Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 58

I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind o' privilege Atrampin' round thru Boston streets among the gutter's drivelage; I act'lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little drummin', An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acomin'

Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore in the state prison) An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico wuz hisn.[P]

[Footnote M: i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn But their _is_ fun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it.--H. B.]

[Footnote N: he means Not quite so fur I guess.--H. B.]

[Footnote O: the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he ollers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile-stone.--H. B.]

[Footnote P: it must be aloud that thare's a streak o' nater in lovin' sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off a chutch mayby) ariggin' himself out in the Weigh they du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef any thin's foolisher and moor d.i.c.klus than militerry gloary it is milishy gloary.--H.

B.]

This 'ere's about the meanest place a skunk could wal diskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Salt-river); The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good blue-nose tater; The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin'

Throughout is swarmin' with the most alarmin' kind o' varmin.

He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The holl on't 's mud an' p.r.i.c.kly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, "Wut air ye at?"[Q]

You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a _scarabus pilularius_[R] big ez a year old elephant,) The rigiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin' off with Cunnle Wright,--'t wuz jest a common _cimex lectularius_.

[Footnote Q: these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha bek.u.m.--H. B.]

[Footnote R: it wuz "tumblebug" as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha wouldn't stan' it no how. idnow as tha _wood_ and idnow _as_ tha wood.--H. B.]

One night I started up on eend an' thought I wuz to hum agin, I heern a horn, thinks I it's Sol the fisherman hez come agin, _His_ bellowses is sound enough,--ez I'm a livin' creeter, I felt a thing go thru my leg,--'t wuz nothin' more 'n a skeeter!

Then there's the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito,-- (Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le' _go_ my toe!

My gracious! it's a scorpion thet's took a shine to play with 't I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with 't.)

Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn't human beans,[S]--an ourang outang nation, A sort o' folks a chap could kill an' never dream on't arter, No more 'n a feller 'd dream o' pigs thet he hed hed to slarter; I'd an idee thet they were built arter the darkie fashion all, An' kickin' colored folks about, you know, 's a kind o' national; But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson!

It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglosaxon.

The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' du amazin' lots o' things thet isn't wut they ough' to; Bein' they haint no lead, they make their bullets out o' copper An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Caleb sez aint proper; He sez they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly, (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he'll hev to git up airly,) Thet our nation's bigger'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An' thet it's all to make 'em free thet we air pullin' trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee 's abreakin' 'em to pieces, An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he d.a.m.n pleases; Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet "every man" don't mean a n.i.g.g.e.r or a Mexican; An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeturs, Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State-prison feeturs, Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an' spout on't, The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on't.

[Footnote S: he means human beins, that's wut he means, i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware the Xisle Poles comes from.--H. B.]

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An' ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I'd home agin short meter; O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef't worn't thet I wuz sartin They'd let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin'!

I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aint wut they wuz afore they left the Baystate; Then it wuz "Mister Sawin, sir, you're middlin' well now, be ye?

Step up an' take a nipper, sir; I'm dreffle glad to see ye"; But now it's "Ware's my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an' fetch it!

An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or, d.a.m.n ye, you shall ketch it!"

Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I hed some on 'em to hum, I 'd give 'em link.u.m vity, I'd play the rogue's march on their hides an' other music follerin'-- But I must close my letter here, fer one on 'em 's ahollerin', These Anglosaxon ossifers,--wal, taint no use ajawin', I'm safe enlisted fer the war,

Yourn, Birdofredom Sawin .

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

This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_.

While so many miracles of this sort, vouched by eyewitnesses, have encouraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlaeus at Marathon and those _Dioscuri_ (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized.

Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust.

Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have a.s.sisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Or has that day become less an object of his especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, "which was enough to serve 'em; only on _Sat.u.r.days_ they still catched a couple, and on the _Lord's Days_ they could catch none at all"?

Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as _Cape Cod Clergymen_.

It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myself to be so far of that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania _de propaganda fide_, I think it would be wise to fill our bombsh.e.l.ls with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-b.a.l.l.s in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery.

Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary _siesta_ beneath the lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live, and say _shooters_ as well as _fishers_ of men?

I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards.

Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,--I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is No to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a p.r.o.nunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against _e corde cordium_. And by what College of Cardinals is this our G.o.d's-vicar, our binder and looser, elected?

Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha.

According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, ??t? d??s???

?a??? ???eta? ???ad' ???st?. This unclean spirit is skilful to a.s.sume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Sat.u.r.day, under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy,--"Our country, right or wrong,"--by tracing its original to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles. H. W.]

No. III.

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.

[A few remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The satire in them was not meant to have any personal, but only a general, application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a commentary Mr.

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

Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget, that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt.

Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,--_aliquid sufflaminandus erat_. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with _aqua fortis_, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. _Est ars etiam maledicendi_, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may conclude with worthy and wise Dr.

Fuller, that "one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are a.s.ses which are not lions."--H. W.]

Guvener B. is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into n.o.body's tater-patch pokes;-- But John P.

Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?

We can't never choose him, o' course,--thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P.

Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,-- He's been true to _one_ party and thet is himself;-- So John P.

Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did G.o.d make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?

So John P.

Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral G.

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

Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took, An' Presidunt Polk, you know, _he_ is our country.

An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the _debit_ to him, an' to us the _per contry_; An' John P.

Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest _fee, faw, fum_: An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ignorance, an' t' other half rum, But John P.

Robinson he Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, so must we.

Parson Wilbur sez _he_ never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife, To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes, But John P.

Robinson he Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee.

Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,-- G.o.d sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough; Fer John P.