Contents
-Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Josh Billings’s Advertisement
By Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–1885)
[Born in Lanesborough, Mass., 1818. Died at Monterey, Cal., 1885. Josh Billings, His Works. 1876.]
I
KAN sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars, a pallas, a sweet and pensive retirement, lokated on the virgin banks ov the Hudson, kontaining 85 acres. The land is luxuriously divided by the hand of natur and art, into pastor and tillage, into plain and deklivity, into stern abruptness, and the dallianse ov moss-tufted medder; streams ov sparkling gladness (thick with trout) danse through this wilderness ov buty, tew the low musik ov the kricket and grasshopper. The evergreen sighs az the evening zephir flits through its shadowy buzzum, and the aspen trembles like the luv-smitten harte ov a damsell. Fruits ov the tropicks, in golden buty, melt on the bows, and the bees go heavy and sweet from the fields to their garnering hives. The manshun iz ov Parian marble, the porch iz a single diamond, set with rubiz and the mother ov pearl; the floors are ov rosewood, and the ceilings are more butiful than the starry vault of heavin. Hot and cold water bubbles and squirts in evry apartment, and nothing is wanting that a poet could pra for, or art could portray. The stables are worthy of the steeds ov Nimrod or the studs ov Akilles, and its henery waz bilt expressly for the birds of paradice; while somber in the distance, like the cave ov a hermit, glimpses are caught ov the dorg-house. Here poets hav cum and warbled their laze—here skulptors hav cut, here painters hav robbed the scene ov dreamy landskapes, and here the philosopher diskovered the stun, which made him the alkimist ov natur. Nex northward ov this thing ov buty, sleeps the residence and domain ov the Duke John Smith; while southward, and nearer the spice-breathing tropicks, may be seen the barronial villy ov Earl Brown, and the Duchess, Widder Betsy Stevens. Walls ov primitiff rock, laid in Roman cement, bound the estate, while upward and downward, the eye catches far away the magesta and slow grander ov the Hudson. As the young moon hangs like a cutting ov silver from the blu brest ov the ski, an angel may be seen each night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green. (N. B. This angel goes with the place.)
