Chapter XV: Introduction (2)

One night I started up on eend an' thought I wuz to hum agin, I heern a horn, thinks I it's Sol the fisherman hez come agin, _His_ bellowses is sound enough,--ez I'm a livin' creeter, I felt a thing go thru my leg--'twuz nothin' more 'n a skeeter! Then there's the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito,-- (Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le' _go_ my toe! 70 My gracious! it's a scorpion thet's took a shine to play with 't, I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with 't,) Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn't human beans,[18]--an ourang outang nation, A sort o' folks a chap could kill an' never dream on 't arter, No more 'n a feller'd dream o' pigs thet he hed hed to slarter; I'd an idee thet they were built arter the darkie fashion all, An' kickin' colored folks about, you know 's a kind o' national; But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' du amazin' lots o' things thet isn't wut they ough' to; Bein' they haint no lead, they make their bullets out o' copper An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Caleb sez ain proper; 90 He sez they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he'll hev to git up airly), Thet our nation's bigger 'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An' thet it's all to make 'em free thet we air pullin' trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces, An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet 'every man' don't mean a nigger or a Mexican; An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeters, Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State-prison feeturs, 100 Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an' spout on 't, The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on 't.

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An' ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I'd home agin short meter; O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef 't worn't thet I wuz sartin They'd let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin! I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aiut wut they wuz afore they left the Bay-state; Then it wuz 'Mister Sawin, sir, you're middlin' well now, be ye? Step up an' take a nipper, sir; I'm dreffle glad to see ye:' 110 But now it's 'Ware's my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an' fetch it! An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or, damn ye, you shall ketch it!' Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I hed some on 'em to hum, I'd give 'em linkum vity, I'd play the rogue's march on their hides an' other music follerin'-- But I must close my letter here, fer one on 'em 's ahollerin', These Anglosaxon ossifers,--wal, taint no use ajawin', I'm safe enlisted fer the war, Yourn, BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN.

[Those have not been wanting (as, indeed, when hath Satan been to seek for attorneys?) who have maintained that our late inroad upon Mexico was undertaken not so much for the avenging of any national quarrel, as for the spreading of free institutions and of Protestantism. _Capita vix duabus Anticyris medenda!_ Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther riding at the front of the host upon a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, the zealous Gomara (spawn though he were of the Scarlet Woman) was favored with a vision of St. James of Compostella, skewering the infidels upon his apostolical lance. We read, also, that Richard of the lion heart, having gone to Palestine on a similar errand of mercy, was divinely encouraged to cut the throats of such Paynims as refused to swallow the bread of life (doubtless that they might be thereafter incapacitated for swallowing the filthy gobbets of Mahound) by angels of heaven, who cried to the king and his knights,_--Seigneurs, tuez! tuez!_ providentially using the French tongue, as being the only one understood by their auditors. This would argue for the pantoglottism of these celestial intelligences, while, on the other hand, the Devil, _teste_ Cotton Mather, is unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be a semeiologist the most expert, making himself intelligible to every people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial persuasion is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair or a tide-waiter's stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us, dangling there over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven, sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, they are all one, bits of fuzzy cotton.

This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_. While so many miracles of this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have encouraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlæus at Marathon and those _Dioscuri_ (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Do we not know from Josephus, that, careful of His decree, a certain river in Judaea abstained from flowing on the day of Rest? Or has that day become less an object of His especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, 'which was enough to serve 'em; only on _Saturdays_ they still catched a couple, and on the _Lord's Days_ they could catch none at all'? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as _Cape Cod Clergymen_.

It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myseif to be so far of that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania _pro propaganda fide_, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary _siesta_ beneath the lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live, and say _shooters_ as well as _fishers_ of men?

I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,--I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is _No_ to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against _e corde cordium_. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our binder and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, [Greek: Onto daemosion kakon erchetai oikad ekasto] This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy,--'Our country, right or wrong,'--by tracing its original to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles.--H.W.]

