Knockerbocker on Appleton

[alice wellintown]

Bless us! -- what a hard life we historians have of it, who undertake
to satisfy the doubts of the world! -- Here have I been toiling and
moiling through three pestiferous chapters, and my readers toiling and
moiling at my heels; up early and to bed late, poring over worm-eaten,
obsolete, goodfor-nothing books, and cultivating the acquaintance of a
thousand learned authors, both ancient and modern, who, to tell the
honest truth, are the stupidest companions in the world -- and after
all, what have we got by it? -- Truly the mighty valuable conclusion,
that this country does actually exist, and has been discovered; a
self-evident fact not worth a hap'worth of gingerbread. And what is
worse, we seem just as far off from the city of New York now, as we
were at first. Now for myself, I would not care the value of a brass
button, being used to this dull and learned company; but I feel for my
unhappy readers, who seem most woefully jaded and fatigued.

Still, however, we have formidable difficulties to encounter, since it
yet remains, if possible, to shew how this country was originally
peopled -- a point fruitful of incredible embarrassment, to us
scrupulous historians, but absolutely indispensable to our works. For
unless we prove that the Aborigines did absolutely come from some
where, it will be immediately asserted in this age of scepticism, that
they did not come at all; and if they did not come at all, then was
this country never populated -- a conclusion perfectly agreeable to
the rules of logic, but wholly irreconcilable to every feeling of
humanity, inasmuch as it must syllogistically prove fatal to the
innumerable Aborigines of this populous region.