Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

154 SALMAGUNDI.
resolved to publish if it is ever attempted to carry the measure
into operation. Whether he is sincere in these professions, or
whether his present situation is owing to choice or disappointment, he only can tell; but if he ever does tell, I will suffer
myself to be shot by the first lady's eye that can twang an
arrow. In his youth he was forever in love; but it was his
misfortune to be continually crossed and rivalled by his bosom
friend and contemporary beau, Pindar Cockloft, Esq., for as
Langstaff never made a confidant on these occasions, his friend
never knew which way his affections pointed; and so, between
them both, the lady generally slipped through their fingers.
It has ever been the misfortune of Launcelot, that he could
not for the soul of him restrain a good thing; and this fatality
has drawn upon him the ill-will of many whom he would not
have offended for the world. With the kindest heart under
heaven, and the most benevolent disposition toward every being
around him,-he has been continually betrayed by the mischievous
vivacity of his fancy, and the good-humored waggery of his feelings, into satirical sallies which have been treasured up by the
invidious, and retailed out with the bitter sneer of malevolence,
instead of the playful hilarity of countenance which originally
sweetened and tempered and disarmed them of their sting.
These misrepresentations have gained him many reproaches and
lost him many a friend.
This unlucky characteristic played the mischief with him in
one of his love affairs. Hle was, as I have before observed,
ofteii opposed in his gallantries by that formidable rival, Pindar
Cockloft, Esq., and a most formidable rival he was; for he had
Apollo, the nine muses, together with all the joint tenants of
Olympus to back him; and everybody knows what important
confederates they are to a lover. Poor Launcelot stood no