The Prevailing Costumes
Of The Gentlemen Were Straw Hats, Black Dress Coats Remarkably Shiny,
Tight Pantaloons, And Pumps.
These were worn by the sallow narrators of
the tales of successful roguery.
There were a very few hardy western men,
habited in scarlet flannel shirts, and trowsers tucked into high boots,
their garments supported by stout leathern belts, with dependent bowie-
knives; these told "yarns" of adventures, and dangers from Indians,
something in the style of Colonel Crockett.
The ladies wore their satin or kid shoes of various colours, of which the
mud had made woeful havoc. The stories, which called forth the applause of
the company in exact proportion to the barefaced roguery and utter want of
principle displayed in each, would not have been worth listening to, had
it not been from the extraordinary vernacular in which they were clothed,
and the racy and emphatic manner of the narrators. Some of these voted
three legs of their chairs superfluous, and balanced themselves on the
fourth; while others hooked their feet on the top of the windows, and
balanced themselves on the back legs of their chairs, in a position
strongly suggestive of hanging by the heels. One of the stories which
excited the most amusement reads very tamely divested of the slang and
manner of the story-teller.
A "'cute chap down east" had a "2-50" black mare (one which could perform
a mile in two minutes fifty seconds), and, being about to "make tracks,"
he sold her to a gentleman for 350 dollars.
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