CONTENTS

Volume I.—No. 4.]—— SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1858.—— [Price 2 Cents.

STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S
ALLIGATOR.

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Let Dad and Son Beware!

Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann are old and sacred friends of George W. Matsell, who are more familiar with each other than they are with the Bible, or morning and evening prayers. Mayor Tiemann was elected with the express condition that Matsell should be restored to his old position, and Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann, and James W. Gerard, and Ambrose C. Kingsland are at work for their lives to effect the restoration of Matsell, and all impends on the election of a Commissioner in place of the noble Perrit. Matsell was in the city at the last Mayoralty election, conspiring against Wood, who saved him from the scaffold, after we convicted him of alienage and perjury, and the dastard and sacrilegious abjuration of his country. And at the late election, he stabbed his benefactor down in the dust, in the assassin’s darkness, and did not play Brutus for the public virtue, but to consummate his restoration to an office (he had always degraded) which was in the contract between himself and Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland, and other slavish friends. We know them all and the rendezvous of all their kindred Diavolos, whose names would fill the jaws of the Alligator. Matsell professed to enter the city from Iowa with flags and music on the day after Tiemann’s election, but he was in the city long before, and concealed in as dark a cavern as the odious Cataline, while conspiring to foil the patriotic Cicero, and consign the eternal city to a million thieves. And we now warn Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland to beware. For if they foist Matsell on the city through the purchase of Nye or Bowen with Mayoralty, Street Commissioner, or the pap of the Mayor’s Executive vassals, we will make disclosures that will make them stare like affrighted cats, (Gerard a la he-cat, and the others a la she-cats,) and rock the city to its carbonic entrails. Talmadge must remain, although he annoyed his nurse and mother when a brat, and so did we; and in boyhood and early manhood we both had worms, and raised Sancho Panza,

And we rambled around the town,
And saw perhaps Miss Julia Brown,

as we may develop in the publication of our funny reminiscences; but we are both growing old, and told our experience at the recent revival, and asked admission as pious pilgrims, when the deacons said that we should both be put on five year’s trial, but we begged so hard they let us in. Talmadge joined the Presbyterians, and he looks pale and pensive, but we joined the noisy Methodists, and look mighty cheerful, and sing and dance, and scream like the devil in delirium tremens, and nervous neighbors murmur at our thundering methodistic demonstrations. Talmadge as Recorder was too kind and lenient, but he erred on the side of humanity, which is preferable to err on the side of a pale and icy and bloodless liver, though we should steer between the heart and liver, and consign the culprits to the pits and gulches of the navel, where the voracious worms could soon devour them. The valor of Talmadge conquered the ruffians of Astor Place, and he has a Roman and Spartan nature, and is as generous and magnanimous as Clay or Webster, whom he loved as his own big heart. No man ever had a more genial or sympathising bosom, than Frederick A. Talmadge. And William Curtis Noyes married his favorite daughter, and while, the spotless Noyes walks the velvet earth, and his father-in-law is Chief of Police, all will go well. Wm. Curtis Noyes is one of the ablest jurists of our country, and Washington himself had no purer, nor warmer, nor more patriotic heart. We selected Mr. Noyes as our counsel against little Georgy Matsell, when arraigned before the Police Commissioners, and to his ability and fidelity are New Yorkers profoundly indebted for the downfall of Matsell, and the worst and most formidable banditti that ever scourged the Western Continent. Beware, then, Cooper Tiemann, Gerard and Kingsland, and other trembling conspirators, or we will make you howl, and open the gates of Tartarus, and set a million dogs and devils at your heels, and when they bite, may God have mercy on your poor old bones. Beware, or we will harrow your superannuated souls into the realms of Pluto, where Robert le Diable will grab and burn you in liquid brimstone, through exhaustless years. Beware of those forty pages yet behind. O, beware, we implore you, in the name of your wives and children, and your God! Beware of Matsell and his gang, as the big and little demons of these wicked times.

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Advents and Public Plunderers.

Richard B. Connolly, the County Clerk, was born in Bandon, Ireland, and arrived in Philadelphia twenty-five years since, (as his glib, and slippery, and truthful tongue asseverates,) and thence immigrated to our metropolis. He became Simeon Draper’s Friday clerk, who taught him the politician’s creed of plunder, and has ever used him as a spy in the democratic legions. Draper got him in the Customs, and kept him there through several Administrations. Draper and Connolly long controlled the Ten Governors, and do now. Draper has been in all camps, and Connolly has figured in democratic conventions, primary and legal, of all stripes and checks, through which he acquired the immortal name of Slippery. Dick is an alien, and offered us between the pillars of Plunder Hall a lucrative position in the office of County Clerk, and also proposed to play Judas against Matsell, if we would not expose his perjured alienage. We had three interviews, when we assured him that we despised both treason and traitor. He then got Alderman John Kelly to read a letter in the Board of Aldermen, declaring that he was naturalized in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, whither we repaired, and got certificates from the clerks, declaring that he was never naturalized in Philadelphia, which we published in the New York Daily Times. In his Aldermanic letter, he declared that his