Black Beetles in Amber Part 37

RINGDIVVY:

Just so; the steadfast faith of those who hold, In foreign lands beyond the Eastern sea, The shares in your concern--a simple, blind, Unreasoning belief in dividends, Still stimulated by a.s.sessments which, When the skies fall, ensnaring all the larks, Will bring, no doubt, a very great return.

ALL (_singing_):

O the beautiful a.s.sessment, The exquisite a.s.sessment, The regular a.s.sessment, That makes the water flow.

RINGDIVVY:

The rascally-a.s.sessment!

FEEGOBBLE:

The murderous a.s.sessment!

NOZZLE:

The glorious a.s.sessment That makes my mare to go!

FEEGOBBLE:

But, Nozzle, you, I think, were on the point Of making a remark about some rights-- Some certain vested rights you have acquired By long immunity; for still the law Holds that if one do evil undisturbed His right to do so ripens with the years; And one may be a villain long enough To make himself an honest gentleman.

ALL (_singing_):

Hail, holy law, The soul with awe Bows to thy dispensation.

NOZZLE:

It breaks my jaw!

RINGDIVVY:

It qualms my maw!

FEEGOBBLE:

It feeds my jaw, It crams my maw, It is my soul's salvation!

NOZZLE:

Why, yes, I've floated mountains to the sea For lo! these many years; though some, they say, Do strand themselves along the bottom lands And cover up a village here and there, And here and there a ranch. 'Tis said, indeed, The granger with his female and his young Do not infrequently go to the d.i.c.kens By premature burial in slickens.

ALL (_singing_):

Could slickens forever Choke up the river, And slime's endeavor Be tried on grain, How small the measure Of granger's treasure, How keen his pain!

RINGDIVVY:

"A consummation devoutly to be wished!"

These rascal grangers would long since have been Submerged in slimes, to the last man of them, But for the fact that all their wicked tribes Affect our legislation with their bribes.

ALL (_singing_):

O bribery's great-- 'Tis a pillar of State, And the people they are free.

FEEGOBBLE:

It smashes my slate!

NOZZLE:

It is thievery straight!

RINGDIVVY:

But it's been the making of me!

NOZZLE:

I judge by certain shrewd sensations here In these callosities I call my thumbs-- thrilling sense as of ten thousand pins, Red-hot and penetrant, transpiercing all The cuticle and tickling through the nerves-- That some malign and awful thing draws near.

(_Enter Hayseed._)

Good Lord! here are the ghosts and spooks of all The grangers I have decently interred, Rolled into one!

FEEGOBBLE:

Plead, phantom.

RINGDIVVY:

You've the floor.

HAYSEED:

From the margin of the river (Bitter Creek, they sometimes call it) Where I cherished once the pumpkin, And the summer squash promoted, Harvested the sweet potato, Dallied with the fatal melon And subdued the fierce cuc.u.mber, I've been driven by the slickens, Driven by the slimes and tailings!

All my family--my Polly Ann and all my sons and daughters, Dog and baby both included-- All were swamped in seas of slickens, Buried fifty fathoms under, Where they lie, prepared to play their Gentle prank on geologic Gents that shall exhume them later, In the dim and distant future, Taking them for melancholy Relics antedating Adam.

I alone got up and dusted.

NOZZLE:

Avaunt! you horrid and infernal cuss!

What dire distress have you prepared for us?

RINGDIVVY:

Were I a buzzard stooping from the sky My craw with filth to fill, Into your honorable body I Would introduce a bill.