The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume I Part 2

The country all about Pinch Gut So beautiful did seem, That the beholder thought it like A picture in a dream.

But the plantations near Burnt Coat Were even finer still, And made the wond'ring tourist feel A soft, delicious thrill.

At Tear s.h.i.+rt too, the scenery Most charming did appear, With s.n.a.t.c.h It in the distance far, And Purgatory near.

But spite of all these pleasant scenes, The tourist stoutly swore, That home is brightest, after all, And travel is a bore.

So back he went to Maine, straightway, A little wife he took; And now is making nutmegs at Moosehicmagunticook.

In his note, introductory of this poem, my boy, the editor of the _Lily_ affirmed (which is strictly true) that I had named none but veritable localities; and ventured the belief that the composition would remind his readers of Goldsmith. Upon which his scorpion contemporary in the next village observed, that there was rather more smith than gold about the poem. Genius, my boy, is never appreciated until its possessor is dead; and even the useless praise it then obtains is chiefly due to the pleasure that is experienced in burying the poor wretch.

Up to the time when this poem appeared in print, I had succeeded in concealing from my father the nature of my incidental occupation; but now he must know all.

He did know all, my boy; and the result was, that he gave me ten dollars, and sent me to New York to look out for myself.

"It's the only thing that will save him," says he to my mother, "and I must either send him off, or expect to see him sink by degrees to editors.h.i.+p, and commence to wear disgraceful clothes."

I went to New York; I became private secretary and speech-scribe to an unscrupulous and, therefore, rising politician; and now--I am in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Thus, my boy, have I answered your desire for an outline of my personal history; and henceforth let me devote my attention to other and more important inhabitants of our distracted country. I had a certain postmasters.h.i.+p in my eye when I first came hither; but war's alarms indicate that I may do better as an amateur hero.

Yours inconoclastically,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER IV.

DESCRIBING THE SOUTH IN TWELVE LINES, DEFINING THE CITIZEN'S FIRST DUTY, AND RECITING A PARODY.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., April --, 1861.

The chivalrous South, my boy, has taken Fort Sumter, and only wants to be "let alone." Some things of a Southern sort I like, my boy; Southdown mutton is fit for the G.o.ds, and Southside particular is liquid suns.h.i.+ne for the heart; but the whole country was growing tired of new South wails before this, and my present comprehensive estimate of all there is of Dixie may be summed up in twelve straight lines, under the general heading of

REPUDIATION.

'Neath a ragged palmetto a Southerner sat, A-twisting the band of his Panama hat, And trying to lighten his mind of a load By humming the words of the following ode: "Oh! for a n.i.g.g.e.r, and oh! for a whip; Oh! for a c.o.c.ktail, and oh! for a nip; Oh! for a shot at old Greeley and Beecher; Oh! for a crack at a Yankee school-teacher; Oh! for a captain, and oh! for a s.h.i.+p; Oh! for a cargo of n.i.g.g.e.rs each trip."

And so he kept oh-ing for all he had not, Not contented with owing for all that he'd got.

In view of the impending conflict, it is the duty of every American citizen, who has nothing else to do, to take up his abode in the capital of this agonized Republic, and give the Cabinet the sanction of his presence. Some base child of treason may intimate that Was.h.i.+ngton is not quite large enough to hold every American citizen; but I'm satisfied that, if all the democrats could have one good was.h.i.+ng, they would shrink so that you might put the whole blessed party into an ordinary custom house. Some of the republicans are pretty large chaps for their size, but Jeff Davis thinks they can be "taken in" easily enough; and I know that the new tariff will be enough to make them contract like sponges out of water. The city is full of Western chaps, at present, who look as if they had just walked out of a charity-hospital, and had not got beyond gruel diet yet. Every soul of them knew old Abe when he was a child, and one old boy can even remember going for a doctor when his mother was born. I met one of them the other day (he is after the Moosehicmagunticook post-office), and his anecdotes of the President's boyhood brought tears to my eyes, and several tumblers to my lips. He says, that when Abe was an infant of sixteen, he split so many rails that his whole county looked like a wholesale lumber-yard for a week; and that when he took to flat-boating, he was so tall and straight, that a fellow once took him for a smoke-stack on a steamboat, and didn't find out his mistake until he tried to kindle a fire under him. Once, while Abe was practising as a lawyer, he defended a man for stealing a horse, and was so eloquent in proving that his client was an honest victim of false suspicion, that the deeply-affected victim made him a present of the horse as soon as he was acquitted. I tell you what, my boy, if Abe pays a post-office for every story of his childhood that's told, the mail department of this glorious nation will be so large that a letter smaller than a two-story house would get lost in it.

Of all the vile and d.a.m.ning deeds that ever rendered a city eternally infamous, my boy--of all the infernal sins of dark-browed treachery that ever made open-faced treason seem holy, the crime of Baltimore is the blackest and worst. All that April day we were waiting with bated breath and beating hearts for the devoted men who had pledged their lives to their country at the first call of the President, and were known to be marching to the defence of the nation's capital. That night was one of terror: at any moment the hosts of the rebels might pour upon the city from the mountains of guilty Virginia, and grasp the very throat of the Republic. And with the first dim light of morning came the news that our soldiers had been basely beset in the streets of Baltimore, and ruthlessly shot down by a treacherous mob! Those whom they had trusted as brothers, my boy--whose country they were marching to defend with their lives--a.s.sa.s.sinating them in cold blood!

I was sitting in my room at Willard's, when a serious chap from New Haven, who had just paused long enough at the door to send a waiter for the same that he had yesterday, came rus.h.i.+ng into the apartment with a long, fluttering paper in his hand.

"Listen to this," says he, in wild agitation, and read:

BALTIMORE.

Midnight shadows, dark, appalling, round the Capitol were falling, And its dome and pillars glimmered spectral from Potomac's sh.o.r.e; All the great had gone to slumber, and of all the busy number That had moved the State by day within its walls, as erst before, None there were but dreamed of heroes thither sent ere day was o'er-- Thither sent through BALTIMORE.

But within a chamber solemn, barred aloft with many a column, And with windows tow'rd Mount Vernon, windows tow'rd Potomac's sh.o.r.e, Sat a figure, stern and awful; Chief, but not the Chieftain lawful Of the land whose grateful millions Was.h.i.+ngton's great name adore-- Sat the form--a shade majestic of a Chieftain gone before, Thine to honor, BALTIMORE!

There he sat in silence, gazing, by a single planet's blazing, At a map outspread before him wide upon the marble floor; And if 'twere for mortal proving that those reverend lips were moving, While the eyes were closely scanning one mapped city o'er and o'er-- While he saw but one great city on that map upon the floor-- They were whispering--"BALTIMORE."

Thus he sat, nor word did utter, till there came a sudden flutter, And the sound of beating wings was heard upon the carved door.

In a trice the bolts were broken; by those lips no word was spoken, As an Eagle, torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, dim of eye, and wounded sore, Fluttered down upon the map, and trailed a wing all wet with gore O'er the name of BALTIMORE!

Then that n.o.ble form uprising, with a gesture of surprising, Bent with look of keenest sorrow tow'rd the bird that drooped before; "Emblem of my country!" said he, "are thy pinions stained already In a tide whose blending waters never ran so red before?

Is it with the blood of kinsmen? Tell me quickly, I implore!"

Croaked the eagle--"BALTIMORE!"

"Eagle," said the Shade, advancing, "tell me by what dread mischancing Thou, the symbol of my people, bear'st thy plumes erect no more?

Why dost thou desert mine army, sent against the foes that harm me, Through my country, with a Treason worlds to come shall e'er deplore?"

And the Eagle on the map, with bleeding wing, as just before, Blurred the name of BALTIMORE!

"Can it be?" the spectre muttered. "Can it be?" those pale lips uttered; "Is the blood Columbia treasures spilt upon its native sh.o.r.e?

Is there in the land so cherished, land for whom the great have perished, Men to shed a brother's blood as tyrant's blood was shed before?

Where are they who murder Peace before the breaking out of war?"

Croaked the Eagle--"BALTIMORE."

At the word, of sound so mournful, came a frown, half sad, half scornful, O'er the grand, majestic face where frown had never been before; And the hands to Heaven uplifted, with an awful pow'r seemed gifted To plant curses on a head, and hold them there forevermore-- To rain curses on a land, and bid them grow forevermore-- Woe art thou, O BALTIMORE!

Then the sacred spirit, fading, left upon the floor a shading, As of one with arms uplifted, from a distance bending o'er; And the vail of night grew thicker, and the death-watch beat the quicker For a death within a death, and sadder than the death before!

And a whispering of woe was heard upon Potomac's sh.o.r.e-- Hear it not, O BALTIMORE!

And the Eagle, never dying, still is trying, still is trying, With its wings upon the map to hide a city with its gore; But the name is there forever, and it shall be hidden never, While the awful brand of murder points the Avenger to its sh.o.r.e; While the blood of peaceful brothers G.o.d's dread vengeance doth implore, Thou art doomed, O BALTIMORE!

"There!" says the serious New Haven chap, as he finished reading, stirring something softly with a spoon, "what do you suppose Poe would think, if he were alive now and could read that?"

"I think," says I, striving to appear calm, "that he would be 'Raven'

mad about it."

"Oh--ah--yes," says the serious chap, vaguely, "what will _you_ take?"

Doubtless I shall become hardened to the horrors of war in time, my boy; but at present these things unhinge me.

Yours, unforgivingly,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.