehensive knowledge of its contents;
but, judging by the face of ineffable despair
he assumed after thrusting his nose half-a-dozen
times between the leaves, with little success—
“excuse me,” he continued, smiling sardonically
on his audience, “it would be presumptuous
in me, a plain, unlearned citizen, to undertake
to convey to your minds the substance
of a volume like this. Gentlemen, I'll read
you a passage from the introduction, which explains
itself:—“Ponds have presented turtles
in two aspects—either as turtles or as not turtles.
In the one, turtle, the living, breathing,
air-cased creature, the individual in his pneumatic
being, sitting on a rock, pond-centred, is
mighty, supernal, vastly infinite—more than
frogdom at bottom, blind-eel, or muscle life.
Not he theirs, or for them, but they nothing,
save for him. Outward world—to them, mudencompassed—
otherwise dead as door-nail. In
the other, slidden from pond-centred rock down
to the depths of the unsearchable, frogdom,
blind-eel, and muscle life—each more than
turtle. He theirs, being thick-headed, obfusticated
by lack of light, and doltish;—and for them,
he little or nothing save a black lump, part of the
general pond-bottom, pavement, chips, wind,
gas, snake-grass, and bulrushes.”'

It need scarcely be added that the lucid work
on which the auctioneer was engaged, was
nothing more nor less than a volume of transcendental
lectures. Puffer Hopkins detected
the same burley voice bidding for this—and triumphing
in its bid—that he had heard twice
before.

At this juncture a member of the great fraternity
of lay bishops—in other words a very
worthy cartman in his short frock—came in,
and supposing, from the few words that he
caught as he entered, that the work in hand
was illustrative of some new and improved
method of “bobbing for eels,” was rash enough
to invest seven shillings in the purchase of a
second copy. Paying his money very awkwardly
at the counter, out of a blind-pocket in his
cart-frock—be carried his purchase to a lamp
in another quarter of the auction-room, and proceeded,
very slowly and painfully, to enlighten
himself on the favorite pursuit of eel-bobbing.
He bobbed, however, in that pond to very little
purpose—and becoming confused and horribly
enraged at the constant recurrence of the phrases
a “oneness,” an “obscure and unreachable
infinite,” “divergence toward central orbits,”
and “revolutionary inwardnesses”—intemperately
sold it (for six cents and a fraction) to a
match-boy, who stood by with a basket ready
to catch such purchases as might prove unavailable
or disrelishing to the buyers. “There's
an acre of fog-bank there, boy,” said the cartman
from between his teeth, “take it away. My horse
has a better head for writings, and authorships,
and what not, than the stupid journeyman fellow
that spoked this wheel together. Just away
with it.”

“If there's a patriot in the room,” continued
the salesman, “a single young or middle-aged
gentleman that loves his country and the story
of her achievements, let him come forward and
lay down his one dollar fifty. I offer you, gentlemen,
the `Battle of Bloody Puddle,' a narrative
poem, in six books. This masterpiece of genius
has nine heroes, each one of whom accomplishes
more in the way of slaughter, swordsmanship,
and small-talk, from various elevations,
peaks, cliffs, and hill-tops, than any nine
heroes ever let loose on the world before. The
stanza is irregular, to correspond with the
thought, which is very wild and superhuman.
The chief hero—the A No. 1—pattern warrior,
is discovered by moonlight, sharpening his
sword on a boulder of granite, in two nimblefoot
octosyllabic stanzas—he loses his scabbard
and temper in four Spenserian—entering
a cave to conceal himself from the bloody British
foe, who are tracking him about like dogs,
in twenty-five hexameters—but recovers both in
an eleven-syllabled song, in which he grows
very happy about wine, war, and woman, particularly
Isobel the fair—until, all at once, he
discovers a cloud on the moon, which reminds
him to prepare for a few elegiac verses and
death. He ultimately hangs himself in a hemlock
sapling, and leaves his pocket-book, with
a counterfeit bill and two forged letters in it,
to his Isobel, bidding her, in a brief, touching,
epistolary farewell, never to part with these relics
of his affection—never, never! which it isn't
very likely she ever will, particularly the counterfeits.
The rest of the poem corresponds,
how much, how much? Cheap—going cheap—
as politicians' consciences, a penny a dozen.
It's yours, sir, at twenty-five cents. It's perfectly
ruinous to sell this work at that price,”
sighed the auctioneer, wheeling round and stoically
receiving from his assistant a bundle of
two dozen more of the same.

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]