Classical Academy near the President’s. White roomed with me at Columbian College until 1839, when I became so ill, that I was compelled to relinquish my studies. My blood rushed fearfully to the brain, and I was so nervous, that I imagined if I spoke beyond a whisper, that I would break a blood vessel. I also thought if I ate solid food, I would have the cholic as soon as it entered my belly. Dr. Thomas Sewell, of Washington, came out to the College, and the students and professors gathered around my bed, and I thought I was about to die, when the Doctor, (after punching my belly rather roughly,) exclaimed: “Why, Branch, you are not dangerously ill, and you could not die, if you wanted to, without suicide. You are only nervous and dyspeptic, and you remind me of a nervous person recently described in an eminent British periodical, who imagined that he had glass legs, and that, if he attempted to walk, they would snap like pipe stems. He made his friends dress him, and carry him about the house for a long period, until he nearly wore them out, and they resolved to do it no longer; and believing that he could walk as well as they, they determined to try an experiment. So, they asked him if he would like to take a ride into the country. He said he would, if they would put him in the carriage. They first placed masks, torches, horns, and Indian apparel in a trunk, and placed him in the carriage, and off they drove, arriving in a deep wood before sunset, and asked him if he would get out, and sit on the grass. He said he would, if they would take him out. They carefully took him out, and seated him on the grass, and then got into the carriage, saying that they were going back to London, and that, if he accompanied them, he must get into the carriage himself, which he assured them he could not do, without breaking his glass legs. So, off they drive, amid his frantic cries to take him with them. In about two hours, a thunder storm arose, and four of them, in their frightful disguises, rapidly approached him, (amid rain, thunder, and lightning,) all masked and attired like devils and wild Indians, and made the woods ring with drums, and horns, and bagpipes. He sat firmly until they were about to inclose, and apparently devour him, when he sprang to his feet, and ran so fleetly on his supposed glass legs, that they pursued him for half a mile, and gave up the contest. They then repaired to their carriage, and although they drove tolerably fast, yet, when they arrived at their home in London, they found him sitting quietly in his easy chair, as though nothing had transpired, his fancy glass legs having distanced the fleetest horses.” I had not laughed for two months, but Dr. Sewell’s funny and truthful story made all the students, and President, and professors roar, and I had to join them against my will. When they all retired, I arose from my bed, for the first time in ten days, and dressed and shaved myself, and raised my voice far beyond a whisper, and in one hour talked in my usual tone, and called for some beef steak, of which I ate quite heartily, and found that my nerves had bamboozled me most shamefully, and I recovered rapidly. But I was delicate, and could not work at the printing business, and my blood concentrated in the brain, and I had to cease my severe mental application, and I resolved to return to my father’s in Providence as the prodigal son. Young White accompanied me to my father’s door, and told my mournful story, when my father embraced me with his wonted affection, after an absence of nearly three years.

(To be continued to our last moan.)

Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1858.

This is the seventh week of the Alligator, and nearly every editor in this city has had the courtesy, and kindness, and generosity to notice my efforts to establish a journal on the basis of truth and justice, save James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley, and Henry J. Raymond. As I have written for the Herald, Tribune, and Times nearly since their birth, the premeditated slight of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond seems so impolite and unkind and ungenerous, that I have resolved to analyse the editorial career of these notorious big and little villains of the press, who are a greater curse to the people of this country than all the thieves who ever entered the City Hall, or our State or National Capitols. And next week I will begin their dissection, and pluck out their livers, and cast them to the cadaverous and greedy vultures for a choice repast, which will present the novel spectacle of thievish crows devouring the livers of their own species. It is the custom of these editors to unite and crush those who dare oppose them, and expose their crimes, by refusing to let the wholesale newspaper venders have the Herald, Tribune, and Times, if they sell the public journals of their adversaries. If they strive to deprive me of bread, by intimidating the wholesale newspaper dealers of Ann, Nassau, and Beekman streets, so help me God, I will enter their editorial closets, and lash them until the blood streams from every pore, if I am slain in the attempt. Next week, then, and as long as I can wield a pen, I will show the people of this country how these editors blow hot and cold, and black mail, and collude with thievish politicians, and share their spoils, and sell the people! And from my knowledge of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond (after a close communion with them for twenty years,) I brand them as three of the biggest villains that ever breathed. So, next week, let the American people prepare for startling revelations!

James R. Whiting is a man whose head commands our profoundest respect, and his heart our warmest attachment. This is no age for him. He is like a cat in a strange garret among the Busteeds, and Connollys, and Pursers, and Devlins, and Smiths, and Erbens, and other perjured aliens and plunderers that prowl around the City Treasury. But James R. Whiting would have been adored in the halcyon or tumultuous days of the Persian, Egyptian, Grecian, or Roman Empires. But neither the press nor the people will ever appreciate his wisdom, patriotism, and sacrifice in these degenerate times. God bless James R. Whiting! and when he dies, the honest people will weep over his departure, as the Athenians did over the bones of Socrates, whom they kicked, and cuffed, and taunted with insanity, and accused of corrupting the youth of his country, and thrust poison down his throat, but they deeply regretted their folly and cruelty, and the Grecians of every age have mourned his melancholy fate, and cursed their ancestors for their neglect and persecution of the scholar and patriot, and unrivalled Father of Philosophers, since the globe was launched into the atmospheric waves.

c8

Peter Cooper’s Avarice and Infernal Antecedents.

We all know how John Jacob Astor and Stephen Girard got their first thousand dollars. And now let us see how Peter Cooper obtained his first fifteen hundred dollars. When quite young and penniless, the American Government owed Peter Cooper’s aunt fifteen hundred dollars, as pension money, which Peter long besought his aunt to let him strive to obtain, and she invested him with the power to collect it, and he soon obtained it without much difficulty through some of the vagabond politicians of those days, for whom he had done some dirty work in