UNCLE SAM'S PECULIARITIES.

LONG ISLANDERS.

I STARTED one day from Brooklyn in a 'Dearborn Waggon,' to pay a visit to an English farmer, Mr. Peter Acastor, formerly of Barnby Dun, in Yorkshire, whose land was situated at an equal distance from Jericho, Babylon, Rockaway, and Hempstead. The road from Brooklyn was considered a first-rate turnpike, or 'pike;-the difference between a 'pike and a common road being, that the latter is a slice of country railed off from the land on either side; but to which no other labour has been used in its formation; the original unevenness remaining to warn travellers against progressing at night. The 'pike, however, was a very good Macadamised road; and in a couple of hours we had run over the flat country about sixteen miles, through the romantic small forests of cedars and pines, and the quiet, white painted villages, to Peter Acastor's farm. The little villages of Jericho and Jerusalem were new and clean, and the little wooden spires to the churches, the railed garden-grounds to each cottage, and the neat school-rooms attached to the parsonages, bespoke an opulence sufficient for rural felicity.

My friend, Peter Acastor, had an excellent farming residence; comfortable parlours, and equally comfortable sleeping apartments; a well of pure spring water; and a pond for fish close by the house: two or three vehicles; and several 'span' (couple) of horses; an immense barn, well stored with grain and hay (the latter is never put up in open stacks;) the pigs had abundance of right of way to run over, and the fowl and game (including terrapins, or land-tortoises,) were in sufficient abundance. He brewed his own cider and wine; he might have grown his own hops, made malt, and brewed his own beer; he might make his own candles, and tan his own leather; he might grow his own tobacco, and distil his own whiskey. No prying exciseman could disturb him. He was a farming nobleman, a lord of the soil, and had the happiness to see around him neighbours as independent and comfortable as himself. This was, indeed, a tempting picture of that American felicity of which so much is spoken, written, and printed, in England; and on attending church the following day at Hempstead, the favourable impression of Long Island happiness was strongly increased. Here were two churchesone Presbyterian and the other Ecclesiastical (Church of England,) and around each there were thirty or forty waggons and sulkies,* owned by the families attending worship.

An interesting ceremony took place in the Ecclesiastical church: the Bishop of New York inducting a clergyman into the ministry of the church at the desire of the congregation.' The Bishop sat in a plain chair under the pulpit during the prayers, at the end of which he arose, and, presenting a Bible and prayer-book to the future incumbent, declared that by these presents' he inducted him into the preferment. A very excellent sermon followed, showing the duties of the minister, and the good he might effect among his pastoral charge.

* Gigs holding one traveller only.

The streets of the village were broad, and the houses beautifully clean. There was a newspaper office, and no bridewell; several good hotels, a ten-pin alley, and a fire-engine depôt and news-room. This was the prettiest village I had ever seen; yet it did not satisfy the inhabitants: they wanted to make it into a city, so that there might be the little aristocracy of mayor and common-councilmen. They were tired of having no rank and titles but such as the military and militia, the newspaper and the fire-engine afforded. The village Bonapartes saw in perspective the grandeur and dignity to which they might aspire in the future city; the glory and renown reserved for some one citizen who might be in his own proper person colonel of the militia; brigadier-general of the 'military artillery; editor of the 'Hempstead Polar Star, or Accepted Mason's Beacon of Liberty; churchwarden of the Ecclesiastical church; proprietor of the Washington Hotel; commissioner of the 'pikes; director of the fire-engine; and mayor of the free and independent city of Hempstead! What a huge mouthful of honour! And to be had by merely making a village into a city, and the payment of a certain bill of costs to a legislative agent at Albany!

Peter Acastor, who was a widower, had a widowed mother, and two sons, both mere lads, but one born in Barnby Dun, and the other in America. The youngest, who was the American son, had been taught at school to pride himself on the fact of his being a real native American. Peter was a very quiet man; but had frequently to reprove his youngest son for his indigenous patriotism; while the eldest son, from the nature of the society into which he was thrown, was unwillingly forced to admit the sort of superiority his younger brother boasted over him. One evening there were present in the farmer's parlour, facing the pond and farm-yard, and a little hillock of Indian corn in the distance, Quiet Peter, and his two sons, all three mending a net; the old 'granny;' Anacreon Livingstone, village schoolmaster; a dry store-keeper of Babylon-name forgotten; and a curious specimen of Yankeeism, ycleped Captain Quare Algord, a one-eyed clipper of Jericho village. The following is a tolerably faithful report of the conversation which ensued. The reader is requested to imagine himself in the writer's seat, near a window, enjoying the transatlantic prospect: and during the pauses of conversation laughing heartily at two niggers, who were rolling over each other near the pond in a sham gouging match.

PETER. There is plenty more of that fruit. Don't spare it. Pine apples are rather more plentiful here than in England.

