106 



COCKNEYISM IN THE COUNTRY. 



cause it is the fashion to have a coun- 

 try house, — he often becomes, perhaps for 

 the first time in his life, a dangerous 

 member of society. There is always a 

 certain influence about the mere possessor 

 of wealth, that dazzles us, and makes us 

 see things in a false light ; and the cockney 

 has wealth. As he builds a house which 

 costs five times as much as that of any of 

 his country neighbors, some of them, who 

 take it for granted that wealth and taste 

 go together, fancy the cockney house puts 

 their simple, modest cottages to the blush. 

 Hence, they directly go to imitating it in 

 their moderate way ; and so, a quiet coun- 

 try neighborhood is as certainly tainted with 

 the malaria of cockneyism, as it would be 

 by a ship-fever, or the air of the Pontine 

 marshes. 



There are, to be sure, some cockneyisms 

 so gross that, like an overdose of poi- 

 son, they have a salutary effect, by rousing 

 nature to make a struggle and throw it off. 

 We must be allowed to quote a couple 

 of instances of this kind, (mentioning no 

 names,) which have come under our obser- 

 vation lately. 



A few miles from Brooklyn, N. Y., 

 on a commanding point of land, is to be 

 seen the country house of a cockney mil- 

 lionaire. It is built of red brick, at a cost 

 of some $12,000. It stands bolt upright, 

 five stories high, with windows in the front 

 and rear, town house street door, steps and 

 railing, and not a window on either of the 

 two remaining sides. In fact, it is a pre- 

 cise copy of a first class house in Tenth- 

 street, — minus the rest of the row on each 

 side of it ! Poor tenement ! There was, 

 as we gazed on it, not a tree growing near 

 it, though a straight road, leading up to it, 

 had been planted with a beggarly assort- 

 ment of some street trees. It looked, in its 

 utter want of association with all about it, 



as if it had been brought out there by some 

 designing city friend, who had forgotten 

 to " introduce it" to the rustic neighbor- 

 hood. 



On a noble promontory of land, in a part 

 of the Hudson which shall be nameless, is 

 a villa, built of wood, in the style of the 

 Parthenon. The situation is so simple and 

 grand, — a broad plain, bordered by a natu- 

 ral belt of fine trees, — that any one, with 

 half a grain of taste, would have felt, at a 

 glance, that the key to all the " improve- 

 ments" to be made there, must be found in 

 merely following nature's hint, and by a 

 liberal grouping of trees, to have converted 

 the whole into a fine park. The thing 

 were as easily done, if rightly conceived, 

 as for the owner to have written his name 

 at the bottom of the check to pay for it. 



Well, how do our readers think this 

 cockney has improved his country resi- 

 dence ? How has he elevated and height- 

 ened the beauty of this noble plain, skirted 

 with stately trees, and ornamented with his 

 classical copy of the Parthenon ? 



By running a post and chain fence, in a 

 circle, round the house, and stretching a 

 grape arbor up and down the plain on both 

 sides of it ! 



After that, only one thing remained ; 

 and it was done. A silver plate on the 

 front door bears, neatly engraved, the name 

 of ■ , Esq., the proprietor ! 



Now, if any of our readers will give us 

 certified documents, to prove that any coun- 

 tryman was ever so foolish as to build a 

 house in town, for the purpose of threshing 

 his grain in the front parlor, and shelling 

 his corn in the library, we will confess that 

 cockneys have the best of it. 



But, as we have already remarked, such 

 gross examples as these are not those 

 which are really dangerous in the country. 



The cockneyisms which are fatal to the 



