Dialogue between Edward and Harry

• Posted by mgr on August 3rd, 2008 filed in Zeitdokumente
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Edward, alone, reading.
Enter Harry, with an important air.

Harry: HOW are you, Ned?

Edward: What, is it you, brother Harry? Were it not for the small part of your face, that appears between your fore-top and your cravat, I should never know you.

Har. My appearance is a little altered, to be sure; but I hope you will allow it is for the better.

Edw. I wish I could. I perceive, that, some how or other, you are completely metamorphosed from a plain country lad, to a Boston buck, beau, or fop: which is the current word in your varying town dialect, to express such a thing as yourself?

Har. Ah, either of them will do. The young ladies sometimes call me Tippy Harry; that suits my ear the best.

Edw. That, I suppose, means a little fop, or, as I should express it, a foppee, who is obliged to stand tiptoe to reach a lady her fan.

Har. One of your clownish blunders, Ned. It means an airy young gentleman, dressed out in complete bon ton from head to foot, like myself.

Edw. “An airy young gentleman, dressed out in complete bon ton, &c. &c.” This definition may be of service to me; I will try to remember it. You always possessed one quality of a gentleman, a large share of good humour: I hope you will not be angry, brother, if I am a little inquisitive.

Har. Do, Ned, leave off using that oldfashioned word: I had rather you would do any thing to me than brother me at this rate. If you should come to Boston, dressed as you are now, with your clumsy shoes, coarse stockings, great small-clothes,home-spun coat, and your old rusty go-to-mill hat, and shake hands with me, in your awkward way; and then, to complete the whole, should call me brother, I should be thunderstruck! For my credit’s sake, I should swear it was some crazy straggler, I had seen in the country, and given a few coppers to keep him from starving. I would hide behind the counter, or lie rolled up in a piece of broadcloth a week, rather than be caught in such a scrape.

Edw. An airy young gentleman, indeed! would swear to half a dozen lies, hide behind the counter, and roll yourself up in a piece of broadcloth; like a silkworm, to save your credit! You have improved much beyond my expectations, Tippy Harry! This sounds better in your refined ear than brother Harry, I suppose.

Har. Yes it does, Ned, I’ll assure you: that’s your sort! You begin to come on a little. Now I’ll tell you how it is, Ned; if you would take your old musty library here, and lay it all on the fire together, and burn all your old-fashioned clothes with it, and then go to Boston —

Edw. What, without any clothes, Harry?

Har. Why, I think I should about as lief be seen with you stark naked, as with your coarse, narrow, backed, short-waisted coat. But as I was saying before, then put yourself under the care of a tailor, barber, shoemaker, and dancing master; keep a store of English goods about three months, go to the Theatre a dozen nights, chat with our Boston Tippies, have a few high goes, and freeze and thaw two or three times, for you are monstrously stiff; I say after all this; I believe, Ned, you would make a very clever fellow.

Edw. The freezing and thawing is a kind of discipline I should not so readily comply with. I have heard of several of your clever fellows, and ladies of your sort, who were found frozen in old barns, and behind board fences; but I never knew they were so fortunate as to thaw again. Now, Harry, I will be serious with you. Your airy young gentleman, in my opinion is a very insipid character; far beneath my ambition. A few materials from behind the counter, the tailor’s needle and shears, the barber’s puff and pomatum, a little sheep-skin modified by the shoemaker, and what is the most insignificant of all, a little supple, puny machine, that in plain English, I should call a naked fool; to strut about the streets with all this finery; carry it to the theatre, or dancing school; and teach it to say a few pretty things by rote; these make the gentleman of your sort. Mine is composed of quite different materials.

Har. Pray let me know what they are? homespun, I dare say. I am superfine, you see, from head to foot.

Edw. Yes, Harry, you have blundered into one just observation. In the first place, I would lay up a good store of knowledge, home-spun from my own reflections, reading and observations; not the second-handed smattering of the most ignorant of all beings who use a tongue. The tailor’s, barber’s, and dancing-master’s bill should not show an inventory of all I possessed. They may make my clothes, dress my hair, and teach me how to bow; but there must be something more to command the bow of respect trom people of sense, the judges of real merit. In short, I would be a gentleman farmer; too well informed to be influenced by your railing newspaper politics; too much delighted with the bleating and playing of the flocks in my own pasture, to read the head of Theatricals, or be amused with any drove of stage players, that have invested our country from Charleston to Portsmouth. And I should be much more proud of raising one likely calf, than as many of the most insipid of all animals, called Tippies, as could stand in every shop in Cornhill.

Quoted from: Caleb Bingham: The Columbian Orator. Baltimore, 1811.

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