Quodlibet Part 1

Quodlibet.

by John P. Kennedy.

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR.

These annals were first published in 1840. They reappear after an interval of twenty years. In that interval the old questions which inflamed the zeal and sharpened the wit of parties have totally disappeared from the political field: the parties themselves have fermented into new compounds, and lost all cognizable ident.i.ty. Old warriors, who dealt mortal blows on each other's sconce, have sunk to sleep in the same truckle bed, and have waked up in mutual surprise to find themselves in each other's arms, with a new flag above them, and new and unaccustomed voices giving the word of command.

The youth who have grown up to manhood in the mean time, and have come to be conspicuous in the conduct of public affairs, compose a distinct generation, as unconscious of the events, the interests, and sentiments of twenty years ago as of those of remote antiquity. These not only reject the traditions and teachings of the past, but repudiate and ignore the whole scheme of social and political opinion of the men who have gone before them, disdaining to adopt their maxims of government, their policy, their forbearance, their toleration, or their affections.

They inaugurate a new era of new principles, new purposes, new powers, new morals, and, alas! of new hatreds.

May it not serve a good turn toward arresting this torrent of innovation, to present to the leisure meditation of those who are embarking upon its stream, a few memorials of a bygone day, quite as distinguished as the present for the intensity of its political ardors and the absurdity of its excesses, but, fortunately, more harmless and amiable in its temper? Is it not worth while to attempt, by these playful sketches of the past, to lure the angry combatants into a smile, and, by showing them the grotesque retribution which history inflicts upon distempered parties after a few decades of oblivion, to beguile them into some consideration of the predicament in which they may leave their own renown? May not all sober-minded lovers of their country contemplate with some profit the _morale_ of a picture--even as light and extravagant as this--which represents the engrossments of parties who fancied that the destinies of a great nation hung upon the plots and counterplots of their busy ferment,--which engrossments, with all their concomitant gravities and glorifications, twenty years have shriveled into the dimensions of a pleasant farce--a little stage imbroglio of comic conceits and fussy nothings?

That intrepidity of absurdity which no responsible individual would dare to countenance in his own conduct, and which is only possible to organized bodies propelled by the ardor of party enthusiasm, is a fact in human action worth the study of the philosopher. By some unexplored tidal law, parties would seem to move through successive ebb and flow toward a final culmination of mischievous extreme, each refluent wave returning with heavier ma.s.s, until the acc.u.mulated weight of madness and folly overtopples, breaks, and dissolves in noisy foam. As we have a computed cycle of a money-crisis, the known result of an increasing and rapid prosperity ill used, so also we have the regularly recurring political crisis, the result of increasing party-power abused by rash and insolent presumption upon its strength.

This century has run out its three periods of twenty years. The first ended in the total absorption of all differences of opinion, bringing a stagnant calm upon the waters of ancient strife. The second culminated in a revolution that shook a great party out of its seat;--a revolution which these annals were designed to ill.u.s.trate. The third period has wheeled through its course, to work another downfall and another revolution more notable and significant than either that have gone before. The fourth, let us hope, may find a nation restored to reason;--a great united Republic, tried and purified by the experience of dangers incurred and surmounted, and by an awakened patriotism successfully a.s.serting the predominance of the good sense and virtue of the people over the factious spirit that ministers to personal ambition, and the vanity that seeks renown in innovations upon either the principles in which the Union was formed, or the sentiment by which it is to be preserved.

