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.

A BREAK UP. 235
flounder through a cotillon, tear half a dozen gowns, commit a
number of other depredations, and make the whole company
sensible of his infinite condescension in coming amongst them.
The people of Gotham thought him a prodigious fine fellow; the
young bucks cultivated his acquaintance with the most persevering assiduity; and his retainers were sometimes complimented
with a seat in his curricle, or a ride on one of his fine horses.
The belles were delighted with the attentions of such a fashionable gentleman, and struck with astonishment at his learned distinctions between wrought scissors and those of cast-steel;
together with his profound dissertations on buttons and horse
flesh. The rich merchants courted his acquaintance because he
was an Englishman, and their wives treated him with great deference because he had come from beyond seas. I cannot help
here observing that your salt water is a marvellous great sharp
ener of men's wits, and I intend to recommend it to some of my
acquaintance in a particular essay.
Straddle continued his brilliant career for only a short time.
His prosperous journey over the turnpike of fashion was checked
by some of those stumbling-blocks in the way of aspiring youth,
called creditors, or duns-a race of people who, as a celebrated
writer observes, " are hated by gods and men." Consignments
slackened, whispers of distant suspicion floated in the dark,
and those pests of society, the tailors and shoemakers, rose in
rebellion against Straddle. In vain were all his remonstrances,
in vain did he prove to them that though he had given them no
money, yet he had given them more custom, and as many promises as any young man in the city. They were inflexible, and
the signal of danger being given, a host of other prosecutors
pounced upon his back. Straddle saw there was but one way fcr
it; he determined to do the thing genteelly, to go to smash like