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SQUIBOB ABHORS STREET INTRODUCTIONS.

No matter of local interest having occurred, worthy the pen of history, since the return of the "Congressional Rifles" from their target excursion at San Mateo, I propose to devote a few moments to the reprobation of an uncomfortable custom prevalent in this city, to an alarming extent, and which if persisted in, strikes me as calculated to destroy public confidence, and, to use an architectural metaphor, shake the framework of society to its very piles. I allude to the pernicious habit which every body seems to have adopted, of making general, indiscriminate and public introductions. You meet Brown on Montgomery street: "Good morning, Brown; " "How are you, Smith?" "Let me introduce you to Mr. Jones"—and you forthwith shake hands with a seedy individual, who has been boring Brown for the previous hour, for a small loan probably—an individual you never saw be

fore, never had the slightest desire to see, and never wish to see again. Being naturally of an arid disposition, and perhaps requiring irrigation at that particular moment, you unguardedly invite Brown, and your new friend Jones of course, to step over to Parry and Batten's, and imbibe. What is the consequence? The miscreant Jones introduces you to fifteen more equally desirable acquaintances, and in two minutes from the first introduction there you are, with seventeen newly formed friends, all of whom "take sugar in their'n," at your expense.

This is invading a man's quarters with a vengeance. But this is not the worst of it. Each gentleman to whom you have been introduced, wherever you may meet thereafter, in billiard room, tenpin alley, hot house or church, introduces you to somebody else, and so the list increases in geometrical progression, like the sum of money, which Colman in his arithmetic informs us the gentleman paid for the horse, with such a number of nails in his shoes-a story which in early childhood I remember to have implicitly believed. In this manner you form a crowd of acquaintances, of the majority of whom you recollect neither names nor faces, but being continually assailed by bows and smiles on all sides, from unknown gentlemen, you are forced, to avoid the appearance of rudeness, to go bowing and smirking down the street, like a distinguished character in a public procession, or one of those graven images at Tobin & Duncan's, which are eternally wagging their heads with no definite object in view. This custom is peculiarly embarrassing in other respects. If you

are so unfortunate as to possess an indifferent memory for names, and a decided idiosyncrasy for forgetting faces, you are continually in trouble as to the amount of familiarity with which to receive the salutation of some unknown individual to whom you have been introduced, and who persists in remembering all about you, though you have utterly forgotten him.

Only the other day, at the Oriental Hotel, I met an elderly gentleman, who bowed to me in the most pleasant manner as I entered the bar-room. I wasn't quite sure, but I thought I had been introduced to him at Pat Hunt's; so, walking up, I seized him familiarly by one hand, and slapping him on the shoulder with the other, exclaimed, "How are you old cock?" I shall not soon forget his suspicious glance, as muttering," Old Cock, sir!" he turned indignantly away; nor my confusion at learning shortly after, that I had thus irreverently addressed the Rev. Aminadab Sleek, Chairman of the "Society for Propagating the Heathen in California," to whom I had brought a letter of introduction from Mrs. Harriet Bitcher Stowe. On the same day I met and addressed, with a degree of distant respect almost amounting to veneration, an individual whom I afterwards ascertained to be the husband of my washerwoman- -a discovery which I did not make until I had inquired most respectfully after his family, and promised to call at an early day to see them.

There are very few gentlemen in San Francisco, to whom I should dislike to be introduced, but it is not to gentlemen alone, unhappily, to whom this introduction mania is confined.

Everybody introduces everybody else; your tailor, your barber, and your shoemaker, deem it their duty to introduce you to all their numerous and by no means select circle of acquaintance. An unfortunate friend of mine, T-hf-1 Js, tells me that, stopping near the Union Hotel the other day to have his boots blacked by a Frenchman, he was introduced by that exile, during the operation, to thirty-eight of his compatriots, owing to which piece of civility he is now suffering with a cutaneous disorder, and has been vi donc-ed, icid, and gd ever since, to that degree that he hates the sight of a French roll, and damns the memory of the great Napoleon.

My own circle of acquaintance is not large; but if I had a dollar for every introduction I have received during the last six weeks I should be able to back up the Baron in one of his magnificent schemes, or purchase the entire establishment of the Herald office.

But I have said quite enough to prove the absurdity of indiscriminate introductions. Hoping, therefore, that you will excuse my introduction of the subject, and that Winn won't make an advertisement out of this article,

I remain, as ever, yours faithfully.

SQUIBOB AT THE PLAY.

ANOTHER SQUIBOB IN THE FIELD.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, 1858.

THE sympathies of the community have been strongly excited within the last few days in favor of an unfortunate gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion, on whom the officers of the Golden Gate perpetrated a most inhuman atrocity, during her late trip from Panama. I gather from information of indignant passengers, and by contemplation of an affecting appeal to the public, posted in the form of a handbill at the corners of the streets, that this gentleman was forced, by threats and entreaties, to do violence to his feelings and constitution, by eating his way through a barrel (not a half barrel, as has been stated by interested individuals, anxious to palliate the atrocious deed) of clear pork! The hand-bill alluded to is headed by a graphic and well-executed sketch by Solomon Ben David, a distinguished artist of this city, and represents the unhappy sufferer as he

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