No. III

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS

[A few remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The satire in them was not meant to have any personal, but only a general, application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw the letter itself. The position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated _tenues in auras._ For what says Seneca? _Longum iter per præcepta, breve et efficace per exempla_. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely, the life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan, that he never exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if at all. He holds our affections as hostages, the while he patches up a truce with our conscience.

Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,--_aliquid sufflaminandus erat_. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with _aqua fortis_, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. _Est ars etiam maledicendi_, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that 'one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses which are not lions.'--H.W.]

Guvener B. is a sensible man;
He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez be wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?
We can't never choose him o' course,--thet's flat;
Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He's ben on all sides thet gives places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,--
He's ben true to _one_ party,--an' thet is himself;--
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don't vally princerple more'n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint,
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, _he_ is our country.
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the _debit_ to him, an' to us the _per contry;_
An' John P.
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies;
Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest _fee, faw, fum;_
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez it aint no sech thing: an' of course, so must we.

Parson Wilbur sez _he_ never heerd in his life
Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats,
An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife,
To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee.

Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us
The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,--
God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers,
To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough;
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee!

[The attentive reader will doubtless have perceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that pernicious sentiment,--'Our country, right or wrong.' It is an abuse of language to call a certain portion of land, much more, certain personages, elevated for the time being to high station, our country. I would not sever nor loosen a single one of those ties by which we are united to the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the respect due to the Magistrate. I love our own Bay State too well to do the one, and as for the other, I have myself for nigh forty years exercised, however unworthily, the function of Justice of the Peace, having been called thereto by the unsolicited kindness of that most excellent man and upright patriot, Caleb Strong. _Patriæ fumus igne alieno luculentior_ is best qualified with this,--_Ubi libertas, ibi patria_. We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided, allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment. When, therefore, one would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multitude,--'_Our country, however bounded!_' he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a hair's-breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_. That is a hard choice when our earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points us to another. We must make as noble and becoming an election as did Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her.

Shortly after the publication of the foregoing poem, there appeared some comments upon it in one of the public prints which seemed to call for animadversion. I accordingly addressed to Mr. Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the following letter.

JAALAM, November 4, 1847.

'_To the Editor of the Courier:_

'RESPECTED SIR,--Calling at the post-office this morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell. For aught I know or can affirm to the contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he be such, he, I am certain, as well as I, would be free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly belong to another. I am confident, that, in penning these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose silence hitherto, when rumor pointed to himward, has excited in my bosom mingled emotions of sorrow and surprise. Well may my young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, exclaim with the poet,

"Sic vos non vobis," &c.;

though, in saying this, I would not convey the impression that he is a proficient in the Latin tongue,--the tongue, I might add, of a Horace and a Tully.

'Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be exalted by the carnal plaudits of men, _digito monstrari, &c_. He does not wait upon Providence for mercies, and in his heart mean _merces_. But I should esteem myself as verily deficient in my duty (who am his friend and in some unworthy sort his spiritual _fidus Achates_, &c.), if I did not step forward to claim for him whatever measure of applause might be assigned to him by the judicious.

'If this were a fitting occasion, I might venture here a brief dissertation touching the manner and kind of my young friend's poetry. But I dubitate whether this abstruser sort of speculation (though enlivened by some apposite instances from Aristophanes) would sufficiently interest your oppidan readers. As regards their satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as a religious, moral, and intellectual being, and that there is no _apage Sathanas!_ so potent as ridicule. But it is a kind of weapon that must have a button of good-nature on the point of it.

'The productions of Mr. B. have been stigmatized in some quarters as unpatriotic; but I can vouch that he loves his native soil with that hearty, though discriminating, attachment which springs from an intimate social intercourse of many years' standing. In the ploughing season, no one has a deeper share in the well-being of the country than he. If Dean Swift were right in saying that he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before confers a greater benefit on the state than he who taketh a city, Mr. B. might exhibit a fairer claim to the Presidency than General Scott himself. I think that some of those disinterested lovers of the hard-handed democracy, whose fingers have never touched anything rougher than the dollars of our common country, would hesitate to compare palms with him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a cleaner and wider swath than any in this town.

