The Adventures of Timothy Peacock, Esquire: Freemasonry Practically Illustrated

Our Hero, the present Thrice Illustrious TIMOTHY PEACOCK, Esquire, was born in a small village in the interior of Rhode Island. His father and mother were deserters from a British fleet. They had, however, once seen brighter days than this circumstance might seem to imply; for Mr. Peacock, at one time, had the honor to write himself Chief Butcher to His Majesty George III., London. Mrs. Peacock, before she united her destinies to those of the honored father of our hero—that union which was to bestow upon the New World the brightest masonic star that ever illumined the wondering hemisphere of the West—Mrs. Peacock, I say, was called the Billingsgate Beauty. They very mackerels she sold might shrink from a comparison with the plumpness of her person, and the claws of her own lobsters were nothing in redness to the vermillion of her cheeks. She made, as may well be supposed, sad devastation among the hearts of the gallant young fish-mongers.—Oystermen, clam-cryers, carpers, shrimpers and all—all fell before the scorching blaze of her optical artillery. But she would have mercy on none of them; she aspired to a higher destiny; and her laudable ambition was rewarded with the most flattering success; for she soon saw herself the distinguished lady of Peletiah Peacock, Chief Butcher to His Majesty. But how she became the envy of many a dashing butcheress, by the splendor of her appearance,—how her husband flourished, and how he fell, and was driven from the stalls of royalty,—how he took leave of the baffled bum-bailiffs of his native city, enlisted on board a man of war, and sailed for America, with permission for his loving rib to accompany him,—how they both deserted at a New England port, at which the vessel had touched, and were housed in a friendly hay-stack in the neighborhood till the search was over and vessel departed,—and, finally, how they travelled over land till they reached the smiling village where they found their abiding domicil, belongs, perhaps, to the literati of Britain to relate. They have, and of right ought to have, the first claim on the achievements of their countrymen with which to fill the bright pages of their country’s biography; and to them then let us graciously yield the honor of enshrining his memory with those of their Reverend `Fiddlers’ and truth-telling `Trollopes.’ Far be it from me to rob them of the glory of this theme.—Mine is a different object; and I shall mention no more of the deeds of the father than I conceive necessary to elucidate the history of the son, whose brilliant career I have attempted, with trembling diffidence, to sketch in the following unworthy pages.