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                                 CONTENTS
                                                          PAGE

  LET DAD AND SON BEWARE!                                    2

  ADVENTS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS.                             3

  THE MAYOR AND CHARLEY.                                     6

  LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH.                                 8




  [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.
  Volume I.—No. 4.]      SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1858.      [Price 2 Cents.]


                    STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.




Let Dad and Son Beware!


Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann are old and sacred friends of George
W. Matsell, who are more familiar with each other than they are
with the Bible, or morning and evening prayers. Mayor Tiemann was
elected with the express condition that Matsell should be restored
to his old position, and Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann, and James
W. Gerard, and Ambrose C. Kingsland are at work for their lives to
effect the restoration of Matsell, and all impends on the election of
a Commissioner in place of the noble Perrit. Matsell was in the city
at the last Mayoralty election, conspiring against Wood, who saved him
from the scaffold, after we convicted him of alienage and perjury,
and the dastard and sacrilegious abjuration of his country. And at
the late election, he stabbed his benefactor down in the dust, in the
assassin’s darkness, and did not play Brutus for the public virtue, but
to consummate his restoration to an office (he had always degraded)
which was in the contract between himself and Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard,
and Kingsland, and other slavish friends. We know them all and the
rendezvous of all their kindred Diavolos, whose names would fill the
jaws of the _Alligator_. Matsell professed to enter the city from
Iowa with flags and music on the day after Tiemann’s election, but he
was in the city long before, and concealed in as dark a cavern as the
odious Cataline, while conspiring to foil the patriotic Cicero, and
consign the eternal city to a million thieves. And we now warn Cooper,
Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland to beware. For if they foist Matsell on
the city through the purchase of Nye or Bowen with Mayoralty, Street
Commissioner, or the pap of the Mayor’s Executive vassals, we will make
disclosures that will make them stare like affrighted cats, (Gerard _a
la_ he-cat, and the others _a la_ she-cats,) and rock the city to its
carbonic entrails. Talmadge must remain, although he annoyed his nurse
and mother when a brat, and so did we; and in boyhood and early manhood
we both had worms, and raised Sancho Panza,

  And we rambled around the town,
  And saw perhaps Miss Julia Brown,

as we may develop in the publication of our funny reminiscences;
but we are both growing old, and told our experience at the recent
revival, and asked admission as pious pilgrims, when the deacons said
that we should both be put on five year’s trial, but we begged so hard
they let us in. Talmadge joined the Presbyterians, and he looks pale
and pensive, but we joined the noisy Methodists, and look mighty
cheerful, and sing and dance, and scream like the devil in delirium
tremens, and nervous neighbors murmur at our thundering methodistic
demonstrations. Talmadge as Recorder was too kind and lenient, but he
erred on the side of humanity, which is preferable to err on the side
of a pale and icy and bloodless liver, though we should steer between
the heart and liver, and consign the culprits to the pits and gulches
of the navel, where the voracious worms could soon devour them. The
valor of Talmadge conquered the ruffians of Astor Place, and he has a
Roman and Spartan nature, and is as generous and magnanimous as Clay
or Webster, whom he loved as his own big heart. No man ever had a more
genial or sympathising bosom, than Frederick A. Talmadge. And William
Curtis Noyes married his favorite daughter, and while, the spotless
Noyes walks the velvet earth, and his father-in-law is Chief of Police,
all will go well. Wm. Curtis Noyes is one of the ablest jurists of our
country, and Washington himself had no purer, nor warmer, nor more
patriotic heart. We selected Mr. Noyes as our counsel against little
Georgy Matsell, when arraigned before the Police Commissioners, and to
his ability and fidelity are New Yorkers profoundly indebted for the
downfall of Matsell, and the worst and most formidable banditti that
ever scourged the Western Continent. Beware, then, Cooper Tiemann,
Gerard and Kingsland, and other trembling conspirators, or we will make
you howl, and open the gates of Tartarus, and set a million dogs and
devils at your heels, and when they bite, may God have mercy on your
poor old bones. Beware, or we will harrow your superannuated souls into
the realms of Pluto, where _Robert le Diable_ will grab and burn you
in liquid brimstone, through exhaustless years. Beware of those forty
pages yet behind. O, beware, we implore you, in the name of your wives
and children, and your God! Beware of Matsell and his gang, as the big
and little demons of these wicked times.




