The poems now followed in quick succession. On March 17 there was a sly skit upon the surgeon-general, Samuel Mitchill, the best-known--and most self-important--physician and scientist in the city, and a man noted in the history of Columbia College; the next day an address to John Minshull, a prominent merchant; on March 19 a poem of general theme, “The Man Who Frets”; on March 20 and 25, verses upon Manager Simpson of the Park Theater again; and on March 23 lines “To John Lang, Esq.,” the sturdy old editor of the _Gazette_. An apostrophe “To Domestic Peace” and “A Lament for Great Ones Departed” also appeared in March, as did two complimentary epistles in verse to the authors, selected by Coleman from “the multitude of imitators that the popularity of Croaker has produced.” One writer spoke of Croaker and Co. as “the wits of the day and the pride of the age,” while the other credited them with making “all Gotham at thy dashes stare.” There was a pause early in April while Drake was out of town, and Coleman confessed that “on account of the public, we begin to be a little impatient.” But the series recommenced on April 8, and by May 1, when a poem to William Cobbett, the eminent English journalist, then sojourning on Long Island, appeared, twenty-one had been printed. One Croaker contribution had meanwhile come out in Noah’s _National Advocate_. After another pause, on May 29 the _Evening Post_ published the gem of the whole collection, Drake’s “The American Flag,” with the final quatrain written by Halleck. Coleman prefaced this famous patriotic lyric with the remark that it was one of those poems which, as Sir Philip Sidney said of the old ballad of Chevy Chase, stir the heart like a trumpet. It might more truly be said that, with its blare of sound and pomp of imagery, it stirs the bearer like a full brass band. Probably not even Coleman realized how many generations of schoolboys would declaim:
When freedom from her mountain height, Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there!
The success of the “Salmagundi Papers” did not compare in immediacy or extent with that of the Croaker poems. Copies of the _Evening Post_, which now had 2,000 subscribers, passed from hand to hand. In homes, bookstores, coffee-houses, taverns, and on the street corners every one, as Halleck wrote his sister on April 1, was soon discussing the skits. “We have had the pleasure of seeing and of hearing ourselves praised, puffed, eulogized, execrated, and threatened as much as any writers since the days of Junius,” he informed her. “The whole town has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every newspaper has done us the honor to mention us in some way, either of praise or censure, but all united in owning our talents and genius.” The two young men, unused to seeing themselves in print, were tremendously elated. Once upon receiving a proof of some stanzas from the _Evening Post_, Drake laid his cheek down upon the lines and, with beaming eyes, exclaimed to his fellow-poet: “O, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!” Most of the Croaker series, which was virtually concluded in June, though two poems now generally bracketed with them appeared in 1821, were too much the product of joint labor to be assigned to one writer or the other; the theme suggested itself, and both would elaborate it.