Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/682

660 fear that it must be found chiefly in the love-making of the Duchess to Fritz, and in the monstrous but, we admit, ridiculous indecorum of the conspiracy scene, which winds up with the "Cancan Polka" between a grand duchess and a prime minister. The Duchess's love affair—if so it must be called—is of the most revolting nature. Surely nothing more gross was ever played in public on the stage. Of dramatic interest there is none, even of the comic kind. The fun is merely in the shock to decency. But this sort of thing succeeds in Paris? Yes; in certain parts of Paris, where gentlemen go, and the demi-monde; but where gentlemen very rarely take their wives and sisters. But even this is a sign of the times. When Cora Pearl, aged forty, and not very beautiful, appeared as Cupid, in Paris, it was noticed that the stalls were filled, not only by the students from the Quartier Latin, and by the members of the Jockey Club, but by scholars, statesmen, men of science, and philosophers. This, perhaps, is explicable, but not in one of our Nebulæ. One fact, however, needs no explanation—that the scholars, statesmen, and philosophers left wives and sisters at home.

— were much amused, the other day, by an anecdote of a certain secretary of a Governor, several removes backward from the present Chief Magistrate of the Empire State. Like most sub-officials, to whom some "pressing" final process is committed, he had an itching palm, while, at the same time, it would not be exactly safe to show his hand too openly. On one occasion he had, for the third time been waited upon by an impatient party, interested in two important bills which had passed the Legislature, and, with sundry others, were awaiting the Governor's signature.

"Did you place my bills before his Excellency?" asked the party of the secretary.

"N—n—not yet," said he—he had a slight impediment in his speech—"n—not quite yet; the G—g—overnor's v—very busy. By the b—by, w—hat was the n— ame of the m—man that g—ot up into a t—tree, when our Saviour was w—walking along that w—way?"

"Oh, you mean Zaccheus?"

"Ye—es; that's the man. We—ell, do you r—recollect what was s—said to him?"

"Certainly: 'Zaccheus, come down!

"Ex—a—actly; ye—es, Come down! I was thinking of that ye—esterday, when you c—called, but I c—couldn't rem—mem-ber the name!"

The hint was taken: the party "came down" accordingly; and when he next called his signed bills were ready for him.

— many New-Yorkers could take up Miss Booth's "History of New York" (of which but a hundred copies are printed) without being astonished at their own ignorance of the derivation of the most familiar names. The Buttermilk Channel, in the East River, was, as late as the last century, so filled with rocks as to be only navigable by market-boats laden with buttermilk, and rowed by women. Wallabout Bay (at first Waal-bogt or Walloons Bay) takes its name from the sturdy Walloons, who crossed East River and founded Brooklyn. Corlaers Hook commemorates the expedition of Jacob Van Corlaers, sent by the Dutch governor of Manhattan to buy a tract near Hartford. Another expedition discovered and named Rhode (Roode or Red) Island. Michael Pauw, striking boldly across North River, founded Communipauw, and the settlement of Pavonia (Pauwonia). The West India Company, after buying all Manhattan Island for 25 guilders, or 20,000 acres of city lots for $10, reserved for themselves five farms, or Bouwerys, from which eligible farms, or garden patches, came the name of Bowery Hill, so familiar thirty years ago as among the outskirts of the city, over which runs the busy Bowery of to-day. Broadway the Dutch called Heere straat. When the Dutch town ventured beyond the limits of the fort that protected it, it made an up-town movement to Pearl street, which was occupied by houses in 1633. Next, Bridge street was laid out; and on this occurred the first recorded transfer of a town lot on Manhattan Island. The size of the lot was 30 by 110 feet—the price 24 guilders, or $9 60. What an era for a real-estate broker to live in, could he only have united in himself the qualities of seer and Methuselah!