LIFE OF WILSON. Ixxxiii 



covers the stalls of this market-place, in the metropolis of the fertile country 

 of Kentucky.* 



" The horses of Kentucky are the hardiest in the world, not so much by 

 nature as by education and habit. From the commencement of their existence 

 they are habituated to every extreme of starvation and gluttony, idleness and 

 excessive fatigue. In summer they fare sumptuously every day. In winter, 

 when not a blade of grass is to be seen, and when the cows have deprived 

 them of the very bark and buds of every fallen tree, they are ridden into 

 town, fifteen or twenty miles, through roads and sloughs that would become 

 the graves of any common animal, with a fury and celerity incomprehensible 

 by you folks on the other side of the Alleghany. They are there fastened to 

 the posts on the sides of the streets, and around the public square, where 



* This letter, it should seem, gave offence to some of the inhabitants of Lexington ; and 

 a gentleman residing in that town, solicitous about its repiitation, undertook, in a letter to 

 the editor of the Port Folio, to vindicate it from strictures which he plainly insinuated 

 were the offspring of ignorance, and unsupported by fact. 



After a feeble attempt at sarcasm and irony, the letter-writer thus proceeds : " I have 

 too great a respect Cor Mr. Wilson, as your friend, not to bel^eTe he had in mind some 

 other market-house than that of Lexington, when he speaks of it as ' unpaved and un- 

 finished I' But the people of Lexington would be gratified to learn what your ornitho- 

 logist means by ' skinned squirrels cut up into quarters,' which curious anatomical prepa- 

 rations he enumerates among the articles he saw in the Lexington market. Does Mr. 

 Wilson mean to joke upon us ? If this is wit we must confess that, however abundant our 

 country may be in good substantial matter-of-fact salt, the attic tart is unknown among us. 



" I hope, however, soon to see this gentleman's American Ornithology. Its elegance 

 of execution, and descriptive propriety, may assuage the little pique we have taken from 

 the author." 



The editor of the Port Folio having transmitted this letter to Wilson, previous to send- 

 ing it to press, it was returned with the following note : 



"To THE Editor of the Port Folio. 



" Bartram's Gardens, July 16, 1811. 

 "Dear Sir. 



"No man can have a more respectful opinion of the people of Kentucky, particularly 

 those of Lexington, than myself ; because I have traversed nearly the whole extent of their 

 country, and witnessed the effects of their bravery, their active industry, and daring spirit 

 for enterprise. But they would be gods, and not men, were they faultless. 



" I am sorry that truth will not permit me to retract, as mere jokes, the few disagreeable 

 things alluded to. I certainly had no other market-place in view, than that of Lexington, 

 in the passage above mentioned. As to the circumstance of ' skinned squirrels, cut up 

 into quarters,' which seems to have excited so much sensibility, I candidly acknowledge 

 myself to have been incorrect in that statement, and I owe an apology for the same. On 

 referring to my notes taken at the time, I find the word 'halves,' not quarters ; that is, 

 those ' curious anatomical preparations' (skinned squirrels) were brought to market in 

 the form of a saddle of venison ; not in that of a leg or shoulder of mutton. 



" With this correction, I beg leave to assure your very sensible correspondent, that the 

 thing itself was no joke, nor meant for one ; but, like all the rest of the particulars of that 

 sicetch, ' good substantial matter of fact.' 



"If these explanations, or the perusal of my American Ornithology, should assuage 

 the ' little pique' in the minds of the good people of Lexington, it will be no less honor- 

 able to their own good sense, than agreeable to your humble servant," &c. Port Folio 

 fo> August, 1811. 