But these reflections are tending toward a graver subject than it would be becoming to discuss here. So, I leave them for some more appropriate occasion. If I have any reason to fear the annals of Quodlibet may find no favor with the emerging generation, I can make sure of another cla.s.s of readers to whom I look with a staunch and unfaltering trust;--that goodly host of ripe and considerate citizens, the survivors of 1840--that salt of the earth, who live on the past, and reckon old memories to be better than a fresh and damp morning journal. To you, old friends, bald on the crown, gray and feathery about the temples, with jovial glance of the eye, showing a heart made kind by trials, and who love your country with an affection that grows out of the straits in which you have seen her, and the faith you have that Providence has helped her through them, and will help her through many more: to you, seasoned and made jocund by time, and who, both as supporters and antagonists, have run through the career of pa.s.sion and delusion, and outlived the wrath, the cunning, and the falsehood, the grandiloquent fervor and exaggerated importance of the old political quarrels; to you I dedicate this new edition of this book and consign it to your protection, with the affectionate trust of a fellow-soldier, (whether as comrade or opponent,--as kindly in one character as the other,) in the whilom war of bloodless campaigns, in which for years we were mutually engaged.

The astute reader of these annals, if he but truly a.n.a.lyze their philosophy, may obtain a revelation more or less intelligible of what is acting on the stage to-day, and even arrive at some data by which he may cast a horoscope of the time to come. History is constantly reproducing itself. Events have different dates, and run in different names; but motives, human action and pa.s.sion, are the same, and bring to light the same categories of thought and opinion. That which has been, is, and will be again, through an infinite series of repet.i.tions. Thus we read the present and the future in the past. And in this light I affirm the annals to be a fair and veritable history of this time. Change a few secondary particulars, and the reader will find 1840 a type of 1860.

Would that in these grotesque absurdities of the busy world of twenty years ago the men who shape and control the political issues of this day may see some reflected images of themselves, and thus find a motive to make interest with posterity for a better report twenty years hence!

INTRODUCTION.

FRIENDLY READER:--

Of a truth, we are a great people!--and most happy am I, Solomon Secondthoughts, Schoolmaster of the Borough of Quodlibet, that it hath fallen to my lot, even in my small way, to make known to you how in our Borough that greatness hath grown toward its perfect maturity--feeling persuaded that Quodlibet therein is but an abstract or miniature portrait of this nation. Happy am I, although sorely oppressed with an inward perception of my defective craft in this most worthy task, that I have been thought by our Central Committee a fit expounder of that history wherein is _enchrysalized_ (if I may be allowed to draw a word, _parce detortum_, from the Greek mint) the most veritable essence of that recently discovered Democratic theory, for distinction called the Quodlibetarian, which is destined to supplant all other principles in our government, and to render us the most formidable and the most imposing people upon the terraqueous globe.

How it came to pa.s.s that this duty has been committed to my hands, you shall learn.

In the days of the late Judge Flam, now thirty years gone by, and long before Quodlibet was, that very considerate and astute gentleman honored me, a poor and youthful scholar, with a promotion to the office of private tutor in his family, then residing at their ancient seat in this neighborhood. It was my especial duty, in this station, to prepare Master Middleton, the eldest born, for college; which in three years of a.s.siduous labor was achieved, much to my content, and, I need not scruple to affirm, no less to my honor, seeing how notably my pupil has since figured in high places among the salt of the nation. Far be it from me to take an undue share of desert for this consummation; it would be disingenuous not to say that my pupil's liberal endowments at the hand of Nature herself rendered my task easy of success.

By the aid of my early patron the Judge, whose memory will long be embalmed in the unction of my grat.i.tude, I became, after Master Middleton was pa.s.sed from under my care, the head of our district school, which at first was established in that lowly log building under the big chestnut upon the Rumblebottom, about fifty rods south of Christy M'Curdy's mill--which tenement is yet to be seen, although in a melancholy state of desolation, the roof thereof having been blown away in the famous hurricane of August, 1836, just two years and ten months after the Removal of the Deposits. This unfortunate event--I mean the blowing off of the roof--it was the mercy of Providence to delay for the term of one year and a fraction of a month after I had removed into the new academy which my former pupil, and now, in lineal succession to his lamented parent the Judge, my second patron, the Hon. Middleton Flam, had procured to be erected for my better accommodation in the Borough of Quodlibet. Had my removal been delayed, or the hurricane have risen thirteen months sooner than it did, who shall tell what mourning it might not have spread through our country side--who shall venture to say that Quodlibet might not have been to-day without a chronicler?

