Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 60

An' ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so, Eat up his own words, it's a marcy it is so.

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.

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 const.i.tootional 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.

An', ez fer this Palfrey,[V] 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?

Doos 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; Ef it aint jest the thing thet's well pleasin' to G.o.d, It makes us thought highly on elsewhere abroad; The Roos.h.i.+an 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 fl.u.s.ter, 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, 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.[W]

[Footnote V: There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,-- "Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas."

H. W.]

[Footnote W: Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of other prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Philippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither!

That of Seneca in Medea will suit here:--

"Rapida fortuna ac levis Praecepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit."

Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of aeschylus,-- ?pa?, d? t?a??? ?st?? ?? ???? ??at?.

H. W.]

You say,--"We'd ha' scared 'em by growin' in peace, A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these"?

Who is it dares say thet "our naytional eagle Wun't much longer be cla.s.sed 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 ough' to"?

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, 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 civilized, free inst.i.tutions; 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; I shan't 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 every thing 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 b.u.t.tons 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) a.s.sured 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 any thing 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 Manichaean 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 Lacedaemonians 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 ear-shot.

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 Fanueil Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort.--H. W.]

No. V.

THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT.

SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME.

[The incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians. Had Tripoli, instead of Was.h.i.+ngton, been the scene of this undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as they now are of the practical part of martyrdom. I question whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the seat of government.

Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse the vile s.m.u.tch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key. _Ahenea clavis_, a brazen Key indeed!

Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the ap.r.o.n-string of the Past. The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will not do for us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out her arms and asks us to come to her.

But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken away from us and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is boiling over and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold, and gulp down our dignity along with it.

Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of a great statesman, and, if it be great statesmans.h.i.+p to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the Spirit of the Age with the certainty of being next moment hurled neck and heels into the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves the t.i.tle. He is the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should remember the old Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of G.o.ds, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the great snake which knit the universe together; and when he smote the Earth, though with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only been wrestling with an old woman, striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head.

And in old times, doubtless, the giants _were_ stupid, and there was no better sport for the Sir Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. But things have wonderfully changed. It is the giants, now-a-days, that have the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still c.u.mber themselves with the clumsy armor of a by-gone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal of the Past.--H. W.]

TO MR. BUCKENAM.

Mr. Editer , As i wuz kinder prunin round, in a little nussry sot out a year or 2 a go, the Dbait in the sennit c.u.m inter my mine An so i took & Sot it to wut I call a nussry rime. I hev made sum onnable Gentlemun speak that dident speak in a Kind uv Poetikul lie sense the seeson is dreffle backerd up This way

ewers as ushul Hosea Biglow .

"Here we stan' on the Const.i.tution, by thunder!

It's a fact o' wich ther's bus.h.i.+ls o' proofs; Fer how could we trample on't so, I wonder, Ef 't worn't thet it's ollers under our hoofs?"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; "Human rights haint no more Right to come on this floor, No more'n the man in the moon," sez he.

"The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin', An' you've no idee how much bother it saves; We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin', We're _used_ to layin' the string on our slaves,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Foote, "I should like to shoot The holl gang, by the great horn spoon," sez he.

"Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther's no doubt on, It's sutthin' thet's--wha' d' ye call it?--divine,-- An' the slaves thet we allers _make_ the most out on Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Fer all thet," sez Mangum, "'T would be better to hang 'em, An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he.

"The ma.s.s ough' to labor an' we lay on soffies, Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree; It puts all the cunninest on us in office, An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Thet's ez plain," sez Ca.s.s, "Ez thet some one's an a.s.s, It's ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez he.

"Now don't go to say I'm the friend of oppression, But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth, Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet's my impression) To make cussed free with the rights o' the North,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Davis o' Miss., "The perfection o' bliss Is in skinnin' thet same old c.o.o.n," sez he.

"Slavery's a thing thet depends on complexion, It's G.o.d's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) Wich of our onnable body'd be safe?"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Hannegan, Afore he began agin, "Thet exception is quite oppertoon," sez he.

"Gen'nle Ca.s.s, Sir, you needn't be twitchin' your collar, _Your_ merit's quite clear by the dut on your knees, At the North we don't make no distinctions o' color, You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Jarnagin, "They wunt hev to larn agin, They all on 'em know the old toon," sez he.

"The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin', North an' South hev one int'rest, it's plain to a glance; No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin, But they _du_ sell themselves, ef they git a good chance,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Atherton here, "This is gittin' severe, I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he.

"It'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom, An' your fact'ry gals (soon ez we split) 'll make head, An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em, 'll go to work raisin' pr'miscoous Ned,"

Sez John O. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes, the North," sez Colquitt, "Ef we Southeners all quit, Would go down like a busted balloon," sez he.

"Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's brewin'

In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine, All the wise aristoxy is tumblin' to ruin, An' the sankylots drorin' an' drinkin' their wine,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Johnson, "in France They're beginnin' to dance Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he.

"The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "O," sez Westcott o' Florida, "Wut treason is horrider Then our priv'leges tryin' to proon?" sez he.

"It's 'coz they're so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; We think it's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints, Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth shan't be spiled,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, "It perfectly true is Thet slavery 's airth's grettest boon," sez he.