Transcribers Note : Spelling and grammar have been retained as in the original publication.
Doesticks and his Friends.
Doesticks
What He Says
BY
Q. K. Philander Doesticks P.B.
NEW YORK:
LIVERMORE & RUDD,
310 BROADWAY.
1856.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
EDWARD LIVERMORE,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York
THIS IS NEITHER
A HISTORY, ROMANCE, LIFE-DRAMA, BIOGRAPHY,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
NOR
POST MORTEM EXAMINATION,
BUT A SERIES OF
Unpremeditated Literary Extravaganzas,
WRITTEN WITHOUT MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
BY THE SINGLE HERO THEREOF,
PURELY FOR HIS OWN GLORIFICATION
AND PRINTED BY THE PUBLISHER
SOLELY FOR HIS OWN PROFIT.
Nothing.
In a literary point of view this book claims nothing:
This is the manufacturer's assertion.
In a literary point of view this book amounts tonothing.
This will be the reader's conclusion.
And if any skeptical person insists upon investigating the matter forhimself, he will eventually be compelled to acknowledge the verity ofthis remark; and will, at the same time, bear a strong testimony to thesagacity of the publisher, who has put his trust in nothing—forhe will have bought the book.
This work simply professes to be sketches of various persons, places,and events—some of which have been published, and some hav'n't;some are bad, and some are worse; but all have a claim to originality intreatment, although the same things may have been better said bybetter people.
Some of these bubbles have been, for some time, floating on the sea ofliterature—the lightest froth of the restless wave; still thereare many of them which have never met the public eye, and which arehere, for the first time, set afloat.
And for their publication the writer makes no apology. Accident hasbrought these "airy nothings" into notice; and although many of thethoughts are not novel in themselves, but are merely whimsically put,and not a few of the whims are borrowed unhesitatingly from others, theyare dressed up in a lingual garb so quaint, eccentric, fantastic, orextravagant, that each lender would be sadly puzzled to know his own.
It is undoubtedly this trick of phrase, this affectation of a new-foundstyle, which has caused their widespread newspaper notoriety. And in thehope that people will buy the book before the trick is stale, and notsuspect the secret of the joke until they read it on this page, thewriter has authorized the collection of these roving unsubstantialink-brats into their present shelter, and now presents the whole uncouthfamily for inspection, trusting that the experiment will "put moneyin the purse," not only of himself, but of his sanguine publisher.
This book, like Hodge's razors, was "made to sell;" and if the sometimegood-natured world will pay the price, and have its huge grim smile overthese unlicked fancies—although in a political, moral, orutilitarian sense it will have gained nothing—it will, in aliteral if not literary view, lose nothing.