No. II

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 6th Jan., 1862.

Gentlemen,—I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany, though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on New Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My third granddaughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis (a practice too much neglected in our modern systems of education), read aloud to me the excellent essay upon 'Old Age,' the author of which I cannot help suspecting to be a young man who has never yet known what it was to have snow (canities morosa) upon his own roof. Dissolve frigus, large super foco ligna reponens, is a rule for the young, whose woodpile is yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the part of the publick (as I have reason to know from several letters of inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. Nihil humani alienum, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors which is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more fitting season.

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry, and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is little better than [Greek: kapnou skias onar]. The plot was, as I believe, suggested by the 'Twa Brigs' of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the last century, as that found its prototype in the 'Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey' by Fergusson, though, the metre of this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into activity, it were better to be in for the whole sheep than the shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,—an expression questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of what he affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken out as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this place because they rightly define 'punkin-seed' (which Mr. Bartlett would have a kind of perch,—a creature to which I have found a rod or pole not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books of arithmetic) and because it conveys an eulogium on the worthy son of an excellent father, with whose acquaintance (eheu, fugaces anni!) I was formerly honoured.

'But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show, So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau. I know the village, though; was sent there once A-schoolin', 'cause to home I played the dunce; An' I 've ben sence a visitin' the Jedge, Whose garding whispers with the river's edge, Where I 've sot mornin's lazy as the bream, Whose on'y business is to head upstream, (We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in chat Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence.'

Concerning the subject-matter of the verses. I have not the leisure at present to write so fully as I could wish, my time being occupied with the preparation of a discourse for the forthcoming bicentenary celebration of the first settlement of Jaalam East Parish. It may gratify the publick interest to mention the circumstance, that my investigations to this end have enabled me to verify the fact (of much historick importance, and hitherto hotly debated) that Shearjashub Tarbox was the first child of white parentage born in this town, being named in his father's will under date August 7th, or 9th, 1662. It is well known that those who advocate the claims of Mehetable Goings are unable to find any trace of her existence prior to October of that year. As respects the settlement of the Mason and Slidell question, Mr. Biglow has not incorrectly stated the popular sentiment, so far as I can judge by its expression in this locality. For myself, I feel more sorrow than resentment: for I am old enough to have heard those talk of England who still, even after the unhappy estrangement, could not unschool their lips from calling her the Mother-Country. But England has insisted on ripping up old wounds, and has undone the healing work of fifty years; for nations do not reason, they only feel, and the spretae injuria formae rankles in their minds as bitterly as in that of a woman. And because this is so, I feel the more satisfaction that our Government has acted (as all Governments should, standing as they do between the people and their passions) as if it had arrived at years of discretion. There are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any language (and I suspect they were no easier before the confusion of tongues), but which no man or nation that cannot utter can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are, I was wrong; and I am proud that, while England played the boy, our rulers had strength enough from the People below and wisdom enough from God above to quit themselves like men.

The sore points on both sides have been skilfully exasperated by interested and unscrupulous persons, who saw in a war between the two countries the only hope of profitable return for their investment in Confederate stock, whether political or financial. The always supercilious, often insulting, and sometimes even brutal tone of British journals and publick men has certainly not tended to soothe whatever resentment might exist in America.

'Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me down stairs?'

We have no reason to complain that England, as a necessary consequence of her clubs, has become a great society for the minding of other people's business, and we can smile good-naturedly when she lectures other nations on the sins of arrogance and conceit: but we may justly consider it a breach of the political convenances which are expected to regulate the intercourse of one well-bred government with another, when men holding places in the ministry allow themselves to dictate our domestic policy, to instruct us in our duty, and to stigmatize as unholy a war for the rescue of whatever a high-minded people should hold most vital and most sacred. Was it in good taste, that I may use the mildest term, for Earl Russell to expound our own Constitution to President Lincoln, or to make a new and fallacious application of an old phrase for our benefit, and tell us that the Rebels were fighting for independence and we for empire? As if all wars for independence were by nature just and deserving of sympathy, and all wars for empire ignoble and worthy only of reprobation, or as if these easy phrases in any way characterized this terrible struggle,—terrible not so truly in any superficial sense, as from the essential and deadly enmity of the principles that underlie it. His Lordship's bit of borrowed rhetoric would justify Smith O'Brien, Nana Sahib, and the Maori chieftains, while it would condemn nearly every war in which England has ever been engaged. Was it so very presumptuous in us to think that it would be decorous in English statesmen if they spared time enough to acquire some kind of knowledge, though of the most elementary kind, in regard to this country and the questions at issue here, before they pronounced so off-hand a judgment? Or is political information expected to come Dogberry-fashion in England, like reading and writing, by nature?

And now all respectable England is wondering at our irritability, and sees a quite satisfactory explanation of it in our national vanity. Suave mari magno, it is pleasant, sitting in the easy-chairs of Downing Street, to sprinkle pepper on the raw wounds of a kindred people struggling for life, and philosophical to find in self-conceit the cause of our instinctive resentment. Surely we were of all nations the least liable to any temptation of vanity at a time when the gravest anxiety and the keenest sorrow were never absent from our hearts. Nor is conceit the exclusive attribute of any one nation. The earliest of English travellers, Sir John Mandeville, took a less provincial view of the matter when he said, 'For fro what partie of the erthe that men duellen, other aboven or beneathen, it semethe alweys to hem that duellen that thei gon more righte than any other folke.' The English have always had their fair share of this amiable quality. We may say of them still, as the authour of the 'Lettres Cabalistiques' said of them more than a century ago, 'Ces derniers disent naturellement qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui soient estimables'. And, as he also says,'J'aimerois presque autant tomber entre les mains d'un Inquisiteur que d'un Anglois qui me fait sentir sans cesse combien il s'estime plus que moi, et qui ne daigne me parler que pour injurier ma Nation et pour m'ennuyer du recit des grandes qualites de la sienne.' Of this Bull we may safely say with Horace, habet faenum in cornu. What we felt to be especially insulting was the quiet assumption that the descendants of men who left the Old World for the sake of principle, and who had made the wilderness into a New World patterned after an Idea, could not possibly be susceptible of a generous or lofty sentiment, could have no feeling of nationality deeper than that of a tradesman for his shop. One would have thought, in listening to England, that we were presumptuous in fancying that we were a nation at all, or had any other principle of union than that of booths at a fair, where there is no higher notion of government than the constable, or better image of God than that stamped upon the current coin.

It is time for Englishmen to consider whether there was nothing in the spirit of their press and of their leading public men calculated to rouse a just indignation, and to cause a permanent estrangement on the part of any nation capable of self-respect, and sensitively jealous, as ours then was, of foreign interference. Was there nothing in the indecent haste with which belligerent rights were conceded to the Rebels, nothing in the abrupt tone assumed in the Trent case, nothing in the fitting out of Confederate privateers, that might stir the blood of a people already overcharged with doubt, suspicion, and terrible responsibility? The laity in any country do not stop to consider points of law, but they have an instinctive perception of the animus that actuates the policy of a foreign nation; and in our own case they remembered that the British authorities in Canada did not wait till diplomacy could send home to England for her slow official tinder-box to fire the 'Caroline.' Add to this, what every sensible American knew, that the moral support of England was equal to an army of two hundred thousand men to the Rebels, while it insured us another year or two of exhausting war. It was not so much the spite of her words (though the time might have been more tastefully chosen) as the actual power for evil in them that we felt as a deadly wrong. Perhaps the most immediate and efficient cause of mere irritation was, the sudden and unaccountable change of manner on the other side of the water. Only six months before, the Prince of Wales had come over to call us cousins; and everywhere it was nothing but 'our American brethren,' that great offshoot of British institutions in the New World, so almost identical with them in laws, language, and literature,—this last of the alliterative compliments being so bitterly true, that perhaps it will not be retracted even now. To this outburst of long-repressed affection we responded with genuine warmth, if with something of the awkwardness of a poor relation bewildered with the sudden tightening of the ties of consanguinity when it is rumored that he has come into a large estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, presto! a flaw in our titles was discovered, the plate we were promised at the family table is flung at our head, and we were again the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at once cowardly and overbearing,—no relations of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hybrid of the basest bloods of Europe. Panurge was not quicker to call Friar John his former friend. I cannot help thinking of Walter Mapes's jingling paraphrase of Petronius,—

'Dummodo sim splendidis vestibus ornatus, Et multa familia sim circumvallatus, Prudens sum et sapiens et morigeratus, Et tuus nepos sum et tu meus cognatus,'—

which I may freely render thus:—

So long as I was prosperous, I'd dinners by the dozen, Was well-bred, witty, virtuous, and everybody's cousin; If luck should turn, as well she may, her fancy is so flexile, Will virtue, cousinship, and all return with her from exile?

There was nothing in all this to exasperate a philosopher, much to make him smile rather; but the earth's surface is not chiefly inhabited by philosophers, and I revive the recollection of it now in perfect good-humour, merely by way of suggesting to our ci-devant British cousins, that it would have been easier for them to hold their tongues than for us to keep our tempers under the circumstances.