'But it is time for me to be at my Post. It is very clear that my young friend's shot has struck the lintel, for the Post is shaken (Amos ix. 1). The editor of that paper is a strenuous advocate of the Mexican war, and a colonel, as I am given to understand. I presume, that, being necessarily absent in Mexico, he has left his journal in some less judicious hands. At any rate, the Post has been too swift on this occasion. It could hardly have cited a more incontrovertible line from any poem than that which it has selected for animadversion, namely,--

"We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage."

'If the Post maintains the converse of this proposition, it can hardly be considered as a safe guide-post for the moral and religious portions of its party, however many other excellent qualities of a post it may be blessed with. There is a sign in London on which is painted,--"The Green Man." It would do very well as a portrait of any individual who should support so unscriptural a thesis. As regards the language of the line in question, I am bold to say that He who readeth the hearts of men will not account any dialect unseemly which conveys a sound, and pious sentiment. I could wish that such sentiments were more common, however uncouthly expressed. Saint Ambrose affirms, that _veritas a quocunque_ (why not, then, _quomodocunque?) dicatur, a, spiritu sancto est_. Digest also this of Baxter: "The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters."

'When the paragraph in question was shown to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed to give him any dissatisfaction was that which classed him with the Whig party. He says, that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of diet, that party must be in a very hearty and flourishing condition; for that they have quietly eaten more good ones of their own baking than he could have conceived to be possible without repletion. He has been for some years past (I regret to say) an ardent opponent of those sound doctrines of protective policy which form so prominent a portion of the creed of that party. I confess, that, in some discussions which I have had with him on this point in my study, he has displayed a vein of obstinacy which I had not hitherto detected in his composition. He is also (_horresco referens_) infected in no small measure with the peculiar notions of a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I take every proper opportunity of combating, and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single line.

'I did not see Mr. B.'s verses until they appeared in print, and there _is_ certainly one thing in them which I consider highly improper. I allude to the personal references to myself by name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual who is laboring quietly in his vocation, and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust of the political arena (though _voe mihi si non evangelizavero_), is no doubt an indecorum. The sentiments which he attributes to me I will not deny to be mine. They were embodied, though in a different form, in a discourse preached upon the last day of public fasting, and were acceptable to my entire people (of whatever political views), except the postmaster, who dissented _ex officio_. I observe that you sometimes devote a portion of your paper to a religious summary. I should be well pleased to furnish a copy of my discourse for insertion in this department of your instructive journal. By omitting the advertisements, it might easily be got within the limits of a single number, and I venture to insure you the sale of some scores of copies in this town. I will cheerfully render myself responsible for ten. It might possibly be advantageous to issue it as an _extra_. But perhaps you will not esteem it an object, and I will not press it. My offer does not spring from any weak desire of seeing my name in print; for I can enjoy this satisfaction at any time by turning to the Triennial Catalogue of the University, where it also possesses that added emphasis of Italics with which those of my calling are distinguished.

'I would simply add, that I continue to fit ingenuous youth for college, and that I have two spacious and airy sleeping apartments at this moment unoccupied. _Ingenuas didicisse_, &c. Terms, which vary according to the circumstances of the parents, may be known on application to me by letter, post-paid. In all cases the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add, has no exceptions.

'Respectfully, your obedient servant,

'HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

'P.S. Perhaps the last paragraph may look like an attempt to obtain the insertion of my circular gratuitously. If it should appear to you in that light, I desire that you would erase it, or charge for it at the usual rates, and deduct the amount from the proceeds in your hands from the sale of my discourse, when it shall be printed. My circular is much longer and more explicit, and will be forwarded without charge to any who may desire it. It has been very neatly executed on a letter sheet, by a very deserving printer, who attends upon my ministry, and is a creditable specimen of the typographic art. I have one hung over my mantelpiece in a neat frame, where it makes a beautiful and appropriate ornament, and balances the profile of Mrs. W., cut with her toes by the young lady born without arms.