Advents and Public Plunderers.


Richard B. Connolly, the County Clerk, was born in Bandon, Ireland,
and arrived in Philadelphia twenty-five years since, (as his glib,
and slippery, and truthful tongue asseverates,) and thence immigrated
to our metropolis. He became Simeon Draper’s Friday clerk, who taught
him the politician’s creed of plunder, and has ever used him as a spy
in the democratic legions. Draper got him in the Customs, and kept
him there through several Administrations. Draper and Connolly long
controlled the Ten Governors, and do now. Draper has been in all camps,
and Connolly has figured in democratic conventions, primary and legal,
of all stripes and checks, through which he acquired the immortal name
of Slippery. Dick is an alien, and offered us between the pillars of
Plunder Hall a lucrative position in the office of County Clerk, and
also proposed to play Judas against Matsell, if we would not expose
his perjured alienage. We had three interviews, when we assured him
that we despised both treason and traitor. He then got Alderman John
Kelly to read a letter in the Board of Aldermen, declaring that he was
naturalized in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, whither we repaired,
and got certificates from the clerks, declaring that he was never
naturalized in Philadelphia, which we published in the _New York Daily
Times_. In his Aldermanic letter, he declared that his document of
naturalization was framed, which he regarded as his most valuable piece
of furniture, and cordially invited his friends and the incredulous
to call and behold its graceful decoration of his parlor. The gallant
Alderman John H. Briggs, (the Putnam of the Americans, who braved
and defied all the thieves, and murderers, and demons of hell in the
Matsell campaign,) called to see Dick’s valuable gem of furniture,
but he could not find it on the wall, nor elsewhere. We then called,
and Dick’s wife told us it was locked in a trunk, and her husband
had the key. Others called, with similar success. On his election as
County Clerk, Dick and Draper got a law enacted at Albany, giving the
County Clerk $50,000 fees, which was just so much stolen from the
people, whom the Municipal, State and National robbers will not let
live, but strive to rob them of their last crumb, and drive them into
the winter air. Public plunder is devoted to greasing the political
wheels, and burnishing, and twitching the mysterious wires, through
which the honest laborer is burdened with taxes, that mangle his
back like the last feather of the expiring camel. Connolly, Busteed,
Doane, Wetmore, Nathan, Nelson, Draper, and Weed, got the Record
Commissioners appointed, through which $550,000 have been squandered
for printing the useless County Clerk and Register’s Records, which is
the boldest robbery of modern times. We never could induce Greeley,
Bryant, Webb’s Secretary, the Halls, and others, to breathe a word
against this Dev-lin-ish plunder. And Flagg, himself, through his old
printing friends, Bowne & Hasbrouck, and others, is involved in this
record robbery up to his chin, who never uttered a syllable against
it, until we goaded him through our crimson dissection in the _Daily
Times_, and even then he only damned it with Iago praise. Since July
last, Flagg has paid more than $300,000 for Record printing, for
which, old as he is, he should be consigned to a sunless dungeon, and
rot there, with spiders only for his nurses and mourners. Last summer
Flagg told us there never was a more wicked band of robbers than the
Record Commissioners, and yet he paid them from July to December the
prodigious sum of over $300,000, and had paid them more than $200,000.
And Flagg paid this enormous sum without a murmur, and has no possible
facility to place the infamy on the scapegoat Smith, who seems to roam
at large unmolested by Flagg, who yet fears Smith’s disclosures of his
delinquency and superannuation. Flagg sputters a little in his reports,
for show, against him, but he is not chasing Smith very hotly in the
Courts, nor dare he, as we have good reason to believe. Through the
Alms House, Navy Yard, County Clerks’ Office, Record Commissioners,
metropolitan and suburban lots, and other plundering sources, Connolly
has amassed a fortune of nearly a million of dollars, and now has the
audacity to proclaim himself a candidate for Comptroller, at which the
honorable citizens of New York should rise and paralyse his infamous
effrontery. Not content with indolence all his days,—with robbing the
laborer and mechanic, and merchant, and widow, and orphan, for whom
he professes such boundless love, through his spurious and mercenary
democracy,—with corrupting the ballot box, and packing juries, to
imprison and hang us according to his caprice and public or private
interest,—with the election of Mayors and other municipal and even
State and National officers, through his fraudulent canvass of votes
as County Clerk,—and with his awful perjury in connection with his
alienage, he now appears with his stolen money bags, and proclaims
himself a candidate for Comptroller, for which he should be lashed, and
scourged, and probed to his marrow bones, through the streets of New
York, beneath the glare of the meridian sun, and the gaze and withering
scorn of every honorable and industrious citizen, whom he has robbed,
through intolerable taxation. Connolly has not voted since we exposed
his perjured alienage in 1855, when he strove to bribe us to shield him
from the odium arising from his alienage. A public thief, and perjurer,
and alien, this man or devil announces himself for Comptroller of this
mighty metropolis, with a prospect of nomination and election, unless
his throat is cut by George H. Purser, a deeper and more dangerous
public villain than Connolly. Purser has robbed this city for a quarter
of a century, and is also an unnaturalised alien, and we have positive
evidence of the fact, and he knows it. His corrupt lobby operations in
the Common Council and at Albany would make a large volume. And both
Connolly and Purser are nauseous scabs of the Democratic party, and
grossly pollute the glorious principles of Jefferson and Jackson. And
now, where, in the name of God, are the people, or is there no spirit
and integrity, and patriotism, and courage, to resist the infernal
public thieves of this vandal age? Should the people slumber when a
gang of robbers, and devils, and assassins, and fiends of rapine, are
thundering at the gates of the commercial emporium, and even at the
very doors and firesides of our sacred domestic castles, and daily and
hourly rob our coffers, and ravish our daughters, and cut our throats,
in open day, and through their hellish robbery, and taxation, drive the
mechanic and laborer, and their dear little ones, to hunger, and rags,
and madness, and crime, and to the dungeon, or scaffold, or suicide?
Where is the concert of action of Boston and Providence, and throughout
New England? And where are the pomatum villains of our aristocratic
avenues, in this solemn hour? They are in league with your Greeleys,
and Bryants, and Webbs, and Wetmores, and Drapers, and Connollys, and
Pursers, and Devlins, and Smiths, and Erbens, devising schemes to
plunder the people here, at Albany and Washington, for gilded means
to support themselves in idleness and extravagance, and to carry the
elections against the gallant Southrons, whose throats they would cut
from ear to ear, and deluge this whole land with human blood, ere they
would toil a solitary day like the honest laborer or mechanic, or
surrender a farthing of their ungodly plunder, or breathe a syllable in
favor of the eternal glory of the Union of Washington.




Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1858.

The Mayor and Charley.


_Charley_—That you have wronged me doth appear in this: You have
condemned and noted the devil for taking bribes of the office holders
and contractors, wherein my letters praying on his side, because I knew
the man, were slighted off.

_Mayor_—You knew better than to pray for the devil.

_Charley_—I can get no fat meat nor oyster stews, if every devil is
condemned.

_Mayor_—Let mo tell you, Charley, that you, yourself, should be
condemned for itching to sell your offices and contracts for gold to a
gang of devils.

_Charley_—I got the itch! You know that you are great Peter’s son, or,
by golly, you would not say so twice.

_Mayor_—The name of Itch or Scratch honor this corruption, and by the
Eternal, if Hickory dont hide his head at the Hermitage.

_Charley_—Hickory!

_Mayor_—Remember November,—the hides of November, O remember. Did not
great Fernando bleed for me and Peter and Edward’s sake? Who touched
his carcase, and did stab, and not for me and Peter and young Edward?
What! Shall they who struck the foremost man of all this city, but for
supporting robbers,—shall we now use our fingers, save to grab the
Mayor’s and all the Executive Departments? By all the bellonas and
doughnuts of the world, I’d rather be a hog and grow as fat as Matsell,
than to be a cadaverous crow, and live on vultures, and the shadows of
the moon.

_Charley_—Daniel: I’ll slap your chops. I’ll not stand it.