The English Cabinet made a blunder, unquestionably, in taking it so hastily for granted that the United States had fallen forever from their position as a first-rate power, and it was natural that they should vent a little of their vexation on the people whose inexplicable obstinacy in maintaining freedom and order, and in resisting degradation, was likely to convict them of their mistake. But if bearing a grudge be the sure mark of a small mind in the individual, can it be a proof of high spirit in a nation? If the result of the present estrangement between the two countries shall be to make us more independent of British twaddle (Indomito nec dira ferens stipendia Tauro), so much the better; but if it is to make us insensible to the value of British opinion in matters where it gives us the judgment of an impartial and cultivated outsider, if we are to shut ourselves out from the advantages of English culture, the loss will be ours, and not theirs. Because the door of the old homestead has been once slammed in our faces, shall we in a huff reject all future advances of conciliation, and cut ourselves foolishly off from any share in the humanizing influences of the place, with its ineffable riches of association, its heirlooms of immemorial culture, its historic monuments, ours no less than theirs, its noble gallery of ancestral portraits? We have only to succeed, and England will not only respect, but, for the first time, begin to understand us. And let us not, in our justifiable indignation at wanton insult, forget that England is not the England only of snobs who dread the democracy they do not comprehend, but the England of history, of heroes, statesmen, and poets, whose names are dear, and their influence as salutary to us as to her.

Let us strengthen the hands of those in authority over us, and curb our own tongues, remembering that General Wait commonly proves in the end more than a match for General Headlong, and that the Good Book ascribes safety to a multitude, indeed, but not to a mob, of counsellours. Let us remember and perpend the words of Paulus Emilius to the people of Rome; that, 'if they judged they could manage the war to more advantage by any other, he would willingly yield up his charge; but if they confided in him, they were not to make themselves his colleagues in his office, or raise reports, or criticise his actions, but, without talking, supply him with means and assistance necessary to the carrying on of the war; for, if they proposed to command their own commander, they would render this expedition more ridiculous than the former.' (Vide Plutarchum in Vita P.E.) Let us also not forget what the same excellent authour says concerning Perseus's fear of spending money, and not permit the covetousness of Brother Jonathan to be the good fortune of Jefferson Davis. For my own part, till I am ready to admit the Commander-in-Chief to my pulpit, I shall abstain from planning his battles. If courage be the sword, yet is patience the armour of a nation; and in our desire for peace, let us never be willing to surrender the Constitution bequeathed us by fathers at least as wise as ourselves (even with Jefferson Davis to help us), and, with those degenerate Romans, tuta et praesentia quam vetera et periculosa malle.

And not only should we bridle our own tongues, but the pens of others, which are swift to convey useful intelligence to the enemy. This is no new inconvenience; for, under date, 3d June, 1745, General Pepperell wrote thus to Governor Shirley from Louisbourg: 'What your Excellency observes of the army's being made acquainted with any plans proposed, until ready to be put in execution, has always been disagreeable to me, and I have given many cautions relating to it. But when your Excellency considers that our Council of War consists of more than twenty members, I am persuaded you will think it impossible for me to hinder it, if any of them will persist in communicating to inferior officers and soldiers what ought to be kept secret. I am informed that the Boston newspapers are filled with paragraphs from private letters relating to the expedition. Will your Excellency permit me to say I think it may be of ill consequence? Would it not be convenient, if your Excellency should forbid the Printers' inserting such news?' Verily, if tempora mutantur, we may question the et nos mutamur in illis; and if tongues be leaky, it will need all hands at the pumps to save the Ship of State. Our history dotes and repeats itself. If Sassycus (rather than Alcibiades) find a parallel in Beauregard, so Weakwash, as he is called by the brave Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, need not seek far among our own Sachems for his anti-type.

With respect, Your ob't humble serv't Homer Wilbur, A.M.

I love to start out arter night's begun, An' all the chores about the farm are done, The critters milked an' foddered, gates shet fast, Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper past. An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,— I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch Of folks thet foller in one rut too much: 10 Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out. Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know, There's certin spots where I like best to go: The Concord road, for instance (I, for one, Most gin'lly ollers call it John Bull's Run). The field o' Lexin'ton where England tried The fastest colours thet she ever dyed, An' Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came, Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' fame, 20 Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so's to save the toll.

They're 'most too fur away, take too much time To visit of'en, ef it ain't in rhyme; But the' 's a walk thet's hendier, a sight, An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's night,— I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect Hill. I love to l'iter there while night grows still, An' in the twinklin' villages about, Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out, 30 An' nary sound but watch-dogs' false alarms, Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy farms, Where some wise rooster (men act jest thet way) Stands to 't thet moon-rise is the break o' day; (So Mister Seward sticks a three-months' pin Where the war'd oughto eend, then tries agin: My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow: Don't never prophesy—onless ye know.) I love to muse there till it kind o' seems Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams; 40 The northwest wind thet twitches at my baird Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, An' the same moon thet this December shines Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's lines; The rail-fence posts, acrost the hill thet runs, Turn ghosts o' sogers should'rin' ghosts o' guns; Ez wheels the sentry, glints a flash o' light, Along the firelock won at Concord Fight, An', 'twixt the silences, now fur, now nigh, Rings the sharp chellenge, hums the low reply. 50

Ez I was settin' so, it warn't long sence, Mixin' the puffict with the present tense, I heerd two voices som'ers in the air, Though, ef I was to die, I can't tell where: Voices I call 'em: 'twas a kind o' sough Like pine-trees thet the wind's ageth'rin' through; An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell, Then some misdoubted, couldn't fairly tell, Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel, I knowed, an' didn't,—fin'lly seemed to feel 60 'Twas Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill With the Stone Spike thet's druv thru Bunker's Hill; Whether 'twas so, or ef I on'y dreamed, I couldn't say; I tell it ez it seemed.

THE BRIDGE

Wal, neighbor, tell us wut's turned up thet's new? You're younger 'n I be,—nigher Boston, tu: An' down to Boston, ef you take their showin', Wut they don't know ain't hardly wuth the knowin'. There's sunthin' goin' on, I know: las' night The British sogers killed in our gret fight 70 (Nigh fifty year they hedn't stirred nor spoke) Made sech a coil you'd thought a dam hed broke: Why, one he up an' beat a revellee With his own crossbones on a holler tree, Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a hive With faces I hain't seen sence Seventy-five. Wut is the news? 'T ain't good, or they'd be cheerin'. Speak slow an' clear, for I'm some hard o' hearin'.

THE MONIMENT

I don't know hardly ef it's good or bad,—

THE BRIDGE

At wust, it can't be wus than wut we've had. 80

THE MONIMENT

You know them envys thet the Rebbles sent, An' Cap'n Wilkes he borried o' the Trent?

THE BRIDGE

Wut! they ha'n't hanged 'em? Then their wits is gone! Thet's the sure way to make a goose a swan!

THE MONIMENT

No: England she would hev 'em, Fee, Faw, Fum! (Ez though she hedn't fools enough to home,) So they've returned 'em—

THE BRIDGE

Hev they? Wal, by heaven, Thet's the wust news I've heerd sence Seventy-seven! By George, I meant to say, though I declare It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear. 90

THE MONIMENT

Now don't go off half-cock: folks never gains By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains. Come, neighbor, you don't understan'—

THE BRIDGE

How? Hey? Not understan'? Why, wut's to hender, pray? Must I go huntin' round to find a chap To tell me when my face hez hed a slap?

THE MONIMENT

See here: the British they found out a flaw In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law: (They make all laws, you know, an' so, o' course, It's nateral they should understan' their force:) 100 He'd oughto ha' took the vessel into port, An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court; She was a mail-ship, an' a steamer, tu, An' thet, they say, hez changed the pint o' view, Coz the old practice, bein' meant for sails, Ef tried upon a steamer, kind o' fails; You may take out despatches, but you mus'n't Take nary man—

THE BRIDGE

You mean to say, you dus'n't! Changed pint o'view! No, no,—it's overboard With law an' gospel, when their ox is gored! 110 I tell ye, England's law, on sea an' land, Hez ollers ben, 'I've gut the heaviest hand.' Take nary man? Fine preachin' from her lips! Why, she hez taken hunderds from our ships, An' would agin, an' swear she had a right to, Ef we warn't strong enough to be perlite to. Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind, England doos make the most onpleasant kind: It's you're the sinner ollers, she's the saint; Wut's good's all English, all thet isn't ain't; 120 Wut profits her is ollers right an' just, An' ef you don't read Scriptur so, you must; She's praised herself ontil she fairly thinks There ain't no light in Natur when she winks; Hain't she the Ten Comman'ments in her pus? Could the world stir 'thout she went, tu, ez nus? She ain't like other mortals, thet's a fact: She never stopped the habus-corpus act, Nor specie payments, nor she never yet Cut down the int'rest on her public debt; 130 She don't put down rebellions, lets 'em breed, An' 's ollers willin' Ireland should secede; She's all thet's honest, honnable, an' fair, An' when the vartoos died they made her heir.

