Regarding a scandal involving Willis Patten. Transcription: ? not an unbiased witness by the bye, for he [William Leslie] has hated old [Willis] Patten ever since the row with poor [William] Levison, when Patten threatened to throw Leslie out of window ? a thing he might, or might not, have accomplished ? Leslie, I say, reports how Patten was detested by merchants &c, when in the Custom-house. I can well fancy how odious he'd be when he took a whim of dislike, or was entreated to hurry a little. I wonder, sometimes, how such a man has any friends. Yet, I suppose there must be a class who h
Regarding a scandal involving Willis Patten. Transcription: ? not an unbiased witness by the bye, for he [William Leslie] has hated old [Willis] Patten ever since the row with poor [William] Levison, when Patten threatened to throw Leslie out of window ? a thing he might, or might not, have accomplished ? Leslie, I say, reports how Patten was detested by merchants &c, when in the Custom-house. I can well fancy how odious he'd be when he took a whim of dislike, or was entreated to hurry a little. I wonder, sometimes, how such a man has any friends. Yet, I suppose there must be a class who having no sensitiveness, no feelings to be trampled on, mistake his dogged opinionativeness for rough sense and think him a tough honest man. I think, in spite of this case, that he was originally for an office-holder rather honest (if one may call it so) than otherwise. I think that he would have set out with a resolve to be brutally independent ? he warnt agoing to be fooled by any of them fellows, but to do just what he thought right &c &c. But he would slide into conniving ? still with a show of brutal independence which would deceive himself ? at his jackall's holding out an itching palm. It's all summed up in the sentence 'If you've a mind to pay &c &c somebody else &c, that's none of my business!' Thats Patten all over. Poor Mrs P. has been much exercised about it, asked me, over the dinner table, if I'd read it in the Tribune. (Funnily, the Tribune, Patten's pet paper has the most severe account of it ? most of the folks in the house, too, are Tribune readers!) I said I had; when she launched out into a flood of incoherent explanations, assertions, declarations, and all manner of skimble-skamble stuff ? involving vilification of the man [Nathaniel M.] Russell, who brings the Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 9, page 244, November 5, 1858 . 5 November 1858. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-1903
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