'H.W.'

I have in the foregoing letter mentioned General Scott in connection with the Presidency, because I have been given to understand that he has blown to pieces and otherwise caused to be destroyed more Mexicans than any other commander. His claim would therefore be deservedly considered the strongest. Until accurate returns of the Mexicans killed, wounded, and maimed be obtained, it will be difficult to settle these nice points of precedence. Should it prove that any other officer has been more meritorious and destructive than General S., and has thereby rendered himself more worthy of the confidence and support of the conservative portion of our community, I shall cheerfully insert his name, instead of that of General S., in a future edition. It may be thought, likewise, that General S. has invalidated his claims by too much attention to the decencies of apparel, and the habits belonging to a gentleman. These abstruser points of statesmanship are beyond my scope. I wonder not that successful military achievement should attract the admiration of the multitude. Rather do I rejoice with wonder to behold how rapidly this sentiment is losing its hold upon the popular mind. It is related of Thomas Warton, the second of that honored name who held the office of Poetry Professor at Oxford, that, when one wished to find him, being absconded, as was his wont, in some obscure alehouse, he was counselled to traverse the city with a drum and fife, the sound of which inspiring music would be sure to draw the Doctor from his retirement into the street. We are all more or less bitten with this martial insanity. _Nescio qua dulcedine ... cunctos ducit_. I confess to some infection of that itch myself. When I see a Brigadier-General maintaining his insecure elevation in the saddle under the severe fire of the training-field, and when I remember that some military enthusiasts, through haste, inexperience, or an over-desire to lend reality to those fictitious combats, will sometimes discharge their ramrods, I cannot but admire, while I deplore, the mistaken devotion of those heroic officers. _Semel insanivimus omnes_. I was myself, during the late war with Great Britain, chaplain of a regiment, which was fortunately never called to active military duty. I mention this circumstance with regret rather than pride. Had I been summoned to actual warfare, I trust that I might have been strengthened to bear myself after the manner of that reverend father in our New England Israel, Dr. Benjamin Colman, who, as we are told in Turell's life of him, when the vessel in which he had taken passage for England was attacked by a French privateer, 'fought like a philosopher and a Christian, ... and prayed all the while he charged and fired.' As this note is already long, I shall not here enter upon a discussion of the question, whether Christians may lawfully be soldiers. I think it sufficiently evident, that, during the first two centuries of the Christian era, at least, the two professions were esteemed incompatible. Consult Jortin on this head,--H.W.]

No. IV

REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACE, ESQUIRE,

AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE STREET, REPORTED BY MR. H. BIGLOW

[The ingenious reader will at once understand that no such speech as the following was ever _totidem verbis_ pronounced. But there are simpler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which such an explanation may be needful. For there are certain invisible lines, which as Truth successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and another of us, as a large river, flowing from one kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, which represents to us things and events as they ought to be, rather than servilely copies them as they are imperfectly imaged in the crooked and smoky glass of our mundane affairs. It is this which makes the speech of Antonius, though originally spoken in no wider a forum than the brain of Shakespeare, more historically valuable than that other which Appian has reported, by as much as the understanding of the Englishman was more comprehensive than that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the present instance, has only made use of a license assumed by all the historians of antiquity, who put into the mouths of various characters such words as seem to them most fitting to the occasion and to the speaker. If it be objected that no such oration could ever have been delivered, I answer, that there are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of _Parliamentum Indoctorum_ than did the sixth Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letters,--one to her Majesty, and the other to his wife,--directed them at cross-purposes, so that the Queen was beducked and bedeared and requested to send a change of hose, and the wife was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly besuperlatived, till the one feared for the wits of her ambassador, and the other for those of her husband. In like manner it may be presumed that our speaker has misdirected some of his thoughts, and given to the whole theatre what he would have wished to confide only to a select auditory at the back of the curtain. For it is seldom that we can get any frank utterance from men, who address, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this world or the next. As for their audiences, it may be truly said of our people, that they enjoy one political institution in common with the ancient Athenians: I mean a certain profitless kind of, _ostracism_, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hitherto well enough content. For in Presidential elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I observe that the _oysters_ fall to the lot of comparatively few, the _shells_ (such as the privileges of voting as they are told to do by the _ostrivori_ aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings) are very liberally distributed among the people, as being their prescriptive and quite sufficient portion.