THE MONIMENT

Wal, wal, two wrongs don't never make a right; Ef we're mistaken, own up, an' don't fight: For gracious' sake, ha'n't we enough to du 'thout gettin' up a fight with England, tu? She thinks we're rabble-rid—

THE BRIDGE

An' so we can't Distinguish 'twixt You oughtn't an' You shan't! 140 She jedges by herself; she's no idear How 't stiddies folks to give 'em their fair sheer: The odds 'twixt her an' us is plain's a steeple,— Her People's turned to Mob, our Mob's turned People.

THE MONIMENT

She's riled jes' now—

THE BRIDGE

Plain proof her cause ain't strong,— The one thet fust gits mad's 'most ollers wrong. Why, sence she helped in lickin' Nap the Fust, An' pricked a bubble jest agoin' to bust, With Rooshy, Prooshy, Austry, all assistin', Th' ain't nut a face but wut she's shook her fist in, 150 Ez though she done it all, an' ten times more, An' nothin' never hed gut done afore, Nor never could agin, 'thout she wuz spliced On to one eend an' gin th' old airth a hoist. She is some punkins, thet I wun't deny, (For ain't she some related to you 'n' I?) But there's a few small intrists here below Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co, An' though they can't conceit how 't should be so, I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles 160 'thout no gret helpin' from the British Isles, An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff; I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fellers ez Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses.

THE MONIMENT

You're ollers quick to set your back aridge, Though 't suits a tom-cat more 'n a sober bridge: Don't you get het: they thought the thing was planned; They'll cool off when they come to understand.

THE BRIDGE

Ef thet's wut you expect, you'll hev to wait; 170 Folks never understand the folks they hate: She'll fin' some other grievance jest ez good, 'fore the month's out, to git misunderstood. England cool off! She'll do it, ef she sees She's run her head into a swarm o' bees. I ain't so prejudiced ez wut you spose: I hev thought England was the best thet goes; Remember (no, you can't), when I was reared, God save the King was all the tune you heerd: But it's enough to turn Wachuset roun' 180 This stumpin' fellers when you think they're down.

THE MONIMENT

But, neighbor, ef they prove their claim at law, The best way is to settle, an' not jaw. An' don't le' 's mutter 'bout the awfle bricks We'll give 'em, ef we ketch 'em in a fix: That 'ere's most frequently the kin' o' talk Of critters can't be kicked to toe the chalk; Your 'You'll see nex' time!' an' 'Look out bumby!' 'Most ollers ends in eatin' umble-pie. 'Twun't pay to scringe to England: will it pay 190 To fear thet meaner bully, old 'They'll say'? Suppose they du say; words are dreffle bores, But they ain't quite so bad ez seventy-fours. Wut England wants is jest a wedge to fit Where it'll help to widen out our split: She's found her wedge, an' 'tain't for us to come An' lend the beetle thet's to drive it home. For growed-up folks like us 'twould be a scandle, When we git sarsed, to fly right off the handle. England ain't all bad, coz she thinks us blind: 200 Ef she can't change her skin, she can her mind; An' we shall see her change it double-quick. Soon ez we've proved thet we're a-goin' to lick. She an' Columby's gut to be fas' friends: For the world prospers by their privit ends: 'Twould put the clock back all o' fifty years Ef they should fall together by the ears.

THE BRIDGE

I 'gree to thet; she's nigh us to wut France is; But then she'll hev to make the fust advances; We've gut pride, tu, an' gut it by good rights, 210 An' ketch me stoopin' to pick up the mites O' condescension she'll be lettin' fall When she finds out we ain't dead arter all! I tell ye wut, it takes more'n one good week Afore my nose forgits it's hed a tweak.

THE MONIMENT

She'll come out right bumby, thet I'll engage, Soon ez she gits to seein' we're of age; This talkin' down o' hers ain't wuth a fuss; It's nat'ral ez nut likin' 'tis to us; 220 Ef we're agoin' to prove we be growed-up. 'Twun't be by barkin' like a tarrier pup, But turnin' to an' makin' things ez good Ez wut we're ollers braggin' that we could; We're boun' to be good friends, an' so we'd oughto, In spite of all the fools both sides the water.

THE BRIDGE

I b'lieve thet's so; but hearken in your ear,— I'm older'n you,—Peace wun't keep house with Fear; Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu. I recollect how sailors' rights was won, 230 Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' gun; Why, afore thet, John Bull sot up thet he Hed gut a kind o' mortgage on the sea; You'd thought he held by Gran'ther Adam's will, An' ef you knuckle down, he'll think so still. Better thet all our ships an' all their crews Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze, Each torn flag wavin' chellenge ez it went, An' each dumb gun a brave man's moniment, Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave: 240 Give me the peace of dead men or of brave!

THE MONIMENT

I say, ole boy, it ain't the Glorious Fourth: You'd oughto larned 'fore this wut talk wuz worth. It ain't our nose thet gits put out o' jint; It's England thet gives up her dearest pint. We've gut, I tell ye now, enough to du In our own fem'ly fight, afore we're thru. I hoped, las' spring, jest arter Sumter's shame, When every flag-staff flapped its tethered flame, An' all the people, startled from their doubt, 250 Come must'rin' to the flag with sech a shout,— I hoped to see things settled 'fore this fall, The Rebbles licked, Jeff Davis hanged, an' all; Then come Bull Run, an' sence then I've ben waitin' Like boys in Jennooary thaw for skatin', Nothin' to du but watch my shadder's trace Swing, like a ship at anchor, roun' my base, With daylight's flood an' ebb: it's gittin' slow, An' I 'most think we'd better let 'em go. I tell ye wut, this war's a-goin' to cost— 260

THE BRIDGE

An' I tell you it wun't be money lost; Taxes milks dry, but, neighbor, you'll allow Thet havin' things onsettled kills the cow: We've gut to fix this thing for good an' all; It's no use buildin' wut's a-goin' to fall. I'm older'n you, an' I've seen things an' men, An' my experunce,—tell ye wut it's ben: Folks thet worked thorough was the ones thet thriv, But bad work follers ye ez long's ye live; You can't git red on 't; jest ez sure ez sin, 270 It's ollers askin' to be done agin: Ef we should part, it wouldn't be a week 'Fore your soft-soddered peace would spring aleak. We've turned our cuffs up, but, to put her thru, We must git mad an' off with jackets, tu; 'Twun't du to think thet killin' ain't perlite,— You've gut to be to airnest, ef you fight; Why, two thirds o' the Rebbles 'ould cut dirt, Ef they once thought thet Guv'ment meant to hurt; An' I du wish our Gin'rals hed in mind 280 The folks in front more than the folks behind; You wun't do much ontil you think it's God, An' not constitoounts, thet holds the rod; We want some more o' Gideon's sword, I jedge, For proclamations ha'n't no gret of edge; There's nothin' for a cancer but the knife, Onless you set by 't more than by your life. I've seen hard times; I see a war begun Thet folks thet love their bellies never'd won; Pharo's lean kine hung on for seven long year; 290 But when 'twas done, we didn't count it dear; Why, law an' order, honor, civil right, Ef they ain't wuth it, wut is wuth a fight? I'm older'n you: the plough, the axe, the mill, All kin's o' labor an' all kin's o' skill, Would be a rabbit in a wile-cat's claw, Ef 'twarn't for thet slow critter, 'stablished law; Onsettle thet, an' all the world goes whiz, A screw's gut loose in eyerythin' there is: Good buttresses once settled, don't you fret 300 An' stir 'em; take a bridge's word for thet! Young folks are smart, but all ain't good thet's new; I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin', tu.

THE MONIMENT

Amen to thet! build sure in the beginnin': An' then don't never tech the underpinnin': Th' older a guv'ment is, the better 't suits; New ones hunt folks's corns out like new boots: Change jes' for change, is like them big hotels Where they shift plates, an' let ye live on smells.

THE BRIDGE

Wal, don't give up afore the ship goes down: 310 It's a stiff gale, but Providence wun't drown; An' God wun't leave us yit to sink or swim, Ef we don't fail to du wut's right by Him, This land o' ourn, I tell ye, 's gut to be A better country than man ever see. I feel my sperit swellin' with a cry Thet seems to say, 'Break forth an' prophesy!' O strange New World, thet yit wast never young, Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung, Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby-bed 320 Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread, An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains, Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane, Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events To pitch new States ez Old-World men pitch tents, Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in 330 Against the poorest child of Adam's kin,— The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay In fearful haste thy murdered corse away! I see—

Jest here some dogs begun to bark, So thet I lost old Concord's last remark: I listened long, but all I seemed to hear Was dead leaves gossipin' on some birch-trees near; But ez they hedn't no gret things to say, An' sed 'em often, I come right away, An', walkin' home'ards, jest to pass the time, 340 I put some thoughts thet bothered me in rhyme; I hain't hed time to fairly try 'em on, But here they be—it's

JONATHAN TO JOHN

It don't seem hardly right, John, When both my hands was full, To stump me to a fight, John,— Your cousin, tu, John Bull! Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess We know it now,' sez he, 'The lion's paw is all the law, Accordin' to J.B., Thet's fit for you an' me!' 9

You wonder why we're hot, John? Your mark wuz on the guns, The neutral guns, thet shot, John, Our brothers an' our sons: Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess There's human blood,' sez he, 'By fits an' starts, in Yankee hearts, Though't may surprise J.B. More 'n it would you an' me.'

