Alexandria Daily Advertiser

From the United States Gazettes

The following is a copy of a real letter written by the person whose name is subscribed, and who was a sergeant in the Pennsylvania line during the revolutionary war. The original is or lately was in the possession of a gentleman in this city, (Philadelphia) We have rarely seen a more ludicrous combination of what are usually denominated hard words.

Exuberant Genius,

As the malignity of the vulgar incomparably transcends human comprehension, & their grovelling insinuations will climacterize the minutia of human frailty, you cannot want faculty to investigate the ebullition of that invective which has so inundated, a character whose lucidity appeared in the moral world equal to any planetical phaenomenon.

A. M. 5777, alias, P. N. C 1777. I had the honor to make one of that terrific accumulated body of freemen encamped at Middle Brook, whose unparalleled achievements, and unequalled powers in arms, would obliterate the character of a Macedonian army and whose terror not only put a stop to the depredations of an army of veterans, but drove them from the confines of that patriotic province and made them take shelter within their ignean batteries, on the surges of a boisterous and tempestuous torrent. At that time the famous politicians of the epoch were divided in their opinion and the question was, whether they had totally withdrawn their fleets and armies, or the fates had destined them to plough the Atlartic twice ten years (Ulysses like) to receive the retribution of their national crimes? Maturely pondering the arguments a priori and a posteriori- I coincided with the former. Amusing myself and highly pleased that the Deity was tired of punishing the iniquities of the American world, the curtains of the evening began to incircle me, and the shades of Erebus grew more sable, when one of the daughters of Venus intercepted me in my perambulations, whom I discovered to be sauntering about in tasteless existence---Ah me miserum de qua perfectione decid. My meretricious faculties were alarmed, en verite; the organs of my corporeal system were entirely shocked: and for a short time every muscular motion forgot to vibrate; the fair discovering in me an uncommon structure, was prompted to extend her balmiferous hand and raised me from my torpid stupidity, by which time she was environed with other graces not less agreeable in pulchritudenary features. I was assisted into a circle drawn by quadrupeds, and vehicled into a Virgin province at that time unknown to me. All this time my ideas, simple & compound, centered in my Diana, as a principal and virtual focus.

I had no avocations, nor did my country strike my auricular nerves; no expansion of my common sensorium; all was love! all was joy ecstatic and complete!

Posthumous to my departure from the theatre of human courage, I was enveloped in a dulcid lethargic superfaction of reiterated voluptuosity for three diurnal periods. and, as I conceive, entranced in the saporific calm of Pathian joys-but the fatigues of repetition. destroyed and annihilating my virile powers, I was eventually reduced to a state of compos mentis.

I say after again emerging into the world, upon examining my calendar, I was astonished to find that the lunar periodical revolutions were numerically equal to the muses, and upon hearing of the enemy's return to the continent, I am again determined to make a glorious epiphany.

By this time, sir, I trust the antecedent cogitations have capacified you to form something definitive and conclusive respecting the character of a child of misery and an offspring. of misfortune, and that you will be moved to reconcile me to your causidical brother colonel R---y, from whom I have unfortunately revolted.

Through your benign mediatorial influence I hope to be renovated in his estimation, and that my quantum defectus may be entirely and sempiternally absorbed in the chaos of perpetual oblivion.

I am, most Exuberant Genius, with pedestal humiliation, and retrograde speculation.

Your torquated friend and distressed,

Humble servant,

HUMPHRY THOMSON, Sergeant.

From my sequestered Museum, near the Lancaster Road,
April 23, 1778

To Col …-. in Gen. W.-'s division.