country talk, 1829

[George Thompson]

In October, 1829, the Commercial Advertiser began publishing letters signed Hiram Doolittle Jun.  I have just looked them over casually.  The point of the letters seems to be political satire, and I stay away from politics, generally.  But I will probably go back to them.  It seems that the editor of the Commercial did not know who the real author was -- the letters came over the transom, so to speak.  He said that if Doolittle wanted to be a regular contributor, he would have to tone down the political barbs, and he evidently also made some remarks about the style of the writing which I did not notice, but which Doolittle replied to in the first passage quoted below.
I'm not perfectly clear as to what Doolittle's persona is supposed to be; a bumpkin or a slicker, or neither.

        ***  A pretty brace of critics you must be, to talk about Queen Ann's writing and not know the pure English of your own country!  To "hack and draw a bee-line," then means to turn around and clear out straight.      ***  [the phrase is in italics]

["Amos" and "Duff" were two notable politicians of the era.  The scene is a backwoods inn, in Kentucky.]
        Amos.  "Holloa, there! Can I get to stay with you to-night?"
        Duff.  "Well, I reckon."
        Amos.  "Then boy, hang my horse."
        Duff.  "And give him a smart chance of roughness and toat in his plunder."*
        Amos.  "A smart chunk of a boy, that."
        Duff.  "Well, I reckon; but here's the crack honey-love in the gum." °
        Amos.  "I don't quite let on to that."
        [the dialogue breaks off here]
        In my next I will commence telling you where I have been, and some things I have seen, since I left Cooperstown.  At present, "I'm not in the humor on't."  The fact is, the Oswego stage broke down with me last night; and we had a fearsome time on't, coming down the dug-way of the Irondequoit in the dark.  I'd rather whip my weight in wild-cats than try the experiment again.  Your friend,
                HIRAM DOOLITTLE, Jun.
* i. e. -- A large quantity of provender, and take in his baggage.
° i. e. -- Smartest child in the cradle, or, properly, hollow tree, of which cradles are often made in the new countries. -- Printer's Devil.  [P~ D~ is italicized, as are one or two of the words in the dialogue.]
        Commercial Advertiser, October 6, 1829, p. 2, col. 1
 [The OED has "roughness" in this sense from 1813; "plunder" from 1805; "chance" in this sense (4b) from 1805; "chunk" from 1822; lacks this sense of "let on"; lacks "dug-way"; has "whip my weight in wild-cats" from 1828 & 1834.]

His first letter was datelined from Saratoga Springs; the second from Niagara Falls, where the local bureau or tourism -- or someone else -- had taken the notion to attract sightseers by letting a derelict schooner drift over the falls; Sam Patch was also going to jump below the Falls.  (As it worked out, the schooner went aground and never reached the Falls, and the platform Patch was to jump from fell over, but he managed to find some place to jump from, anyway.)
In any event, the Saratoga letter included some adverse remarks on the ball-room dancing skills of the vacationers:
. . . the specimens of dancing which I have seen, are of the flat foot order.
        Commercial Advertiser, September 3, 1829, p. 2, col. 1  "[flat foot" italicized]
The OED has "flat foot" first of all as the physical defect, from the mid-19th C, then, even later, as a foot soldier and as a cop.
 The entry on "platfoot" seems to promise that when by a commodius vicus of recirculation the revision of the OED reaches the "F"s it will include "flat foot" as a style of dancing,  but here it's a clumsy technique.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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