Puck us no Pucks, De Sauty, nor
constrict our planet's rotundity with any forty-minute girdle; for in
these days of inflating crinoline and ever-increasing circumference of
hooped skirts, it becomes us to leave our Mother Earth at least in the
fashion, nor strive to reduce her to such unmodish dimensions that one
may circumnavigate her in as little time, comparatively, as he may make
the circuit of Miss Flora MacFlimsey.
I beseech you, do not call that nonsense; it is but a good-natured way
of stating the case in the aspect it presents from the De Sauty point
of view; for tightly laced as poor Mother Earth already is, with
railroad corsets and steamship stays, growing small by degrees and
beautifully less, she needs but the forty-minute girdle of Puck De
Sauty to so contract her waist at the equator that any impudent
traveller may span it with a carpet-bag and an umbrella.
On that memorable night of the Cable Celebration, when so many paper
lanterns and so many enlightened New Yorkers were sold in the name of
De Sauty,--when all the streets and all the people were alive with
gas,--when we fired off rockets and Roman candles and spread-eagle
speeches in illustrious exuberance,--when the city children lit their
little dips, and the City Fathers lit their City Hall,--when we hung
out our banners, and clanged our bells, and banged our guns,--when
there was Glory to God in the highest steeple, and Peace on Earth in
the lowest cellar,--I drifted down the Broadway current of a mighty
flood of folk, a morose and miserable sentimentalist.
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