New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1866-01-12
9atts and cGirtions.


-.@4
JENKINs. JR., ON FAcTs.-We received yesterday
the following communication from our friend Jen-
kins, concerning series of immateria facts which
this seedy gentleman picked up whilst pursuing
his vocation of walking about the Streets waiting
for dinners and lunches whose outlines upon no
occasion define themselves with lucidity before his
eyes as he fixes his mental vision upon the momen-
tous hour of P. NJ.
lfy Dear Friend Of the Fdcts-Do you know
| that there is q vast'anount Of philosophy in the
heading Of your column? Have you ever pro-
peIly reflected upon the close alliance of those
two apparently opposite terms, facts and ictions
Where in life do iictons begin and where do facts
end? Where is the boundary line between that
and that horizon as they meet and close around
| Us, draping unconscious mortality with man
tie of uncertainty as impenetrable as it is light
and airy? Life is stern and unfiinching fact,
that stares us in the face as soon as our eyes are
open to its numerous lights and shadows. The
world is vast and undeeypherabe fiction, COM
posed of fictitious facts and dreams that beguile
| US to the end with the reflection Of our own de-
sres, which We call hope.
Take for example, woman. There is fact for
you none serner or more irrevocabe. She stood be-
fore our precious grandfather Adam she stands
| before now, with the apple Of temptation in her
| hand and the devil behind her, whispering perSua-
sive eloquence himself unseen from the recesses Of
| an orchard, where our appetite is made frantic
with the view of many and still more luscious ap-
| pics " hat DO we see III iler as sue IDuS StnillS
before US. There is beauty beaming in her counte
nance, love radiating from her eyes, happiness
swelling with every heave of her bosom, and vo-
| righteousness surrounding and accompanying each
| of her motions. She is enyironed with dazzling
atmosphere of youth, health, virtue, candor, in
nocence and bliss; her head is adorned with
| flowers: and something airy and undefnable which
she calls bonnet, and TO which she tries to give
! an ugly shape, but cannot succeed contributes to
| heighten its beauty. In orde. to render herself
expensive to blind father doting husband
and disagreeabe to the rest of mankind, she has in
vented a system of hoops which, augmenting
gradually in size as they descend from the
waist occupy an exaggerated circumference
when they reach the ground and spread her silk
or gauze from the store to the gutter side of the
| sidewalk. Her hair and several other things are
put in a volumiuous net which hangs upon her
back with a faacious endeavor to be ridiculous !:
she thus sails before you in the street, unconcern-
| edly forcing you into the GUTTER she thus coolly
enters the crowded car and takes in matter-of-
course way the seats Of three gentlemen, broken
down with the days labor. Can you, under such
circumstances, deny her being fact, an uncon-
lrovertble fact, which you cannot help seeing,
aye, and feeling too, if you don't behave yourself
and bow to her slightest nod
And yet what a fiction she is What peram-
bulating no such tIng.'' What a delicious
| and necessary evil! What compound of prose
and poetry dream and reality, truth and lie, fact
and fiction!
Woman is like happiness and like all the beauti-
full things that we dream of-she must be seen at
a distance and adored from afar, if we want to
keep eur delightful fctions and keep away from
stern facts. She stands before you, queen, an
angel-grasp her, seize her, marry her, and the
mask falls-the woman remains and the angel
disappears.
Pursue happiness, that fugitive freight which
dazzles from the hour of our birth and leads US
object and fills up the void of your aspirations
but seize it never, for it will melt in your grasp
like beautiful phantom, and what then will he
/ left for you to pursue? What to feed your in.
60 Ipb
/ We spend our whole lives in mad race after
fictions, one by one we seize them, we examine
them, and find that they are not what we took
them to be: we let them go and start in pursuit OF
something brighter and thus we race, meeting
blight after blight, till painting and breathless, We
lay down on the road to rest and look at our last
hope disappearing with q mournfn smile through
the mist OF futurity. Happy if though stricken
and deceived, we still believe; happy, if unlike
Don Juan, that misunderstood practical poet, dis
appointment does not breed scepticsm, and we do
not end at the fatal supper, buried in the cold and
unfeelng embrace of the marble statue of despair.
One of the best exempliiicatons of facts as rea-
ted to fictions, be found in the following
anecdote quorum pdrs magma 7i1
You must know that notwithstanding certain
well established theories, which have upon the
nanity of imaginary flights, and the stupidity OF
man basing his happiness upon so frail tounda
} ton as woman, | have sweetheart with whom
, am desperately in love. Lis folly, know, but
am something Of poet, and you know tha
poets like children, weep and laugh at times with
out scarce knowing why Why should they no
also love against all reasOn Life would be stupid
thing il there nothing but common sense in it
For my part, believe that mans superiority owe
the brute creation does not consist III his ability Il
reason, which ability the brutcs practically pos
sess much more than man, but in the power 0
v being unreasonable and extravngant, by means Q
a which we enabled to live in unearthly atlnos
: pheres of light and poetry forgetting the har
/ hearted facts and shallow minded conmon-sens
i cal considerations of this sublunary world.
# But to return to my story. Well, being in love
n as said and having strong foundation OF poetr
Ii in my composition, happened, sometime ago, in
. moment OF uNsuspecting outpouring OF feelings, t
= promise my beloved one. among other tnntastici
Ia things, that would g encirce her brow with
white and spotless halo of glory" The deliriui
l. over, I of course thought no more about it, hl
7, continued my daily pursuit Of uncertain and oIte
1t chNhercal dinners.
W Not so with her; the words had struck her inn
:; cent imagination, and she had dreamed of my b
Is slowing upon her for the practical adornment
her precious head, some indefinite object Whic
with feminine peryerseness, she shaped into'a ne
bonnet. &....
A few days after as imprudently promenade
with her on Canal street, she saw in Olympic
window a female head cover whose shape, ''
shape ii might be called-that shape had none
and turning her winning smile upon me, she sal
d, pressing tcnderly my arm
20 Here is one of those white things like that yC
promised me yesterday!h
1t, There was fact for you to demolish pleasa
fictons! The innocent angel One of those viii
things promised her And this it is to drea,
and this il is to be awakened! | could have klsst
her then and there for her simplicity, and at Il
;, same time the innocent word had gone into Il
H. heart like dagger. 1t unveiled an abyss befo
= my eyes-that abyss which separates poetry iro
IT. reality and which never until it is too lat
Oh ye postssyho are rash enough to be in 10
aud have sweetheart, never promise too MAJ
ethereal things; they might "come back to y
before many days. and you might, like me-
startled i'll an unsuspecting moment by the dema
for one of those white things which cost,
lieve, from Information received the incaculat
A. sum of from twenty-five to forty dollars, VII
properly adorned to suit feminine modesty a
g. simplicity. JENkISs, JR