Ef I turned mad dogs loose, John, On your front-parlor stairs, 20 Would it jest meet your views, John, To wait an' sue their heirs? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, I on'y guess,' sez he, 'Thet ef Vattel on his toes fell, 'Twould kind o' rile J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

Who made the law thet hurts, John, Heads I win,—ditto tails? 'J.B.' was on his shirts, John, 30 Onless my memory fails. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess (I'm good at thet),' sez he, 'Thet sauce for goose ain't jest the juice For ganders with J.B., No more 'n with you or me!'

When your rights was our wrongs, John, You didn't stop for fuss,— Britanny's trident prongs, John, Was good 'nough law for us. 40 Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Though physic's good,' sez he, 'It doesn't foller thet he can swaller Prescriptions signed "J.B.," Put up by you an' me!'

We own the ocean, tu, John: You mus'n' take it hard, Ef we can't think with you, John, It's jest your own back-yard. 49 Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Ef thet's his claim,' sez he, 'The fencin' stuff'll cost enough To bust up friend J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

Why talk so dreffle big, John, Of honor when it meant You didn't care a fig, John, But jest for ten per cent? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess He's like the rest,' sez he: 60 'When all is done, it's number one Thet's nearest to J.B., Ez wal ez t' you an' me!'

We give the critters back, John, Cos Abram thought 'twas right; It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, Provokin' us to fight. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess We've a hard row,' sez he, 'To hoe jest now; but thet, somehow, 70 May happen to J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

We ain't so weak an' poor, John, With twenty million people. An' close to every door, John, A school-house an' a steeple. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, It is a fact,' sez he, 'The surest plan to make a Man Is, think him so, J.B., 80 Ez much ez you or me!'

Our folks believe in Law, John; An' it's for her sake, now, They've left the axe an' saw, John, The anvil an' the plough. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Ef 'twarn't for law,' sez he, 'There'd be one shindy from here to Indy; An' thet don't suit J.B. (When't ain't 'twixt you an' me!) 90

We know we've got a cause, John, Thet's honest, just, an' true; We thought 'twould win applause, John, Ef nowheres else, from you. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess His love of right,' sez he, 'Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton: There's natur' in J.B., Ez wal 'z in you an' me!'

The South says, 'Poor folks down!' John, 100 An' 'All men up!' say we,— White, yaller, black, an' brown, John: Now which is your idee? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, John preaches wal,' sez he; 'But, sermon thru, an' come to du, Why, there's the old J.B. A-crowdin' you an' me!'

Shall it be love, or hate, John? It's you thet's to decide; 110 Ain't your bonds held by Fate, John, Like all the world's beside? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess Wise men forgive,' sez he, 'But not forgit; an' some time yit Thet truth may strike J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

God means to make this land, John, Clear thru, from sea to sea, Believe an' understand, John, 120 The wuth o' bein' free. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, God's price is high,' sez he; 'But nothin' else than wut He sells Wears long, an' thet J.B. May larn, like you an' me!'



No. III

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW

With the following Letter from the REVEREND HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 7th Feb., 1862.

RESPECTED FRIENDS,—If I know myself,—and surely a man can hardly be supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning (e coelo descendit, says the pagan poet),—I have no great smack of that weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr. Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in connection with a topick of interest to all those engaged in the publick ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my preaching,—never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the erection of the new house (where we now worship) in 1845. He did, indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable bass in the choir; but, whether on some umbrage (omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus) taken against the bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 (aet. 77,) under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to have preserved (alta mente repostum), as it were, in the pickle of a mind soured by prejudice, a lasting scunner, as he would call it, against our staid and decent form of worship; for I would rather in that wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe in an evil spirit which they call ar c'houskezik, whose office it is to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eyeshot of the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome reveil. It is true, I have numbered among my parishioners some who are proof against the prophylactick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who, nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a philosophick turn have assured us that our pulpits were set too high, and that the soporifick tendency increased with the ratio of the angle in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This were a curious topick for investigation. There can be no doubt that some sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur! Quare fremuerunt gentes? Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has eloquence (ut ita dicam) always on tap? A good man, and, next to David, a sacred poet (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this particular), has said,—

'The worst speak something good: if all want sense, God takes a text and preacheth patience.'

There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the Old World socially superior to those who founded the institutions of New England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact that such superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least paid their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord Bacon had in mind when he wrote: 'It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant.' That certain names are found there is nothing to the purpose, for, even had an alias been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse and character were 'food for the Plantations' (and this before the settlement of New England), but also that any drab would suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. 'Never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia,' says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the counterfeit nobility of the Old Dominion became a topick of ridicule in the Mother Country may be learned from a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on the Rebellion of Bacon: for even these kennels of literature may yield a fact or two to pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper of a Virginia ordinary, calls herself the daughter of a baronet, 'undone in the late rebellion,'—her father having in truth been a tailor,—and three of the Council, assuming to themselves an equal splendor of origin, are shown to have been, one 'a broken exciseman who came over a poor servant,' another a tinker transported for theft, and the third 'a common pickpocket often flogged at the cart's tail.' The ancestry of South Carolina will as little pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience' sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. But of what use to discuss the matter? An expert genealogist will provide any solvent man with a genus et pro avos to order. My Lord Burleigh used to say, with Aristotle and the Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 'nobility was ancient riches,' whence also the Spanish were wont to call their nobles ricos hombres, and the aristocracy of America are the descendants of those who first became wealthy, by whatever means. Petroleum will in this wise be the source of much good blood among our posterity. The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,—the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues thence. And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne consolingly says in his 'Present State of England,' 'to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed no disparagement to a Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother,' yet I conceive that he would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular trade in question. Oddly enough this trade reverses the ordinary standards of social respectability no less than of morals, for the retail and domestick is as creditable as the wholesale and foreign is degrading to him who follows it. Are our morals, then, no better than mores after all? I do not believe that such aristocracy as exists at the South (for I hold with Marius, fortissimum quemque generosissimum) will be found an element of anything like persistent strength in war,—thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly called inductionis dominus et Verulamii) as true as it is pithy, that 'the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies.' It is odd enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's 'Memorial,' was conspiracy and rebellion,—odder yet, as showing the changes which are wrought by circumstance, that the first insurrection, in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of the Proprietary Government. I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,—a high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only quadrumanous but quidruminant.

I confess that the present letter of Mr. Sawin increases my doubts as to the sincerity of the convictions which he professes, and I am inclined to think that the triumph, of the legitimate Government, sure sooner or later to take place, will find him and a large majority of his newly adopted fellow-citizens (who hold with Daedalus, the primal sitter-on-the-fence, that medium tenere tutissimum) original Union men. The criticisms towards the close of his letter on certain of our failings are worthy to be seriously perpended; for he is not, as I think, without a spice of vulgar shrewdness. Fas est et ab hoste doceri: there is no reckoning without your host. As to the good-nature in us which he seems to gird at, while I would not consecrate a chapel, as they have not scrupled to do in France, to Notre Dame de la Haine (Our Lady of Hate), yet I cannot forget that the corruption of good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts (as too frequently in our publick conveyances) it becomes a positive crime when it leads us to look unresentfully on peculation, and to regard treason to the best Government that ever existed as something with which a gentleman may shake hands without soiling his fingers. I do not think the gallows-tree the most profitable member of our Sylva; but, since it continues to be planted, I would fain see a Northern limb ingrafted on it, that it may bear some other fruit than loyal Tennesseeans.

A relick has recently been discovered on the east bank of Bushy Brook in North Jaalam, which I conceive to be an inscription in Runick characters relating to the early expedition of the Northmen to this continent. I shall make fuller investigations, and communicate the result in due season.

Respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

P.S.—I inclose a year's subscription from Deacon Tinkham.

