lage church; to these, add as many spangles, beads, and gew-gaws, as would be sufficient to turn the heads of all the fashionable fair ones of Nootkasound. Let mrs. Toole, or madame Bouchard patch all these articles together, one upon another, dash them plentifully over with stars, bugles, and tinsel, and they will altogether form a dress, which hung upon a lady's back, cannot fail of supplying the place of beauty, youth and grace, and of reminding the spectator of that celebrated region of finery, called Rag Fair.

One of the greatest sources of amusement incident to our humorous knight-errantry, is to ramble about and hear the various conjectures of the town respecting our worships, whom every body pretends to know as well as Falstaff did prince Hal at Gads-hill. We have sometimes seen a sapient, sleepy fellow, on being tickled with a straw, make a furious effort and fancy he had fairly caught a gnat in his grasp; so, that many-headed monster, the public, who with all its heads, is, we fear, sadly off for brains, has, after long hovering, come souse down, like a king-fisher, on the authors of Salma

gundi, and caught them as certainly as the aforesaid honest fellow caught the gnat.

Would that we were rich enough to give every one of our numerous readers a cent, as a reward for their ingenuity! not that they have really conjectured within a thousand leagues of the truth, but that we consider it a great stretch of ingenuity even to have guessed wrong;—and that we hold ourselves much obliged to them for having taken the trouble to guess at all.

One of the most tickling, dear, mischievous pleasures of this life is to laugh in one's sleeve-to sit snug in a corner, unnoticed and unknown, and hear the wise men of Gotham, who are profound judges, of horse-flesh, pronounce, from the style of our work, who are the authors. This listening incog, and receiving a hearty praising over another man's back, is a situation so celestially whimsical that we have done little else than laugh in our sleeve ever since our first number was published.

The town has at length allayed the titilations of curiosity, by fixing on two young gentlemen of literary talents-that is to say, they are equal to the composition of a newspaper squib, a hodge podge criticism, or some such trifle, and may occasionally raise a smile by their effusions; but pardon us, sweet sirs, if we modestly doubt your capability of support

ing the burthen of Salmagundi, or of keeping up a laugh for a whole fortnight, as we have done, and intend to do, until the whole town becomes a community of laughing philosophers like ourselves. We have no intention, however, of undervaluing the abilities of these two young men whom we verily believe, according to common acceptation, young men of promise.

Were we ill-natured, we might publish something that would get our representatives into difficulties; but far be it from us to do any thing to the injury of persons to whom we are under such obligations,

While they stand before us, we, like little Teucer, behind the sevenfold shield of Ajax can launch unseen our sportive arrows, which we trust will never inflict a wound, unless like his they fly, "heaven directed," to some conscious-struck bo

som.

Another marvelous great source of pleasure to us, is the abuse our work has received from several wooden gentlemen, whose censures we covet more than ever we did any thing in our lives. The moment we declared open war against folly and stupidity we expected to receive no quarter, and to provoke a confederacy of all the blockheads in town. For it is one of our indisputable facts, that so sure as you catch a gander by the tail, the whole flock,

geese, goslings, one and all, have a fellow-feeling on the occasion, and begin to cackle and hiss like so many devils bewitched. As we have a profound respect for these ancient and respectable birds, on the score of their once saving the capitol, we hereby declare, that we mean no offence whatever by comparing them to the aforesaid confederacy. We have heard in our walks such criticisms on Salmagundi, as almost induced a belief that folly had here, as in the east, her moments of inspired idiotism. Every silly royster has, as if by an instinctive sense of anticipated danger, joined in the cry; and condemned us without mercy. All is thus as it should be. It would have mortified us very sensibly had we been disappointed in this particular, as we should then have been apprehensive that our shafts had fallen to the ground, innocent of the "blood or brains" of a single numskull. Our efforts have been crowned with wonderful success. All the queer fish, the grubs, the flats, the noddies, and the live oak and timber gentlemen, are pointing their empty guns at us; and we are threatened with a most puissant confederacy of the “ pigmies and cranes,” and other "6 light militia," backed by the heavy armed artillery of dullness and stupidity. The veriest dreams of our most sanguine moments are thus realized. We have no fear of the censures of the

wise, the good, or the fair; for they will ever be sacred from our attacks. We reverence the wise, love the good, and adore the fair; we declare ourselves champions in their cause---in the cause of morality--and we throw our gauntlet to all the world besides.

While we profess and feel the same indifference to public applause as at first, we most earnestly invite the attacks and censures of all the wooden warriors of this sensible city, and especially of that distinguished and learned body, heretofore celebrated under the appellatiou of "the North-river society." The thrice valiant and renowned don Quixotte never made such work amongst the wool-clad warriors of Trapoban, or the puppets of the itinerant showinan as we promise to make amongst these fine fellows; and we pledge ourselves to the public in general, and the Albany skippers in particular, that the North-river shall not be set on fire this winter at least for we shall give the authors of that nefarious scheme, ample employment for some time to come.