LIFE OF WILSON. 
CXXXlli 
the westward of this, and stretches over the whole breadth of the 
square, is built of brick, something like that of Philadelphia, but is 
unpaved and unfinished. In wet weather you sink over the shoes 
in mud at every step; and here again the wisdom of the police is 
manifest; as nobody at such times will wade in there unless forced 
by business or absolute necessity; by which means a great number 
of idle loungers are, very properly, kept out of the way of the mar- 
ket folks. 
I shall say nothing of the nature or quantity of the commodi- 
ties which I saw exhibited there for sale, as the season was unfa- 
vourable to a display of their productions ; otherwise something 
better than a few cakes of black maple sugar, wrapt up in greasy 
saddle-bags, some cabbage, chewing tobacco, catmint and turnip 
tops, a few bags of meal, sassafras-roots, and skinned squirrels cut 
up into quarters — something better than all this, I say, in the pro- 
per season, certainly covers the stalls of this market place, in the 
metropolis of the fertile country of Kentucky.* 
^ This letter, it should seem, gave offence to some of the inhabitants of Lexington ; and 
a gentleman residing in that town, solicitous about its reputation, undertook, in a letter to the 
editor of the Port Folio, to vindicate it from strictures which he plainly insinuated were the off- 
spring of ignorance, and unsupported by fact. 
After a feeble attempt at sarcasm and irony, the Ictter-writer thus proceeds : “ I have too 
great a respect for Mr. Wilson, as your friend, not to believe he had in mind some other mar- 
ket house than that of Lexington, when he speaks of it as ‘ unpaved and unfinished’ ! But the 
people of Lexington would be gratified to learn what your ornithologist means by ‘ skinned 
squirrels cut up into quarters,’ which curious anatomical preparations 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 sending 
it to press, it was returned with the following note : 
2 L 
VOL. IX. 