The occasion of the speech is supposed to be Mr. Palfrey's refusal to vote for the Whig candidate for the Speakership.--H.W.]

No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? Voted agin him? Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him; I seem 's though I see her, with wrath in each quill, Like a chancery lawyer, afilin' her bill, An' grindin' her talents ez sharp ez all nater, To pounce like a writ on the back o' the traitor. Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, But a crisis like this must with vigor be met; Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner bestains, Holl Fourth o' Julys seem to bile in my veins. 10

Who ever'd ha' thought sech a pisonous rig Would be run by a chap thet wuz chose fer a Wig? 'We knowed wut his princerples wuz 'fore we sent him'? Wut wuz there in them from this vote to prevent him? A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler O' purpose thet we might our princerples swaller; It can hold any quantity on 'em, the belly can, An' bring 'em up ready fer use like the pelican, Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is stranger) Puts her family into her pouch wen there's danger. 20 Aint princerple precious? then, who's goin' to use it Wen there's resk o' some chap's gittin' up to abuse it? I can't tell the wy on 't, but nothin' is so sure Ez thet princerple kind o' gits spiled by exposure;[19] A man that lets all sorts o' folks git a sight on 't Ough' to hev it all took right away, every mite on 't; Ef he cant keep it all to himself wen it's wise to, He aint one it's fit to trust nothin' so nice to.

Besides, ther's a wonderful power in latitude To shift a man's morril relations an' attitude; 30 Some flossifers think thet a fakkilty's granted The minnit it's proved to be thoroughly wanted, Thet a change o' demand makes a change o' condition, An' thet everythin' 's nothin' except by position; Ez, for instance, thet rubber-trees fust begun bearin' Wen p'litikle conshunces come into wearin', Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt chanced to fail, Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail; So, wen one's chose to Congriss, ez soon ez he's in it, A collar grows right round his neck in a minnit, 40 An' sartin it is thet a man cannot be strict In bein' himself, when he gits to the Deestrict, Fer a coat thet sets wal here in ole Massachusetts, Wen it gits on to Washinton, somehow askew sets.

Resolves, do you say, o' the Springfield Convention? Thet's precisely the pint I was goin' to mention; Resolves air a thing we most gen'ally keep ill, They're a cheap kind o' dust fer the eyes o' the people; A parcel o' delligits jest git together An' chat fer a spell o' the crops an' the weather, 50 Then, comin' to order, they squabble awile An' let off the speeches they're ferful'll spile; Then--Resolve,--Thet we wunt hev an inch o' slave territory; Thet President Polk's holl perceedins air very tory; Thet the war is a damned war, an' them thet enlist in it Should hev a cravat with a dreffle tight twist in it; Thet the war is a war fer the spreadin' o' slavery; Thet our army desarves our best thanks fer their bravery; Thet we're the original friends o' the nation, All the rest air a paltry an' base fabrication; 60 Thet we highly respect Messrs. A, B, an' C, An' ez deeply despise Messrs. E, F, an' G. In this way they go to the eend o' the chapter, An' then they bust out in a kind of a raptur About their own vartoo, an' folks's stone-blindness To the men thet 'ould actilly do 'em a kindness,-- The American eagle,--the Pilgrims thet landed,-- Till on ole Plymouth Rock they git finally stranded. Wal, the people they listen an' say, 'Thet's the ticket; Ez fer Mexico, 'taint no great glory to lick it, 70 But 'twould be a darned shame to go pullin' o' triggers To extend the aree of abusin' the niggers.'

