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of those cities. How completely horrifying to a fashionable lady to see, in her elegant and superbly furnished drawing-room, the invited guest of her honoured spouse, from the far West, bespattering her brilliant mahogany, and marble and Brussels, with tobacco juice, as unceremoniously as he would inundate the plank floor of a log cabin! Western parsons are especially noted for their gifts in this species of holding forth; and they never fail, during their annual visits to Philadelphia, to leave an odour of their outpourings so remarkably impressive and affecting as seldom to be effaced or forgotten. Whether their pulpit displays are equally potential or memorable, my reminiscences do not enable me to decide.

The late eloquent Mr. Pinckney of Maryland, while minister at the Court of St. James, very soon discovered that his tobacco chewing was a most disgusting annoyance to every company which he frequented: and he had the good sense and the resolution to discontinue the filthy usage altogether. He became, in consequence, a much healthier and better-looking man, as well as a vastly more accomplished and acceptable representative of the New World in the eyes of the loyal and fastidious Londoners.

The other day at church, a well-dressed young fellow, while standing up in prayer time and leaning over into my pew, so wantonly besprinkled every part of my premises with his tobacco distillations, as fairly to put all devotion out of countenance, and make me wish for the Amen, as impatiently as ever did hungry urchin

during his puritan papa's long grace over a thanksgiving-day's dinner.

At the aforesaid meeting of synod, a reverend doctor from Alabama stated that, during a voyage, a few years since, from Liverpool to New York, it became a topic of conversation and inquiry among the passengers, English and American-what was the peculiar distinguishing trait or characteristic of the American?-It being ac knowledged that they were very much alike in general. At length, a shrewd Englishman remarked that, in his judgment, (and he had many opportunities for observation and comparison,) the "American might par excellence be denominated a SPITTING ANIMAL."

VOL. III.-40

THE WEATHER AND SUNDRIES.*

[JANUARY 30, 1832.]

THE present winter will long be remembered on account of the intense, and hitherto unparalleled severity of the weather. When we recorded, in a neighbouring journal, the features of the cold December, we little anticipated another Greenland visitation in so short a space. But all the concentrated frosts of the Icy Poles have been let loose upon us, and have played such fantastic tricks with our Italian atmosphere that a Russian or Norwegian might here have fancied himself some twenty degrees north of his accustomed latitude. We have, indeed, had winter and summer in delightful contact. One day oppressively hot-the next as cold as if the sun had been instantaneously annihilated. What philosophy can explain such enigmatical phenomena, or build up a meteorological theory worthy of this most enlightened and system-making generation? Do heat and cold travel by steam or by railroads, or by any other modern improvements in esse or in posse? What is the reforming world coming to? A few more mortal inventions will convert our lovely planet into a blazing comet, or into a globe of ice-and we shall be all burnt. up or frozen into statues-to be criticised and questioned

*Printed in the Nashville Herald, January 31, 1832, over the signature of An Old Field Pedagogue.

secundum artem by the Cuviers and Bucklands and Lyells of a future creation.

What think you, courteous Bostonian, of twenty degrees below zero, here in Nashville, forty miles nearer the equator than sultry Algiers? Nashville is in latitude 36° 10′ North, and Algiers 36° 49'. The weather of January up to the 24th, was mild enough: and a few days rather too warm. On the 18th, for example, the mercury in Fahrenheit rose to 72 degrees, and we began to think of gardening. On the 24th, however, in the afternoon, it began to snow and to blow furiously. The night was pinching. At daylight of the 25th, the thermometer stood at four degrees below zero-at 9 o'clock at five below-and during the day the maximum of its rise was only to one above zero. This was the coldest average day we ever experienced anywhere. We were nearly frozen in riding a quarter of a mile on horseback -though well-equipped with all manner of orthodox defensibles. And our juvenile greeklings looked like the very personification of vox faucibus hæsit: and we could not find in our hearts to scold them for not threading the mazes of Euclid or Euripides. Even Busby or Parr would have become gentle and torpid under such an influence. By-the-way, Old Nick was a fool, or he would have made Job a schoolmaster-and then, if he had not triumphed, we are no conjurers.

The morning of the 26th arrived-and lo, the thermometer stood at 18 degrees below zero at sunrise! And that our accuracy may not be questioned, we have received accounts from sundry persons residing within a

range of thirty miles around us, stating the thermometer to have been 16, 17, 18, 19, and even 20 degrees below zero. We pledge our veracity to the whole world and to all posterity that the facts are precisely as we announce them. On the 27th the mercury was, at daylight, twelve degrees below zero, as observed by us, and ten below as reported by others. the 28th it was two above zero. to snow again.

On the morning of

About noon it began And it is snowing still, in real Vermont style, while we are writing-that is to say, at half-past eight o'clock in the evening of this same 28th of January, 1832. How deep the snow will be to-morrow we cannot certainly tell, but we venture a rough guess that it will be about three feet seven inches or thereby, as the Scotch phrase it.

During the previous month of December, it will be remembered that the mercury was, several times, two or three degrees below zero, and that on the morning of the 16th it was 14 below. We had then about 25 days of uninterrupted Iceland weather-with snow ten inches. deep and good sleighing for two weeks. Twenty degrees below zero would be considered an extraordinary affair, and would cause a wonderful sensation even at St. Petersburg.

It is remarkable that the winters of 1740, 1780, and 1820 were the coldest ever known in our country. During each, the bay and other waters about the City of New York were completely frozen over, and admitted of all sorts of land travelling. Of the two former we have often heard our fathers and grandfathers speak as

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