I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started, To tech the leadin' featurs o' my gittin' me convarted; But, ez my letters hez to go clearn roun' by way o' Cuby, 'Twun't seem no staler now than then, by th' time it gits where you be. You know up North, though secs an' things air plenty ez you please, Ther' warn't nut one on 'em thet come jes' square with my idees: They all on 'em wuz too much mixed with Covenants o' Works, An' would hev answered jest ez wal for Afrikins an' Turks, Fer where's a Christian's privilege an' his rewards eusuin', Ef 'taint perfessin' right and eend 'thout nary need o' doin'? 10 I dessay they suit workin'-folks thet ain't noways pertic'lar, But nut your Southun gen'leman thet keeps his parpendic'lar; I don't blame nary man thet casts his lot along o' his folks, But ef you cal'late to save me, 't must be with folks thet is folks; Cov'nants o' works go 'ginst my grain, but down here I've found out The true fus'-fem'ly A 1 plan,—here's how it come about. When I fus' sot up with Miss S., sez she to me, sez she, 'Without you git religion, Sir, the thing can't never be; Nut but wut I respeck,' sez she, 'your intellectle part, But you wun't noways du for me athout a change o' heart; 20 Nothun religion works wal North, but it's ez soft ez spruce, Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound,' sez she, 'upon the goose; A day's experunce 'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z pull a trigger. It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise ten bales a nigger; You'll fin' thet human natur', South, ain't wholesome more 'n skin-deep, An' once 't a darkie's took with it, he wun't be wuth his keep,' 'How shell I git it, Ma'am?'—sez I, 'Attend the nex' camp-meetin',' Sez she, 'an' it'll come to ye ez cheap ez onbleached sheetin'.' Wal, so I went along an' hearn most an impressive sarmon About besprinklin' Afriky with fourth-proof dew o' Harmon: 30 He didn't put no weaknin' in, but gin it tu us hot, 'Z ef he an' Satan 'd ben two bulls in one five-acre lot: I don't purtend to foller him, but give ye jes' the heads; For pulpit ellerkence, you know, 'most ollers kin' o' spreads. Ham's seed wuz gin to us in chairge, an' shouldn't we be li'ble In Kingdom Come, ef we kep' back their priv'lege in the Bible? The cusses an' the promerses make one gret chain, an' ef You snake one link out here, one there, how much on 't ud be lef'? All things wuz gin to man for 's use, his sarvice, an' delight; 39 An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words thet mean a Man mean White? Ain't it belittlin' the Good Book in all its proudes' featurs To think 'twuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'lasses-colored creaturs, Thet couldn' read it, ef they would, nor ain't by lor allowed to, But ough' to take wut we think suits their naturs, an' be proud to? Warn't it more prof'table to bring your raw materil thru Where you can work it inta grace an' inta cotton, tu, Than sendin' missionaries out where fevers might defeat 'em, An' ef the butcher didn' call, their p'rishioners might eat 'em? An' then, agin, wut airthly use? Nor 'twarn't our fault, in so fur Ez Yankee skippers would keep on atotin' on 'em over. 50 'T improved the whites by savin' 'em from ary need o' workin', An' kep' the blacks from bein' lost thru idleness an' shirkin'; We took to 'em ez nat'ral ez a barn-owl doos to mice, An' hed our hull time on our hands to keep us out o' vice; It made us feel ez pop'lar ez a hen doos with one chicken, An' fill our place in Natur's scale by givin' 'em a lickin': For why should Caesar git his dues more 'n Juno, Pomp, an' Cuffy? It's justifyin' Ham to spare a nigger when he's stuffy. Where'd their soles go tu, like to know, ef we should let 'em ketch Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' sech? 60 When Satan sets himself to work to raise his very bes' muss, He scatters roun' onscriptur'l views relatin' to Ones'mus. You'd ough' to seen, though, how his facs an' argymunce an' figgers Drawed tears o' real conviction from a lot o' pen'tent niggers! It warn't like Wilbur's meetin', where you're shet up in a pew, Your dickeys sorrin' off your ears, an' bilin' to be thru; Ther' wuz a tent clost by thet hed a kag o' sunthin' in it, Where you could go, ef you wuz dry, an' damp ye in a minute; An' ef you did dror off a spell, ther' wuzn't no occasion To lose the thread, because, ye see, he bellered like all Bashan. 70 It's dry work follerin' argymunce an' so, 'twix' this an' thet, I felt conviction weighin' down somehow inside my hat; It growed an' growed like Jonah's gourd, a kin' o' whirlin' ketched me, Ontil I fin'lly clean gin out an' owned up thet he'd fetched me; An' when nine tenths o' th' perrish took to tumblin' roun' an' hollerin', I didn' fin' no gret in th' way o' turnin' tu an' follerin'. Soon ez Miss S. see thet, sez she, 'Thet's wut I call wuth seein'! Thet's actin' like a reas'nable an' intellectle bein'!' An' so we fin'lly made it up, concluded to hitch hosses, An' here I be 'n my ellermunt among creation's bosses; 80 Arter I'd drawed sech heaps o' blanks, Fortin at last hez sent a prize, An' chose me for a shinin' light o' missionary entaprise.

This leads me to another pint on which I've changed my plan O' thinkin' so's't I might become a straight-out Southun man. Miss S. (her maiden name wuz Higgs, o' the fus' fem'ly here) On her Ma's side's all Juggernot, on Pa's all Cavileer, An' sence I've merried into her an' stept into her shoes, It ain't more 'n nateral thet I should modderfy my views: I've ben a-readin' in Debow ontil I've fairly gut So 'nlightened thet I'd full ez lives ha' ben a Dook ez nut; 90 An' when we've laid ye all out stiff, an' Jeff hez gut his crown, An' comes to pick his nobles out, wun't this child be in town! We'll hev an Age o' Chivverlry surpassin' Mister Burke's, Where every fem'ly is fus'-best an' nary white man works: Our system's sech, the thing'll root ez easy ez a tater; For while your lords in furrin parts ain't noways marked by natur', Nor sot apart from ornery folks in featurs nor in figgers, Ef ourn'll keep their faces washed, you'll know 'em from their niggers. Ain't sech things wuth secedin' for, an' gittin' red o' you Thet waller in your low idees, an' will tell all is blue? 100 Fact is, we air a diff'rent race, an' I, for one, don't see, Sech havin' ollers ben the case, how w'ever did agree. It's sunthin' thet you lab'rin'-folks up North hed ough' to think on, Thet Higgses can't bemean themselves to rulin' by a Lincoln,— Thet men, (an' guv'nors, tu,) thet hez sech Normal names ez Pickens, Accustomed to no kin' o' work, 'thout 'tis to givin' lickins, Can't measure votes with folks thet get their living from their farms, An' prob'ly think thet Law's ez good ez hevin' coats o' arms. Sence I've ben here, I've hired a chap to look about for me To git me a transplantable an' thrifty fem'ly-tree, 110 An' he tells me the Sawins is ez much o' Normal blood Ez Pickens an' the rest on 'em, an' older 'n Noah's flood. Your Normal schools wun't turn ye into Normals, for it's clear, Ef eddykatin' done the thing, they'd be some skurcer here. Pickenses, Boggses, Pettuses, Magoffins, Letchers, Polks,— Where can you scare up names like them among your mudsill folks? Ther's nothin' to compare with 'em, you'd fin', ef you should glance, Among the tip-top femerlies in Englan', nor in France: I've hearn frum 'sponsible men whose word wuz full ez good's their note, Men thet can run their face for drinks, an' keep a Sunday coat, 120 That they wuz all on 'em come down, an' come down pooty fur, From folks thet, 'thout their crowns wuz on, ou' doors wouldn' never stir, Nor thet ther' warn't a Southun man but wut wuz primy fashy O' the bes' blood in Europe, yis, an' Afriky an' Ashy: Sech bein' the case, is 't likely we should bend like cotton wickin', Or set down under anythin' so low-lived ez a lickin'? More 'n this,—hain't we the literatoor an science, tu, by gorry? Hain't we them intellectle twins, them giants, Simms an' Maury, Each with full twice the ushle brains, like nothin' thet I know, 'thout 'twuz a double-headed calf I see once to a show? 130

For all thet, I warn't jest at fust in favor o' secedin'; I wuz for layin' low a spell to find out where 'twuz leadin', For hevin' South-Carliny try her hand at sepritnationin', She takin' resks an' findin' funds, an' we co-operationin',— I mean a kin' o' hangin' roun' an' settin' on the fence, Till Prov'dunce pinted how to jump an' save the most expense; I recollected thet 'ere mine o' lead to Shiraz Centre Thet bust up Jabez Pettibone, an' didn't want to ventur' 'Fore I wuz sartin wut come out ud pay for wut went in, For swappin' silver off for lead ain't the sure way to win; 140 (An', fact, it doos look now ez though—but folks must live an' larn— We should git lead, an' more 'n we want, out o' the Old Consarn;) But when I see a man so wise an' honest ez Buchanan A-lettin' us hev all the forts an' all the arms an' cannon, Admittin' we wuz nat'lly right an' you wuz nat'lly wrong, Coz you wuz lab'rin'-folks an' we wuz wut they call bong-tong, An' coz there warn't no fight in ye more 'n in a mashed potater, While two o' us can't skurcely meet but wut we fight by natur', An' th' ain't a bar-room here would pay for openin' on 't a night; Without it giv the priverlege o' bein' shot at sight, 150 Which proves we're Natur's noblemen, with whom it don't surprise The British aristoxy should feel boun' to sympathize,— Seein' all this, an' seein', tu, the thing wuz strikin' roots While Uncle Sam sot still in hopes thet some one'd bring his boots, I thought th' ole Union's hoops wuz off, an' let myself be sucked in To rise a peg an' jine the crowd thet went for reconstructin',— Thet is to hev the pardnership under th' ole name continner Jest ez it wuz, we drorrin' pay, you findin' bone an' sinner,— On'y to put it in the bond, an' enter 't in the journals, Thet you're the nat'ral rank an' file, an' we the nat'ral kurnels. 160

Now this I thought a fees'ble plan, thet 'ud work smooth ez grease, Suitin' the Nineteenth Century an' Upper Ten idees, An' there I meant to stick, an' so did most o' th' leaders, tu, Coz we all thought the chance wuz good o' puttin' on it thru; But Jeff he hit upon a way o' helpin' on us forrard By bein' unannermous,—a trick you ain't quite up to, Norrard. A Baldin hain't no more 'f a chance with them new apple-corers Than folks's oppersition views aginst the Ringtail Roarers; They'll take 'em out on him 'bout east,—one canter on a rail Makes a man feel unannermous ez Jonah in the whale: 170 Or ef he's a slow-moulded cuss thet can't seem quite t' 'gree, He gits the noose by tellergraph upon the nighes' tree: Their mission-work with Afrikins hez put 'em up, thet's sartin, To all the mos' across-lot ways o' preachin' an' convartin'; I'll bet my hat th' ain't nary priest, nor all on 'em together; Thet cairs conviction to the min' like Reveren' Taranfeather; Why, he sot up with me one night, an' labored to sech purpose, Thet (ez an owl by daylight 'mongst a flock o' teazin' chirpers Sees clearer 'n mud the wickedness o' eatin' little birds) I see my error an' agreed to shen it arterwurds; 180 An' I should say, (to jedge our folks by facs in my possession,) Thet three's Unannermous where one's a 'Riginal Secession; So it's a thing you fellers North may safely bet your chink on, Thet we're all water-proofed agin th' usurpin' reign o' Lincoln.