So they march in percession, an' git up hooraws, An' tramp thru the mud far the good o' the cause, An' think they're a kind o' fulfillin' the prophecies, Wen they're on'y jest changin' the holders of offices; Ware A sot afore, B is comf'tably seated, One humbug's victor'ous an' t' other defeated, Each honnable doughface gits jest wut he axes, An' the people,--their annooal soft-sodder an' taxes. 80

Now, to keep unimpaired all these glorious feeturs Thet characterize morril an' reasonin' creeturs, Thet give every paytriot all he can cram, Thet oust the untrustworthy Presidunt Flam, An' stick honest Presidunt Sham in his place, To the manifest gain o' the holl human race, An' to some indervidgewals on 't in partickler, Who love Public Opinion an' know how to tickle her,-- I say thet a party with gret aims like these Must stick jest ez close ez a hive full o' bees. 90

I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong Agin wrong in the abstract, fer thet kind o' wrong Is ollers unpop'lar an' never gits pitied, Because it's a crime no one never committed; But he mus'n't be hard on partickler sins, Coz then he'll be kickin' the people's own shins; On'y look at the Demmercrats, see wut they've done Jest simply by stickin' together like fun; They've sucked us right into a mis'able war Thet no one on airth aint responsible for; 100 They've run us a hundred cool millions in debt (An' fer Demmercrat Horners there's good plums left yet); They talk agin tayriffs, but act fer a high one, An' so coax all parties to build up their Zion; To the people they're ollers ez slick ez molasses, An' butter their bread on both sides with The Masses, Half o' whom they've persuaded, by way of a joke, Thet Washinton's mantlepiece fell upon Polk.

Now all o' these blessin's the Wigs might enjoy, Ef they'd gumption enough the right means to imploy;[20] 110 Fer the silver spoon born in Dermoc'acy's mouth Is a kind of a scringe thet they hev to the South; Their masters can cuss 'em an' kick 'em an' wale 'em. An' they notice it less 'an the ass did to Balaam; In this way they screw into second-rate offices Wich the slaveholder thinks 'ould substract too much off his ease; The file-leaders, I mean, du, fer they, by their wiles, Unlike the old viper, grow fat on their files. Wal, the Wigs hev been tryin' to grab all this prey frum 'em An' to hook this nice spoon o' good fortin' away frum 'em, 120 An' they might ha' succeeded, ez likely ez not, In lickin' the Demmercrats all round the lot, Ef it warn't thet, wile all faithful Wigs were their knees on, Some stuffy old codger would holler out,--'Treason! You must keep a sharp eye on a dog thet hez bit you once, An' _I_ aint agoin' to cheat my constitoounts,'-- Wen every fool knows thet a man represents Not the fellers thet sent him, but them on the fence,-- Impartially ready to jump either side An' make the fust use of a turn o' the tide,-- 130 The waiters on Providunce here in the city, Who compose wut they call a State Centerl Committy, Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in, But arterwards don't weigh the heft of a pin, Wy, the people can't all live on Uncle Sam's pus, So they've nothin' to du with 't fer better or wus; It's the folks thet air kind o' brought up to depend on 't Thet hev any consarn in 't, an' thet is the end on 't. Now here wuz New England ahevin' the honor Of a chance at the Speakership showered upon her;-- 140 Do you say, 'She don't want no more Speakers, but fewer; She's hed plenty o' them, wut she wants is a _doer'_? Fer the matter o' thet, it's notorous in town Thet her own representatives du her quite brown. But thet's nothin' to du with it; wut right hed Palfrey To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? Warn't we gittin' on prime with our hot an' cold blowin', Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it agoin'? We'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position. On this side or thet, no one couldn't tell wich one, 150 So, wutever side wipped, we'd a chance at the plunder An' could sue fer infringin' our paytented thunder; We were ready to vote fer whoever wuz eligible, Ef on all pints at issoo he'd stay unintelligible. Wal, sposin' we hed to gulp down our perfessions. We were ready to come out next mornin' with fresh ones; Besides, ef we did, 'twas our business alone, Fer couldn't we du wut we would with our own? An' ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so, Eat up his own words, it's a marcy it is so. 160 Wy, these chaps frum the North, with back-bones to 'em, darn 'em, 'Ould be wuth more 'an Gennle Tom Thumb is to Barnum: Ther's enough thet to office on this very plan grow, By exhibitin' how very small a man can grow; But an M.C. frum here ollers hastens to state he Belongs to the order called invertebraty, Wence some gret filologists judge primy fashy Thet M.C. is M.T. by paronomashy; An' these few exceptions air _loosus naytury_ Folks 'ould put down their quarters to stare at, like fury. 170 It's no use to open the door o' success, Ef a member can bolt so fer nothin' or less; Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers Our fore-fathers fetched with 'em over the billers, Them pillers the people so soundly hev slep' on, Wile to slav'ry, invasion, an' debt they were swep' on, Wile our Destiny higher an' higher kep' mountin' (Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hends her account in), Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em, They wunt hev so much ez a feather left in 'em. 180

