Excerpt from The Cockney in America, or the Adventures of Triptolemus Snooks, Esq.
The field for observation in that strange country, composed of H’ingins and ‘ottentots, was a Wide one, and, to the naturally reflective mind of the subject of our notice, it afforded infinite Opportunities for philosophic speculation. His preceptors at Oxford had egregiously failed to enlighten the mind of Triptolemus on the early history of America. He had read, in a fable-book, many and wondrous stories of their origin; of the natives having been planted on that desolate soil by a band of expatriating Pil grims; of the country having once been under the subjection of Great Britain, and of a rebellion somewhere in the eighteenth century, from the British dominion. Also, of their shortly after having established laws of their own, planted towns and cities, built ships, manufactured steamboats, and erected telegraph wires. But all these strange stories required con firmation. For this purpose, greedily did young Triptolemus Snooks read the startling tales of Mrs. Trollope, Boz, Marryatt, and Fanny Kemble. But the perusal of these veritable authors only filled his mind with a mass of doubt and uncertainty. And, when he came to’ compare these books with the Nursery Tales on the same subject, prepared expressly for the youth of the Nobility, in which the inhabitants of America are represented as half-naked Indians, and as having, sometimes as many as a dozen bands, like a Chinese Idol, and, in some instances, an extra eye situated in the centre of the forehead, he flung away his books in despair, settled his bills at the ‘otel, and, with note-book and pencil, started for America, the inhospitable shores of which country he reached late in the autumn of 1846.
It has become very common for the Cockney in America to have an East India Uncle.
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