No More Learning

An' ez the North hez took to brustlin'
At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, 90
I'll tell ye wut'll save all tusslin'
An' give our side a harnsome boost,--
Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question
I'm RIGHT, although to speak I'm lawth;
This gives you a safe pint to rest on,
An' leaves me frontin' South by North.


[And now of epistles candidatial, which are of two kinds,--namely,
letters of acceptance, and letters definitive of position. Our republic,
on the eve of an election, may safely enough be called a republic of
letters. Epistolary composition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes
one candidate after another, not seldom cutting short the thread of
political life. It has come to such a pass, that a party dreads less the
attacks of its opponents than a letter from its candidate. _Litera
scripta manet_, and it will go hard if something bad cannot be made of
it. General Harrison, it is well understood, was surrounded, during his
candidacy, with the _cordon sanitaire_ of a vigilance committee. No
prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously deprived of writing
materials. The soot was scraped carefully from the chimney-places;
outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death for any goose
(who came clad in feathers) to approach within a certain limited
distance of North Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises were
reduced to the condition of Plato's original man. By these precautions
the General was saved. _Parva componere magnis_, I remember, that, when
party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon occasion of the choice
of a new deacon, I, having my preferences, yet not caring too openly to
express them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring about that result
which I deemed most desirable. My stratagem was no other than the
throwing a copy of the Complete Letter-Writer in the way of the
candidate whom I wished to defeat. He caught the infection, and
addressed a short note to his constituents, in which the opposite party
detected so many and so grave improprieties (he had modelled it upon the
letter of a young lady accepting a proposal of marriage), that he not
only lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion of Sabellianism
and I know not what (the widow Endive assured me that he was a
Paralipomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced to leave the town.
Thus it is that the letter killeth.

The object which candidates propose to themselves in writing is to
convey no meaning at all.
And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into
which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such
cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful
amount and variety of significance. _Omne ignotum pro mirifico_. How do
we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts
from Delphi, Hammon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I so much
as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo
confessed that he was mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, related to have
written six thousand books on the single subject of grammar, a topic
rendered only more tenebrific by the labors of his successors, and which
seems still to possess an attraction for authors in proportion as they
can make nothing of it. A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is
the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, in the course of my studies, I
have noted two hundred and three several interpretations, each
lethiferal to all the rest. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites_,
yet I have myself ventured upon a two hundred and fourth, which I
embodied in a discourse preached on occasion of the demise of the late
usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large measure, the
minds of my people. It is true that my views on this important point
were ardently controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the then preceptor
of our academy, and in other particulars a very deserving and sensible
young man, though possessing a somewhat limited knowledge of the Greek
tongue. But his heresy struck down no deep root, and, he having been
lately removed by the hand of Providence, I had the satisfaction of
reaffirming my cherished sentiments in a sermon preached upon the Lord's
day immediately succeeding his funeral. This might seem like taking an
unfair advantage, did I not add that he had made provision in his last
will (being celibate) for the publication of a posthumous tractate in
support of his own dangerous opinions.

I know of nothing in our modern times which approaches so nearly to the
ancient oracle as the letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, among the
Greeks, the eating of beans was strictly forbidden to all such as had it
in mind to consult those expert amphibologists, and this same
prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples is understood to
imply an abstinence from politics, beans having been used as ballots.
That other explication, _quod videlicet sensus eo cibo obtundi
existimaret_, though supported _pugnis et calcibus_ by many of the
learned, and not wanting the countenance of Cicero, is confuted by the
larger experience of New England. On the whole, I think it safer to
apply here the rule of interpretation which now generally obtains in
regard to antique cosmogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions,
and knotty points generally, which is, to find a common-sense meaning,
and then select whatever can be imagined the most opposite thereto. In
this way we arrive at the conclusion, that the Greeks objected to the
questioning of candidates.