SPECTATOR (to Peter, aside.) There is no real occasion to inform your friends that I am an Englishman. Let me be a New Yorker, if you please. I shall enjoy myself much more if I am not called on to take up the cudgels for the old country.

PETER (aside.) A nod is as good as a wink.

QUARE. Don't like no sort o' fruit except 'bacca; that I like, leaves and all. Were any of you at the sham fight yesterday? SPECTATOR. Was there any sport?

QUARE. Oh! famous-famous! The Rockaway blues mustered eighty-four, and the Washington greys, of Jericho, forty-six; besides the niggers as carried the officers' great coats and umbrellas. Captain Simon Snidge proposed that as the greys were only half as many as the blues, the greys should be Americans, and the other

side should be British; and laid down a beautiful particular plan that the British should pretend to fight hard, but should be beaten at last, natural enough. So the Yankees got up in the cedars, and hid in the firses, and the British paraded away, beating the drums like thunder. You should have seen some of 'em imitate the real English hired assassins. Oh! it was awful ridiculous, I expect. How they held up their heads, and beat the foremost, to make 'em face the enemy, who were peppering 'em like lions from the firses and cedars. I guess they carried on this game for three hours, till we were quite tired of laughing. All the front rank were kicked so that they fell back in the rear; and at last Commodore Cadwallader, of the frigate Federalist, who was on the ground, gave the word to charge bayonets, and the British should then have given way slick; but I wish I may be skewered on the spot, if they didn't fall on the forty-six, and contrary to agreement, poked at 'em so, that in self-defence the Yankee side were obliged to clear out. The blues couldn't bear to be British any longer; their real Yankee blood was up at fomentation point; and the Washington greys were bayoneted within a few yards of reality.

SCHOOLMASTER. Capital-capital fun! but so natural, I forgive them for it.

PETER'S AMERICAN SON. So do I; that's a fact.

PETER. Mr. Quare Algord, it isn't very polite of you to make fun of the English in this way, before me.

SPECTATOR. Did any one here ever meet with an Englishman named Waterton?

QUARE. I never did; but I hard of him. He went gunning in the south, and saw a poor runaway nigger, with a white head, and a bear's skin on him.. Oh! oh!' says he, 'this is a genooine species of the monkeyana baboonarial tribe, made a-purpose for museums. Clack-click-pop! went the gun; down came the poor devil; and this here Waterton cut off his head with a bowie-knife.

AMERICAN SON. What did he do with it?

QUARE. Why, he had the imperance to put it into two quarts of Jamaky sperets, sealed up, and showed it to the nigger's owner, who knowed it at first sight. "Sir," says Waterton, " as this here is a free country, I've shot this extravagant fine specimen, to have a drawing made of it, as a fruntingspice to my work on America."

SCHOOLMASTER. That was cool, certain. Shooting an owner's property that way, was a powerful pleasant way of being agreeable to foreigners in an independent country. Any local improvement paper in the Brooklyn Beacon of this morning ?

DRY STORE-KEEPER. Oh, yes! Powerful paper on building, I guess. Recommends the building of a store-corner of Loco foco-street, turning on Manhattan and Fulton.

QUARE. That aint to be recommended ag'in. Washington Bigg should have known that locality is bought, and promised to be paid

for.

SCHOOLMASTER. Who has gone for to consider that a favourable privilege ground for planting a store?

QUARE. Why, young Smith, - Warming-pan Smith, as carries the large Dutch watch, which he lends out in winter to warm the beds. AMERICAN SON. Who is he?

DRY STORE-KEEPER. Why, he's a smart un, he is :-a relation to the Smiths of London, in Great Britain,-military captain one year, -father a universal clergyman, -uncle kept a grocery. Was raised in Providence, but went to York to trade in coffins. Now out of his time, and clearing out to set up for himself. Made nineteen clever coffins at night-work, while an apprentice, to stock his store with; but one was borrowed by his bos, who wouldn't return it, cos he said the wood was gouged from his store.

SCHOOLMASTER. Where did this young man git the hard Jackson to plant this building?

DRY STOREKEEPER. Oh, he hasn't any cash, as you may say; but he knows a person who has a brother-in-law, that has hard of a friend, who will lend a year's deposit on the land, if he gets the title-deeds, and the coffins. Then he is promised credit for the bricks, which he intends to give a bill of sale for, so as to raise the timber and tiles. So here, I think, is a store fixed right away, and no occasion for cash. He has eighteen coffins for sale now, and the population is increasing; so that he may make the spec answer. His bos was the person that sent the ready-made coffins to New Orleans, during the reign of Old Chol; and his brother is famous in the wooden ham trade.