An', ez fer this Palfrey,[21] we thought wen we'd gut him in, He'd go kindly in wutever harness we put him in; Supposin' we _did_ know thet he wuz a peace man? Does he think he can be Uncle Sammle's policeman, An' wen Sam gits tipsy an' kicks up a riot, Lead him off to the lockup to snooze till he's quiet? Wy, the war is a war thet true paytriots can bear, ef It leads to the fat promised land of a tayriff; _We_ don't go an' fight it, nor aint to be driv on, Nor Demmercrats nuther, thet hev wut to live on; 190 Ef it aint jest the thing thet's well pleasin' to God, It makes us thought highly on elsewhere abroad; The Rooshian black eagle looks blue in his eerie An' shakes both his heads wen he hears o' Monteery; In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, An' reads, with locked doors, how we won Cherry Buster; An' old Philip Lewis--thet come an' kep' school here Fer the mere sake o' scorin his ryalist ruler On the tenderest part of our kings _in futuro_-- Hides his crown underneath an old shut in his bureau, 200 Breaks off in his brags to a suckle o' merry kings, How he often hed hided young native Amerrikins, An' turnin' quite faint in the midst of his fooleries, Sneaks down stairs to bolt the front door o' the Tooleries.[22] You say, 'We'd ha' seared 'em by growin' in peace, A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these'? Who is it dares say thet our naytional eagle Won't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal, Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter this slaughter, 'll bring back a bill ten times longer 'n she'd ough' to? 210 Wut's your name? Come, I see ye, you up-country feller, You've put me out severil times with your beller; Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder, Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder; He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is, He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses; Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it, Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it; Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes, Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, 220 Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it's the corner Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner! In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages, An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions The holl of our civerlized, free institutions; He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier, An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier; I'll be----, thet is, I mean I'll be blest, Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 230 I sha'nt talk with _him_, my religion's too fervent. Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant.

[Into the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall not here enter at large. The two faculties of speech and of speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses, Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven by milk-and-water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (_simulacra_, semblances) of speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens. Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments with hooks and eyes?

This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation (being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the single wall which protected people of other languages from the incursions of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist should be broken down.

In reading Congressional debates, I have fancied, that, after the subsidence of those painful buzzings in the brain which result from such exercises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable information. I made the discovery that _nothing_ takes longer in the saying than anything else, for as _ex nihilo nihil fit_, so from one polypus _nothing_ any number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the attention of _viva voce_ debaters and controversialists the admirable example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichæan antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids are a divinely granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue, books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian bog yield to the advances of firm arable land.

The sagacious Lacedæmonians, hearing that Tesephone had bragged that he could talk all day long on any given subject, made no more ado, but forthwith banished him, whereby they supplied him a topic and at the same time took care that his experiment upon it should be tried out of earshot.

I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet _cold blooded_, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort.--H.W.]

No. V

THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT

SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME