Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

THE PROWLER-No. 1.

THAT the manners of mankind have been corrected and their morals reformed, during the progress of civilization, by a series of literary essayists, is a position few will be found with sufficient incredulity to doubt, or hardihood to deny. Yet many moderns, delighted with the progress of perfectability, or elated with the glare of their own superficial acquirements in literature and smattering in science, affect to believe any further auxiliaries in these long exhausted subjects, unnecessary and futile. To moderate minds, unaccustomed to resistance and unused to surmounting difficulties, these considerations may present obstacles disheartening, if not insuperable; but those who are able to proportion vigor of pursuit to the value of the object to be attained, regard danger and hazard only as incentives to perseverance.

Inspired with such sentiments, the writers of the Prowler have determined to give the world, through the medium of a weekly paper, some of their opinions on various subjects in which the passions and prejudices of mankind have been and yet are most generally conversant. Their remarks will be the result of experience acquired by long lives spent in diligent observation of the human character and accurate investigation of human passions; not in particular cases, but in the general mass; not of a single class, but of endless varieties: in the lap of pleasure and the school of adversity; not in opaque and refracted perspectives through the "spectacles of books," but in clear and unclouded view of living subjects.

The writers of the Prowler propose to diversity their numbers with endless variety. They will sometimes exhibit their thoughts in the ponderous periods of the monarch of English literature. & sometimes assume the careless dress of licensed loungers. If occasionally they exhibit sententious brevity and sarcastic severity, they will not forget to enliven their pages with flashes of wit and sparkles of humor. We will not, however, prolong our introduction by reiteration of promises or amplification of assurances, but leave our readers to the silent operation of our instructions and exhortations. That our numbers will effectually regenerate mankind, reform the age, and diffuse universally correct notions of every possible subject, it were vain to expect and presumptuous to anticipate: yet we are not without hope that our exertions will meet the applause of the wise & good: and amid the arid avocations of mental labor, we shall solace ourselves with the consciousness of discharging our duty to the age in which Providence has destined our existence, regardless of praise or blame from dullness and stupidity.

It may not be amiss to advertise our readers of some of the subjects we propose to treat in our subsequent essays:

Pills and Pillology-or the doctrine of Pills
Psalm-singing, & subscription papers-their evils.
Evening Lectures-notion peddling, scandal, &c.
Street walkers-Sabbath breakers-night hawkers, &c.
Old Maids-Old Bachelors-Coarse wrapping paper
Gun-boats-Dry-docks and yellow fevers.
On the Ancients-Bundorus-Nick Fungus, &c
Spinning wheels and Perpetual motion- Ginger Mills, &c.
Tea Parties, like their tea: weak-& why.
Boot Jacks-Education-Boarding Schools, &c.
Knife Grinders and Note Shavers.
Things in general.

Brunswick, July, 1812.