AMERICAN SON. You seem uneasy, Quare. What's the fix ? QUARE. Why, it's my back; a hurt from a hoss of Captain Syms, as I clipped last week. This here hoss is a vertuous Indine hoss as ever eat a meal,' says the captain, and has no vice. Sound, jump well, quiet and grand in harness, first-rate in a sulky, handsome temper and courage: kind of hack, hunter and racer all in one. Only wants clipping, and his switch-tail screwed off.' So he says, 'Clip me this here devil, and square his tail up.' And I says, I'll clip him smart and smooth; but I've a dog as I wouldn't swap for your hoss no way you could fix it-a grand, clever, liver-coloured pointer, shot over by Silas Johnnes two falls; perfect, stand and back, drop to the hand, drop to game fast as a steamer, range like an Indine, and all that.' Then he says, 'You don't know the vally of this crittur-so full of vertue, that I wouldn't go for to sell him to any but a Presbyterian or Baptist minister.' Well, I clips him right away, and was just going to square his tail when this very vertuous hoss took hold of me by the waist, bit a hole in my back, and laid me on a heap just by. I tried to bark a squirl yesterday, and couldn't, not being able to stand right on account of my back.

SPECTATOR. What do you mean by barking a squirrel ? QUARE. Why, didn't you ever hear of that? SPECTATOR. We haven't many squirrels on Manhattan Island. QUARE. Why, sir, when I want to catch a squirl alive, I naterally don't ought to poke either bullet or shot in him, and maybe I've nothing no way but a gun to make the crittur come to hand. Why then, what does I do but load with a single bullet, and depend on the frightful nater of the squirl hisself. I fires at the bark of the tree, jist by the squirl, so that the bark peels off, and so tarrifies the crittur, that down it comes in a kind of swoon.

SPECTATOR. That puts me in mind of Col. Crockett. The animals in the woods were aware that if he fired at them it was certain death. So, one day when he was out gunning, and was about to take aim at a 'coon, the creature cried out, 'Don't fire; you're Col. Crockett; I'll give in, and come down.'

QUARE. That's as true as thunder. Col. Crockett told me the story himself, word for word, three weeks before the gunning took place.

SCHOOLMASTER. Did you ever hear of the Englisher and American thunder?

QUARE. Go a-head.

SCHOOLMASTER. This here Englisher was a-travelling in this free country in a Poughkeepsie stage, and he says to a real American native, as was seated opposite, You know,' says he, 'you know hi ham quite tired of this air free country, you know,' says he; 'nothin' hin hit his has hexcellent has hin Hingland, you know, you know.''It's a size or so larger,' says the real American native. Hi ham not hinduced to hacknowledge that, you know, you know,' says the Englisher.

QUARE. Tarnation!

SCHOOLMASTER. 'Why, then,' says the real American native, 'you won't acknowledge that we have powerful peculiar water privileges-or that the City of the Falls will be the grandest cataract location in the world-or that the City Hall beats all nature-or that Astor's Hotel is the grandest boarding-house in this or any other country-or that Broadway goes a-head of all the streets in the entire of Europe?'-' You know,' says the Englisher, you know hevery harticle his a hundred times more helegant hin Hingland, you know, you know.' Jist at that moment there comes such a great gun of thunder, and such a prairie full of lightning, that the Englisher shut his eyes with fright. There,' says the real American native, 'd-n you, have you any thunder and lightning as elegant as that in England?"

ENGLISH SON. All Englishmen don't speak in that way. I am an Englishman by birth, and I don't speak in that way.

AMERICAN SON. But then you've learnt civilisation in America. ENGLISH SON. No; I was born civilized.

AMERICAN SON. But it didn't coine natural until you were natural. ized. Thank heaven, I was born an American.

ENGLISH SON. I am an American citizen, if I wasn't born here. Don't be so infernally proud of being a native, don't. Father was born in England, and he is as good, ay better, than you, though you are a native.

GRANNY. Yer granfeyther was the mon-worth all the natives on Long Island.

AMERICAN SON. Where did the grandfather die ?

GRANNY. In Barnby Dun, in Yorkshire, on a Thursday night in October, come next month is nineteen years ago, and he was an old man then. I was out of Wiltshire; but there was no harm in marrying a Yorkshireman, or Heaven help me! He fells in the river getting a sup of water, as saying is; for we were going to wash, and I says, 'Get a sup,' says I, 'that we mayn't want any.' He was just smoking his pipe. I'd give three haypence the day before for hafe an ounce of baccer, and I says to Mrs. Mulauverer, 'make it as strong baccer as you can,' I says, 'that it may last a bit; for she war a decentish woman, and would help to save, if she didn't lose much by it. Many's the haypenny she took from me when feyther war aloive. Baccer without end he smoked, and took snuff too, for that matter; burning candle at both ends, as saying is.

AMERICAN SON. What of the grandfather, granny? Come to him.