It would stick in the throat, so they butter it
first
With a little affected good nature, and cry,
"Nobody regrets the thing deeper than I."
Our young ladies nibble a good name in play,
As for pastime they nibble a biscuit away:
While with shrugs and surmises the toothless old
dame,

As she mumbles a crust she will mumble a name.
And as the fell sisters astonished the Scot
In predicting of Banquo's descendants the lot,
Making shadows of kings, amid flashes of light,
To appear in array and to frown in his sight,
So they conjure up spectres all hideous in hue,
Which, as shades of their neighbours, are passed
in review.

The wives of our cits of inferior degree Will soak up repute in a little bohea; The potion is vulgar, and vulgar the slang With which on their neighbours' defects they harangue;

But the scandal improves, a refinement in wrong! As our matrons are richer, and rise to souchong. With hyson- a beverage that's still more refined,

Our ladies of fashion enliven their mind,

And by nods, inuendoes, and hints, and what not,

Reputations and tea send together to pot.

While madam in laces and cambrics arrayed, With her plate and her liveries in splendid parade,

Will drink in imperial a friend at a sup

Or in gunpowder blow them in dozens all up.
Ah me! how I groan when with full swelling
sail,

Wafted stately along by the favouring gale,
A China ship proudly arrives in our bay,
Displaying her streamers and blazing away.
Oh! more fell to our port is the cargo she bears
Than grenadoes, torpedoes, or warlike affairs:
Each chest is a bombshell thrown into our town,
To shatter repute and bring character down.

Ye Samquas, ye Chinquas, ye Chonquas, so free,

Who discharge on our coasts your cursed quantums of tea,

Oh, think, as ye waft the sad weed from your strand,

Of the plagues and vexations ye deal to our land. As the Upas' dread breath, or the plain where it flies,

Empoisons and blasts each green blade that may rise,

So, wherever the leaves of your shrub find their way,

The social affections soon suffer decay:

Like to Java's drear waste, they embarren the heart,

Till the blossoms of love and of friendship depart.

Ah, ladies, and was it by Heaven design'd That ye should be merciful, loving, and kind?

Did it form you like angels, and send you below
To prophesy peace-to bid charity flow?
And have you thus left your primeval esta'e,
And wander'd so widely-so strangely of late?
Alas! the sad cause I too plainly can see-
These evils have all come upon you through
tea!

Cursed weed, that can make our fair spirits resign

The character mild of their mission divine;

That can blot from their bosoms that tenderness true,

Which from female to female for ever is due! O! how nice is the texture-how fragile the frame

Of that delicate blossom, a female's fair fame!
"Tis the sensitive plant, it recoils from the breath,
And shrinks from the toucn as if pregnant with
death.

How often, how often has innocence sighed,
Has beauty been reft of its honour-its pride,
Has virtue, though pure as an angel of light,
Been painted as dark as a demon of night,
All offered up victims, an auto da fe,
At the gloomy cabals-the dark orgies of tea!

If I, in the remnant that's left me of life,
Am to suffer the torments of slanderous strife,
Let me fall, I implore, in the slang-whanger's
claw,

Where the evil is open and subject to law:
Not nibbled, and mumbled, and put to the rack,
By the sly underminings of tea-party clack:

Condemn me, ye gods, to a newspaper roasting, But spare me! O spare me a tea-table-toasting!

SALMAGUNDI.

DESCRIPTION OF THE POWERFUL ARMY THAT ASSEMBLED AT THE CITY OF NEW-AMSTERDAMTOGETHER WITH THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN PETER THE HEADSTRONG AND GENERAL VON POFFEN

BURGH; AND PETER'S SENTIMENTS RESPECTING

UNFORTUNATE GREAT MEN.

WHILE thus the enterprising Peter was coasting, with flowing sail, up the shores of the lordly Hudson, and arousing all the phlegmatic little Dutch settlements upon its borders, a great and puissant concourse of warriors was assembling at the city of New-Amsterdam. And here that invaluable fragment of antiquity, the Stuyvesant manuscript, is more than commonly particular; by which means I am enabled to record the illustrious host that encamped itself on the public square, in front of the fort, at present denominated the Bowling Green.

In the centre then were pitched the tents of the men of battle of the Manhattoes; who, being the inmates of the metropolis, composed the lifeguards of the governor. These were commanded by the valiant Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilome had acquired such immortal fame at Oyster Bay -they displayed as a standard, a beaver rampant on a field of orange; being the arms of the province, and denoting the persevering industry, and the amphibious origin, of the Nederlanders.