Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

From the WESTERN STAR.
THE CORDWAINER.—No. 3.
NOW I am no Jacobin, gentlemen.
If you ask me what a Jacobin is, I profess I cannot tell you, only I have no-
tions from what I have catched up here and there, that it is a sort of a man that puts on his pants first and then his boots--changes first his coat, and then puts on his shirt knocks you down, and then inquires whether you have injured or offended him-if his cabin wants sweeping. he will set it on fire, in order as he says gravely, to purge it effectually.

Now this was never my way, It always seemed to come handier to me to begin at the other end.--If I was going to remove the old brush-fence round my corn field, when the crop was growing, (for I own a little farm) I should say to myself, " Now if I take away this, poor as it is, before I have got my posts and rails for a new one, and carted them to the spot, ten chances to one, the cattle and hogs will watch the opportunity and destroy my crop. If I have not stuff enough to renew the whole, I will repair as far as my materials will go, and let the rest be till I can get better prepared to complete it."If I undertake to make my neighbor a pair of boots, I do not set my fancy at work to hit the handsomest shape, or study the nicest proportions, with a view of paring the long heel and crooked shin of the wearer to fit the boot; but I take his measure, and if my customer cannot wear an elegant boot, I endeavor to make him such boots as he can wear.

We poor tradesmen don't have much time to read; when a subject so entertaining as the Rights of Man, is handled, however, we strain a point. Mr. Paine seems to be a mighty nice writer; he lays all smooth as velvet before him as he goes. When he encounters the absurdities, the abuses and the prejudices that exist among mankind, he makes napping work; he is as bold as a lion. None of your half-way, do-for-the-present, milk and water notions for him. Mr. Paine knows what is what, I warrant you. O, if I could write like that same Tommy Paine, I am not certain you should always find Ned Nipper at his last and his lapstone.

I should, perhaps, sooner chuse Mr. Paine to write for me, however, than to make systems of government for my country. When I read his works, I endeavor to keep my eyes fixed steadily upon the book, and while I do that, all seems to go on as it should do ; palaces, churches, prisons, ruins, kings and priests swim, like a raree show, before my eyes, and vanish away; but many a fine reverie have I spoiled by suffering my eyes inadvertently to wander from the page, and to dwell for a moment or two, upon the objects which surrounded me. I have dreamed of being in the most delightful garden, where nothing was to be seen but the most beautiful fruits and flowers; nothing heard but the music of the birds and the streams; nothing smelt but fragrant odours ; nothing felt but the breath of the breezes: When the rattling of a shuttle has awaked me to the same old smoaked walls, noisy rats in the ceiling, the tink of my leather and my pitch, and abundance of fleas and bed-bugs.