Jeff's some. He's gut another plan thet hez pertic'lar merits, In givin' things a cheerfle look an' stiffnin' loose-hung sperits; For while your million papers, wut with lyin' an' discussin', Keep folks's tempers all on eend a-fumin' an' a-fussin', A-wondrin' this an' guessin' thet, an' dreadin' every night The breechin' o' the Univarse'll break afore it's light, 190 Our papers don't purtend to print on'y wut Guv'ment choose, An' thet insures us all to git the very best o' noose: Jeff hez it of all sorts an' kines, an' sarves it out ez wanted, So's't every man gits wut he likes an' nobody ain't scanted; Sometimes it's vict'ries (they're 'bout all ther' is that's cheap down here,) Sometimes it's France an' England on the jump to interfere. Fact is, the less the people know o' wut ther' is a-doin', The hendier 'tis for Guv'ment, sence it henders trouble brewin'; An' noose is like a shinplaster,—it's good, ef you believe it, Or, wut's all same, the other man thet's goin' to receive it: 200 Ef you've a son in th' army, wy, it's comfortin' to hear He'll hev no gretter resk to run than seein' th' in'my's rear, Coz, ef an F.F. looks at 'em, they ollers break an' run, Or wilt right down ez debtors will thet stumble on a dun, (An' this, ef an'thin', proves the wuth o' proper fem'ly pride, Fer sech mean shucks ez creditors are all on Lincoln's side); Ef I hev scrip thet wun't go off no more 'n a Belgin rifle, An' read thet it's at par on 'Change, it makes me feel deli'fle; It's cheerin', tu, where every man mus' fortify his bed, To hear thet Freedom's the one thing our darkies mos'ly dread, 210 An' thet experunce, time 'n' agin, to Dixie's Land hez shown Ther' 's nothin' like a powder-cask fer a stiddy corner-stone; Ain't it ez good ez nuts, when salt is sellin' by the ounce For its own weight in Treash'ry-bons, (ef bought in small amounts,) When even whiskey's gittin' skurce an' sugar can't be found, To know thet all the ellerments o' luxury abound? An' don't it glorify sal'-pork, to come to understand It's wut the Richmon' editors call fatness o' the land! Nex' thing to knowin' you're well off is nut to know when y' ain't; An' ef Jeff says all's goin' wal, who'll ventur' t' say it ain't? 220

This cairn the Constitooshun roun' ez Jeff doos in his hat Is hendier a dreffle sight, an' comes more kin' o' pat. I tell ye wut, my jedgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the tail: Th' advantiges of our consarn for bein' prompt air gret, While, 'long o' Congress, you can't strike, 'f you git an iron het; They bother roun' with argooin', an' var'ous sorts o' foolin', To make sure ef it's leg'lly het, an' all the while it's coolin', So's't when you come to strike, it ain't no gret to wish ye j'y on, An' hurts the hammer 'z much or more ez wut it doos the iron, 239 Jeff don't allow no jawin'-sprees for three mouths at a stretch, Knowin' the ears long speeches suits air mostly made to metch; He jes' ropes in your tonguey chaps an' reg'lar ten-inch bores An' lets 'em play at Congress, ef they'll du it with closed doors; So they ain't no more bothersome than ef we'd took an' sunk 'em, An' yit enj'y th' exclusive right to one another's Buncombe 'thout doin' nobody no hurt, an' 'thout its costin' nothin', Their pay bein' jes' Confedrit funds, they findin' keep an' clothin'; They taste the sweets o' public life, an' plan their little jobs, An' suck the Treash'ry (no gret harm, for it's ez dry ez cobs,) 240 An' go thru all the motions jest ez safe ez in a prison, An' hev their business to themselves, while Buregard hez hisn: Ez long 'z he gives the Hessians fits, committees can't make bother 'bout whether 't's done the legle way or whether 't's done tother. An' I tell you you've gut to larn thet War ain't one long teeter Betwixt I wan' to an' 'Twun't du, debatin' like a skeetur Afore he lights,—all is, to give the other side a millin', An' arter thet's done, th' ain't no resk but wut the lor'll be willin'; No metter wut the guv'ment is, ez nigh ez I can hit it, A lickin' 's constitooshunal, pervidin' We don't git it. 250 Jeff don't stan' dilly-dallyin', afore he takes a fort, (With no one in,) to git the leave o' the nex' Soopreme Court, Nor don't want forty-'leven weeks o' jawin' an' expoundin', To prove a nigger hez a right to save him, ef he's drowndin'; Whereas ole Abe 'ud sink afore he'd let a darkie boost him, Ef Taney shouldn't come along an' hedn't interdooced him. It ain't your twenty millions thet'll ever block Jeff's game, But one Man thet wun't let 'em jog jest ez he's takin' aim: Your numbers they may strengthen ye or weaken ye, ez 't heppens They're willin' to be helpin' hands or wuss-'n-nothin' cap'ns. 260

I've chose my side, an' 'tain't no odds ef I wuz drawed with magnets, Or ef I thought it prudenter to jine the nighes' bagnets; I've made my ch'ice, an' ciphered out, from all I see an' heard, Th' ole Constitooshun never'd git her decks for action cleared, Long 'z you elect for Congressmen poor shotes thet want to go Coz they can't seem to git their grub no otherways than so, An' let your bes' men stay to home coz they wun't show ez talkers, Nor can't be hired to fool ye an' sof'-soap ye at a caucus,— Long 'z ye set by Rotashun more 'n ye do by folks's merits, 269 Ez though experunce thriv by change o' sile, like corn an' kerrits,— Long 'z you allow a critter's 'claims' coz, spite o' shoves an' tippins, He's kep' his private pan jest where 'twould ketch mos' public drippin's,— Long 'z A.'ll turn tu an' grin' B.'s exe, ef B.'ll help him grin' hisn, (An' thet's the main idee by which your leadin' men hev risen,)— Long 'z you let ary exe be groun', 'less 'tis to cut the weasan' O' sneaks thet dunno till they're told wut is an' wut ain't Treason,— Long 'z ye give out commissions to a lot o' peddlin' drones Thet trade in whiskey with their men an' skin 'em to their bones,— Long 'z ye sift out 'safe' canderdates thet no one ain't afeared on Coz they're so thund'rin' eminent for bein' never heard on, 280 An' hain't no record, ez it's called, for folks to pick a hole in, Ez ef it hurt a man to hev a body with a soul in, An' it wuz ostentashun to be showin' on 't about, When half his feller-citizens contrive to du without,— Long 'z you suppose your votes can turn biled kebbage into brain, An' ary man thet's pop'lar's fit to drive a lightnin'-train,— Long 'z you believe democracy means I'm ez good ez you be, An' that a feller from the ranks can't be a knave or booby,— Long 'z Congress seems purvided, like yer street-cars an' yer 'busses, With ollers room for jes' one more o' your spiled-in-bakin' cusses, 290 Dough 'thout the emptins of a soul, an' yit with means about 'em (Like essence-peddlers[23]) thet'll make folks long to be without 'em, Jes heavy 'nough to turn a scale thet's doubtfle the wrong way, An' make their nat'ral arsenal o' bein' nasty pay.— Long 'z them things last, (an' I don't see no gret signs of improvin',) I sha'n't up stakes, not hardly yit, nor 'twouldn't pay for movin': For, 'fore you lick us, it'll be the long'st day ever you see. Yourn, (ez I 'xpec' to be nex' spring,) B., MARKISS O' BIG BOOSY.



No. IV

A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN SECRET SESSION

Conjecturally reported by H. BIGLOW

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 10th March, 1862.