This long inhabiting of mine in these parts has afforded me all desirable opportunities to note the growth of the region, and especially to mark out the beginnings, the progression, and the sudden magnifying of our Borough; and being a man--I speak it not vaingloriously--of an inquiring turn, and strongly gifted, as our people of Quodlibet are pleased to allow, with the perfection of setting down my thoughts in writing; and having that essential requisite of the historian, an ardent and unquenchable love of my subject, it has ever been my custom to put into my tablets whatsoever I have deemed noteworthy in the events and opinions of my day, accompanied by such reflections thereon as my subject might be found to invite. Some of these memorabilia, with discourses pertinent to the same, have I from time to time, distrustfully and with the proper timidity of authorship, ventured to contribute to our newspaper, and thereby has my secret vanity been regaled by seeing myself in print. By what token I have not yet ascertained, but these lucubrations of mine were not long ago discovered to our "Grand Central Committee of Unflinching New-Light Quodlibetarian Democrats," who have been charged with the arduous duty of maintaining the integrity of the party in the present alarming crisis, and of promoting, by all means in their power, the indefeasible, unquestionable, and perpetual right of succession to the Presidential Chair, claimed by and a.s.serted for the candidate of the great, unterrified New Democratic school of patriotic defenders of the spoils.

This Central Committee now hold their sessions weekly in Quodlibet--and having discovered my hand in the lucubrations to which I have alluded above, they have been pleased to express a favorable opinion thereon; and, as a sequence thereto, it has occurred to them to fancy that my poor labors being duly given to the compiling of such a history as my tablets might afford of the rise and progress of the New Democratic principle in Quodlibet, the same would greatly redound to the advantage of the cause in the present great struggle. Acting upon this suggestion, the Grand Central Committee have honored me with a request to throw into such shape as I might deem best these scattered records of opinion and chronicles of fact, whereof I was supposed to have a rich magazine.

Readily and cheerfully have I acceded to this request; and with the more relish, as I shall thus be furnished with an authentic occasion to present to the world the many valuable thoughts and eloquent utterings of my late distinguished pupil, and now beneficent patron, the Hon.

Middleton Flam, long a representative of this Borough and the adjacent district in the Congress of the United States.

I pretend to no greater merit in this execution of my task than what an impartial spirit of investigation, a long acquaintance with persons of every degree connected with this history, an apt judgment in discriminating between opinions, a most faithful and abundant memory, a careful store of doc.u.mentary evidence, an unalterable devotion to the great principles of Quodlibetarian Democracy, and, for the expounding of all, a lucid and felicitous style, may allow me to claim as the chronicler of this Borough.

The better to a.s.sure you, my friendly reader, that, in temper and condition, I may demand somewhat of the confidence due to the character of a dispa.s.sionate commentator on the times, I would have you understand that I am now on the shady side of sixty, unmarried, and in possession of an easy revenue of four hundred dollars per annum, which is voted to me by our commissioners, for instructing in their rudiments thirty-seven children of both s.e.xes; that I have a plate at the table of my patron, the Hon. Middleton Flam, my former pupil, every Sunday at dinner; and that he, being aware for some time past of my purpose to treasure up his remarkable sayings, has, with a generous freedom, often repeated to me many opinions which otherwise would have been irretrievably lost.