GENTLEMEN,—My leisure has been so entirely occupied with the hitherto fruitless endeavour to decypher the Runick inscription whose fortunate discovery I mentioned in my last communication, that I have not found time to discuss, as I had intended, the great problem of what we are to do with slavery,—a topick on which the publick mind in this place is at present more than ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes are I need not say, but for safe conclusions I do not conceive that we are yet in possession of facts enough on which to bottom them with certainty. Acknowledging the hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, I am sometimes inclined to think that they are wiser than we, and am willing to wait till we have made this continent once more a place where freemen can live in security and honour, before assuming any further responsibility. This is the view taken by my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage Tunnel. After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman a few days since, I expanded, on the audi alteram partem principle, something which he happened to say by way of illustration, into the following fable.

FESTINA LENTE

Once on a time there was a pool Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool And spotted with cow-lilies garish, Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. Alders the creaking redwings sink on, Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian; And many a moss-embroidered log, The watering-place of summer frog, Slept and decayed with patient skill, As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme, Which realized the fairest dream That ever dozing bull-frog had, Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad, There rose a party with a mission To mend the polliwogs' condition, Who notified the selectmen To call a meeting there and then. 'Some kind of steps,' they said, 'are needed; They don't come on so fast as we did: Let's dock their tails; if that don't make 'em Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em! That boy, that came the other day To dig some flag-root down this way, His jack-knife left, and 'tis a sign That Heaven approves of our design: 'Twere wicked not to urge the step on, When Providence has sent the weapon.'

Old croakers, deacons of the mire, That led the deep batrachian choir, Uk! Uk! Caronk! with bass that might Have left Lablache's out of sight, Shook nobby heads, and said, 'No go! You'd better let 'em try to grow: Old Doctor Time is slow, but still He does know how to make a pill.'

But vain was all their hoarsest bass, Their old experience out of place, And spite of croaking and entreating, The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.

'Lord knows,' protest the polliwogs, 'We're anxious to be grown-up frogs; But don't push in to do the work Of Nature till she prove a shirk; 'Tis not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances; Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; You mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things to steer with.'

'No,' piped the party of reform, 'All great results are ta'en by storm; Fate holds her best gifts till we show We've strength to make her let them go; The Providence that works in history, And seems to some folks such a mystery, Does not creep slowly on incog., But moves by jumps, a mighty frog; No more reject the Age's chrism, Your queues are an anachronism; No more the Future's promise mock, But lay your tails upon the block, Thankful that we the means have voted To have you thus to frogs promoted.'

The thing was done, the tails were cropped. And home each philotadpole hopped, In faith rewarded to exult, And wait the beautiful result. Too soon it came; our pool, so long The theme of patriot bull-frog's song, Next day was reeking, fit to smother, With heads and tails that missed each other,— Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts; The only gainers were the pouts.

MORAL

From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,—flectere si nequeo SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo. To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States, with us in principle,—a consummation that seems to be nearer than many imagine. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos. Our first duty toward our enslaved brother is to educate him, whether he be white or black. The first need of the free black is to elevate himself according to the standard of this material generation. So soon as the Ethiopian goes in his chariot, he will find not only Apostles, but Chief Priests and Scribes and Pharisees willing to ride with him.

'Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.'

I rejoice in the President's late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy.

As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads. I do not understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict with iron. It is not enough merely to have the right on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition. I have observed in my parochial experience (haud ignarus mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage. It is curious, that, as gunpowder made armour useless on shore, so armour is having its revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea; and that, while gunpowder robbed land warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness to give even greater stateliness and sublimity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair to degrade the latter into a squabble between two iron-shelled turtles.

Yours, with esteem and respect,

HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

P.S.—I had wellnigh forgotten to say that the object of this letter is to enclose a communication from the gifted pen of Mr. Biglow.

I sent you a messige, my friens, t'other day, To tell you I'd nothin' pertickler to say: 'twuz the day our new nation gut kin' o' stillborn, So 'twuz my pleasant dooty t' acknowledge the corn, An' I see clearly then, ef I didn't before, Thet the augur in inauguration means bore. I needn't tell you thet my messige wuz written To diffuse correc' notions in France an' Gret Britten, An' agin to impress on the poppylar mind The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind,— 10 To say thet I didn't abate not a hooter O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur', Ez rich in each soshle an' p'litickle blessin' Ez them thet we now hed the joy o' possessin', With a people united, an' longin' to die For wut we call their country, without askin' why, An' all the gret things we concluded to slope for Ez much within reach now ez ever—to hope for. We've gut all the ellerments, this very hour, Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' power: 20 We've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef this Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth is? An' nothin' now henders our takin' our station Ez the freest, enlightenedest, civerlized nation, Built up on our bran'-new politickle thesis Thet a Gov'ment's fust right is to tumble to pieces,— I say nothin' henders our takin' our place Ez the very fus'-best o' the whole human race, A spittin' tobacker ez proud ez you please On Victory's bes' carpets, or loaf-in' at ease 30 In the Tool'ries front-parlor, discussin' affairs With our heels on the backs o' Napoleon's new chairs, An' princes a-mixin' our cocktails an' slings,— Excep', wal, excep' jest a very few things, Sech ez navies an' armies an' wherewith to pay, An' gettin' our sogers to run t'other way, An' not be too over-pertickler in tryin' To hunt up the very las' ditches to die in.

Ther' are critters so base thet they want it explained Jes' wut is the totle amount thet we've gained, 40 Ez ef we could maysure stupenjious events By the low Yankee stan'ard o' dollars an' cents: They seem to forgit, thet, sence last year revolved, We've succeeded in gittin' seceshed an' dissolved, An' thet no one can't hope to git thru dissolootion 'thout some kin' o' strain on the best Constitootion. Who asks for a prospec' more flettrin' an' bright, When from here clean to Texas it's all one free fight? Hain't we rescued from Seward the gret leadin' featurs Thet makes it wuth while to be reasonin' creators? 50 Hain't we saved Habus Coppers, improved it in fact, By suspendin' the Unionists 'stid o' the Act? Ain't the laws free to all? Where on airth else d' ye see Every freeman improvin' his own rope an' tree? Ain't our piety sech (in our speeches an' messiges) Ez t' astonish ourselves in the bes'-composed pessiges, An' to make folks thet knowed us in th' ole state o' things Think convarsion ez easy ez drinkin' gin-slings? It's ne'ssary to take a good confident tone With the public; but here, jest amongst us, I own 60 Things look blacker 'n thunder. Ther' 's no use denyin' We're clean out o' money, an' 'most out o' lyin'; Two things a young nation can't mennage without, Ef she wants to look wal at her fust comin' out; For the fust supplies physickle strength, while the second Gives a morril advantage thet's hard to be reckoned: For this latter I'm willin' to du wut I can; For the former you'll hev to consult on a plan,— Though our fust want (an' this pint I want your best views on) Is plausible paper to print I.O.U.s on. 70 Some gennlemen think it would cure all our cankers In the way o' finance, ef we jes' hanged the bankers; An' I own the proposle 'ud square with my views, Ef their lives wuzn't all thet we'd left 'em to lose. Some say thet more confidence might be inspired, Ef we voted our cities an' towns to be fired,— A plan thet 'ud suttenly tax our endurance, Coz 'twould be our own bills we should git for th' insurance; But cinders, no matter how sacred we think 'em, Mightn't strike furrin minds ez good sources of income, 80 Nor the people, perhaps, wouldn't like the eclaw O' bein' all turned into paytriots by law. Some want we should buy all the cotton an' burn it, On a pledge, when we've gut thru the war, to return it,— Then to take the proceeds an' hold them ez security For an issue o' bonds to be met at maturity With an issue o' notes to be paid in hard cash On the fus' Monday follerin' the 'tarnal Allsmash: This hez a safe air, an', once hold o' the gold, 'ud leave our vile plunderers out in the cold, 90 An' might temp' John Bull, ef it warn't for the dip he Once gut from the banks o' my own Massissippi. Some think we could make, by arrangin' the figgers, A hendy home-currency out of our niggers; But it wun't du to lean much on ary sech staff, For they're gittin' tu current a'ready, by half.