Moreover, since I am now brought before the public under circ.u.mstances in which reserve on my part would be no better than affectation, I would also advertise my indulgent reader of the fact that I belong to the Quodlibetarian New-Light Club, whereof I some time officiated as Secretary, and which club generally meets on Sat.u.r.day night at Ferret's; that the members of the same, noting my staidness of deportment and the careful deliberation with which I guard myself in the utterance of any discourse, do frequent honor to the temperance of my judgment by making me the arbiter of such casual controversies as arise therein, touching the true import and application of the principles of our New-Light Democracy; and--if I run no risk of being charged with offering a trivial evidence of the reputation I have earned in the club--I would also mention, that some of our light wags have gone so far--facetiously and with a commendable good nature, knowing that I would not take it ill, as more peevish men might, in their jocular pleasantry--as to call me, in allusion to my natural sedateness, SOBER SECONDTHOUGHTS:--the rogues!

And now, amiable and considerate reader, you have "ab imo pectore" my honest avouch for what I propose to lay before you, and a plain confession of my weaknesses. I come with a clean breast to the confessional. We shall have a frugal banquet of it, but the fruits, I make bold to promise, shall be wholesome and of the best. Now turn we to it in good earnest. If this little chronicle--for my book shall not be overgrown and apoplectic, but rather, as you shall find it, "garrulous and thin"--do not bring you to a profound sense of the value of this Amaranth of Republicanism, the New-Light Quodlibetarian Democracy, then say it to my teeth, there is no virtue in SOBER SECONDTHOUGHTS. Go thy ways--"The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness."

S. S., SCHOOLMASTER.

INTERLOCUTORS, ACTORS, AND OTHERS NOTED IN THIS HISTORY.

NEW-LIGHT QUODLIBETARIAN DEMOCRATS.

THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM.--Head of the New Lights, Representative of the district in Congress, President of the Copperplate Bank, intimate with the Secretary of the Treasury, an orator, a philosopher, and a man of large estate.

NICODEMUS HANDY.--Projector of the Copperplate Bank, Cashier of the same, and some time second in command of the New Lights.

SIMON SNUFFERS.--Superintendent of the Hay Scales, and President of the New-Light Club.

NATHANIEL DOUBLEDAY.--Clerk of the Court and Vice of the Club.

S. S.--Author and Editor of this History, Princ.i.p.al of the District School, honorary member of several literary societies, and Secretary no less to the New-Light Club than to the Grand Central Committee of Unflinching New-Light Quodlibetarian Democrats--_quorum magna pars fui_.

AGAMEMNON FLAG.--Attorney-at-Law, formerly of Bickerbray. At one time the Regular Nomination Candidate. Disposed to be in love with Miss Handy.

JACOB BARNDOLLAR.--Son-in-law of Jesse Ferret--of the firm of Barndollar & Hardbottle, Forwarding and Commission Merchants.

ANTHONY HARDBOTTLE.--Counterpart in said Firm. Elected President of the bank upon the resignation of Mr. Flam.

ZACHARY YOUNGHUSBAND.--Postmaster of _Quodlibet_, Tin-plate worker, and member of the Grand Central Committee.

THEODORE FOG.--Attorney-at-Law. At one time Director of the bank, but compelled to resign on account of his habits. Independent candidate against Agamemnon Flag--member of the Legislature--a distinguished popular orator, and original founder of that branch of the New Lights known by the name of the True Grits.

DR. THOMAS G. WINKELMAN.--Druggist, and soda-water pavilion keeper, physician in ordinary to the True Grits, and a man of great influence in that sect. Coroner of the county, contractor for the supply of medicines to the Almshouse, and ready to take any other office which might be vacant.

NIMROD PORTER.--Bar-keeper at The Hero, fond of betting, famous for trotting horses. A True Grit, but well inclined to the Mandarins.

ELIPHALET FOX.--Formerly editor of "The Gabwrangle Grimalkin," but, through the influence of Mr. Flam, transferred to "The Quodlibet Whole Hog,"--an expectant of the Marshal's place, but disappointed.

The Orderly of the True Grits.

_True Grits Rank and File._

DABBS.--His Compositor.

NEAL HOPPER.--The Miller in Christy M'Curdy's mill.

SAMUEL PIVOT.--The County a.s.sessor.