One gennleman says, ef we lef' our loan out Where Floyd could git hold on 't he'd take it, no doubt; But 'tain't jes' the takin', though 't hez a good look, We mus' git sunthin' out on it arter it's took, 100 An' we need now more'n ever, with sorrer I own, Thet some one another should let us a loan, Sence a soger wun't fight, on'y jes' while he draws his Pay down on the nail, for the best of all causes, 'thout askin' to know wut the quarrel's about,— An' once come to thet, why, our game is played out. It's ez true ez though I shouldn't never hev said it, Thet a hitch hez took place in our system o' credit; I swear it's all right in my speeches an' messiges, But ther's idees afloat, ez ther' is about sessiges: 110 Folks wun't take a bond ez a basis to trade on, Without nosin' round to find out wut it's made on, An' the thought more an' more thru the public min' crosses Thet our Treshry hez gut 'mos' too many dead hosses. Wut's called credit, you see, is some like a balloon, Thet looks while it's up 'most ez harnsome 'z a moon, But once git a leak in 't, an' wut looked so grand Caves righ' down in a jiffy ez flat ez your hand. Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for our sins, Where ther' ollus is critters about with long pins 120 A-prickin' the bubbles we've blowed with sech care, An' provin' ther' 's nothin' inside but bad air: They're all Stuart Millses, poor-white trash, an' sneaks, Without no more chivverlry 'n Choctaws or Creeks, Who think a real gennleman's promise to pay Is meant to be took in trade's ornery way: Them fellers an' I couldn' never agree; They're the nateral foes o' the Southun Idee; I'd gladly take all of our other resks on me To be red o' this low-lived politikle 'con'my! 130

Now a dastardly notion is gittin' about Thet our bladder is bust an' the gas oozin' out, An' onless we can mennage in some way to stop it, Why, the thing's a gone coon, an' we might ez wal drop it. Brag works wal at fust, but it ain't jes' the thing For a stiddy inves'ment the shiners to bring, An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over Wun't change bein' starved into livin' in clover. Manassas done sunthin' tow'rds drawin' the wool O'er the green, antislavery eyes o' John Bull: 140 Oh, warn't it a godsend, jes' when sech tight fixes Wuz crowdin' us mourners, to throw double-sixes! I wuz tempted to think, an' it wuzn't no wonder, Ther' wuz really a Providence,—over or under,— When, all packed for Nashville, I fust ascertained From the papers up North wut a victory we'd gained. 'twuz the time for diffusin' correc' views abroad Of our union an' strength an' relyin' on God; An', fact, when I'd gut thru my fust big surprise, I much ez half b'lieved in my own tallest lies, 150 An' conveyed the idee thet the whole Southun popperlace Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for Thermopperlies, Thet set on the Lincolnites' bombs till they bust, An' fight for the priv'lege o' dyin' the fust; But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an' the rest Of our recent starn-foremost successes out West, Hain't left us a foot for our swellin' to stand on,— We've showed too much o' wut Buregard calls abandon, For all our Thermopperlies (an' it's a marcy We hain't hed no more) hev ben clean vicy-varsy, 160 An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious to run.

Oh, ef we hed on'y jes' gut Reecognition, Things now would ha' ben in a different position! You'd ha' hed all you wanted: the paper blockade Smashed up into toothpicks; unlimited trade In the one thing thet's needfle, till niggers, I swow, Hed ben thicker'n provisional shin-plasters now; Quinine by the ton 'ginst the shakes when they seize ye; Nice paper to coin into C.S.A. specie; 170 The voice of the driver'd be heerd in our land, An' the univarse scringe, ef we lifted our hand: Wouldn't thet be some like a fulfillin' the prophecies, With all the fus' fem'lies in all the fust offices? 'twuz a beautiful dream, an' all sorrer is idle,— But ef Lincoln would ha' hanged Mason an' Slidell! For wouldn't the Yankees hev found they'd ketched Tartars, Ef they'd raised two sech critters as them into martyrs? Mason wuz F.F.V., though a cheap card to win on, But t'other was jes' New York trash to begin on; 180 They ain't o' no good in European pellices, But think wut a help they'd ha' ben on their gallowses! They'd ha' felt they wuz truly fulfillin' their mission, An' oh, how dog-cheap we'd ha' gut Reecognition!

But somehow another, wutever we've tried, Though the the'ry's fust-rate, the facs wun't coincide: Facs are contrary 'z mules, an' ez hard in the mouth, An' they allus hev showed a mean spite to the South. Sech bein' the case, we hed best look about For some kin' o' way to slip our necks out: 190 Le's vote our las' dollar, ef one can be found, (An', at any rate, votin' it hez a good sound,)— Le''s swear thet to arms all our people is flyin', (The critters can't read, an' wun't know how we're lyin',)— Thet Toombs is advancin' to sack Cincinnater, With a rovin' commission to pillage an' slahter,— Thet we've throwed to the winds all regard for wut's lawfle, An' gone in for sunthin' promiscu'sly awfle. Ye see, hitherto, it's our own knaves an' fools Thet we've used, (those for whetstones, an' t'others ez tools,) 200 An' now our las' chance is in puttin' to test The same kin' o' cattle up North an' out West,— Your Belmonts, Vallandighams, Woodses, an' sech, Poor shotes thet ye couldn't persuade us to tech, Not in ornery times, though we're willin' to feed 'em With a nod now an' then, when we happen to need 'em; Why, for my part, I'd ruther shake hands with a nigger Than with cusses that load an' don't darst dror a trigger; They're the wust wooden nutmegs the Yankees perdooce, Shaky everywheres else, an' jes' sound on the goose; 210 They ain't wuth a cuss, an' I set nothin' by 'em, But we're in sech a fix thet I s'pose we mus' try 'em. I—But, Gennlemen, here's a despatch jes' come in Which shows thet the tide's begun turnin' agin',— Gret Cornfedrit success! C'lumbus eevacooated! I mus' run down an' hev the thing properly stated, An' show wut a triumph it is, an' how lucky To fin'lly git red o' thet cussed Kentucky,— An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day Consists in triumphantly gittin' away. 220



No. V

SPEECH OF HONOURABLE PRESERVED DOE IN SECRET CAUCUS

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 12th April, 1862.

GENTLEMEN,—As I cannot but hope that the ultimate, if not speedy, success of the national arms is now sufficiently ascertained, sure as I am of the righteousness of our cause and its consequent claim on the blessing of God, (for I would not show a faith inferior to that of the Pagan historian with his Facile evenit quod Dis cordi est,) it seems to me a suitable occasion to withdraw our minds a moment from the confusing din of battle to objects of peaceful and permanent interest. Let us not neglect the monuments of preterite history because what shall be history is so diligently making under our eyes. Cras ingens iterabimus aequor; to-morrow will be time enough for that stormy sea; to-day let me engage the attention of your readers with the Runick inscription to whose fortunate discovery I have heretofore alluded. Well may we say with the poet, Multa renascuntur quae jam cecidere. And I would premise, that, although I can no longer resist the evidence of my own senses from the stone before me to the ante-Columbian discovery of this continent by the Northmen, gens inclytissima, as they are called in a Palermitan inscription, written fortunately in a less debatable character than that which I am about to decipher, yet I would by no means be understood as wishing to vilipend the merits of the great Genoese, whose name will never be forgotten so long as the inspiring strains of 'Hail Columbia' shall continue to be heard. Though he must be stripped also of whatever praise may belong to the experiment of the egg, which I find proverbially attributed by Castilian authors to a certain Juanito or Jack, (perhaps an offshoot of our giant-killing mythus,) his name will still remain one of the most illustrious of modern times. But the impartial historian owes a duty likewise to obscure merit, and my solicitude to render a tardy justice is perhaps quickened by my having known those who, had their own field of labour been less secluded, might have found a readier acceptance with the reading publick, I could give an example, but I forbear: forsitan nostris ex ossibus oritur ultor.

Touching Runick inscriptions, I find that they may lie classed under three general heads; 1. Those which are understood by the Danish Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secretary; 2. Those which are comprehensible only by Mr. Rafn; and 3. Those which neither the Society, Mr. Rafn, nor anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. These last are naturally deemed the most valuable by intelligent antiquaries, and to this class the stone now in my possession fortunately belongs. Such give a picturesque variety to ancient events, because susceptible oftentimes of as many interpretations as there are individual archaeologists; and since facts are only the pulp in which the Idea or event-seed is softly imbedded till it ripen, it is of little consequence what colour or flavour we attribute to them, provided it be agreeable. Availing myself of the obliging assistance of Mr. Arphaxad Bowers, an ingenious photographick artist, whose house-on-wheels has now stood for three years on our Meeting-House Green, with the somewhat contradictory inscription,—'our motto is onward,'—I have sent accurate copies of my treasure to many learned men and societies, both native and European. I may hereafter communicate their different and (me judice) equally erroneous solutions. I solicit also, Messrs. Editors, your own acceptance of the copy herewith enclosed. I need only premise further, that the stone itself is a goodly block of metamorphick sandstone, and that the Runes resemble very nearly the ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments. These are rather the non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour. I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted my admiration. Indeed, I had already made up my mind, that, in case good fortune should throw any such invaluable record in my way, I would proceed with it in the following simple and satisfactory method. Alter a cursory examination, merely sufficing for an approximative estimate of its length, I would write down a hypothetical inscription based upon antecedent probabilities, and then proceed to extract from the characters engraven on the stone a meaning as nearly as possible conformed to this a priori product of my own ingenuity. The result more than justified my hopes, inasmuch as the two inscriptions were made without any great violence to tally in all essential particulars. I then proceeded, not without some anxiety, to my second test, which was, to read the Runick letters diagonally, and again with the same success. With an excitement pardonable under the circumstances, yet tempered with thankful humility, I now applied my last and severest trial, my experimentum crucis. I turned the stone, now doubly precious in my eyes, with scrupulous exactness upside down. The physical exertion so far displaced my spectacles as to derange for a moment the focus of vision. I confess that it was with some tremulousness that I readjusted them upon my nose, and prepared my mind to bear with calmness any disappointment that might ensue. But, O albo dies notanda lapillo! what was my delight to find that the change of position had effected none in the sense of the writing, even by so much as a single letter! I was now, and justly, as I think, satisfied of the conscientious exactness of my interpretation. It is as follows: