This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was
first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation
(being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had
received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of
larger possessions in the like kind to follow.
first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation
(being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had
received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of
larger possessions in the like kind to follow.
James Russell Lowell
Come, I see ye, you up-country feller,
You've put me out severil times with your beller;
Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder,
Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder;
He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is,
He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses;
Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it,
Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it;
Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes,
Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, 220
Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it's the corner
Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner!
In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages
All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages,
An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions
The holl of our civerlized, free institutions;
He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier,
An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier;
I'll be----, thet is, I mean I'll be blest,
Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 230
I sha'nt talk with _him_, my religion's too fervent.
Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant.
[Into the question whether the ability to express ourselves in
articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall
not here enter at large. The two faculties of speech and of
speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make
ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It
has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature
everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be
unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome
heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for
the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings,
School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses,
Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is
scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven
by milk-and-water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to
have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other
languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the
furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever
preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations
being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new
deluge without fear, though it rain figures (_simulacra_, semblances) of
speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens.
Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular
wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend
to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments
with hooks and eyes?
This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was
first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation
(being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had
received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of
larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could
not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the
single wall which protected people of other languages from the
incursions of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist should be broken
down.
In reading Congressional debates, I have fancied, that, after the
subsidence of those painful buzzings in the brain which result from such
exercises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable information. I made
the discovery that _nothing_ takes longer in the saying than anything
else, for as _ex nihilo nihil fit_, so from one polypus _nothing_ any
number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the
attention of _viva voce_ debaters and controversialists the admirable
example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half
an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichaean
antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who
quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids
are a divinely granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have
observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming
gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are
called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue,
books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian
bog yield to the advances of firm arable land.
The sagacious Lacedaemonians, hearing that Tesephone had bragged that he
could talk all day long on any given subject, made no more ado, but
forthwith banished him, whereby they supplied him a topic and at the
same time took care that his experiment upon it should be tried out of
earshot.
I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own
Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by
that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser
ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the
Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that
particular does not so well merit the epithet _cold blooded_, by which
naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with
ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil
Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort. --H. W. ]
No. V
THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT
SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME
[The incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following
verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give
freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians.
Had Tripoli, instead of Washington, been the scene of this undertaking,
the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as
they now are of the practical part of martyrdom.
You've put me out severil times with your beller;
Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder,
Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder;
He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is,
He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses;
Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it,
Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it;
Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes,
Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, 220
Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it's the corner
Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner!
In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages
All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages,
An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions
The holl of our civerlized, free institutions;
He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier,
An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier;
I'll be----, thet is, I mean I'll be blest,
Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 230
I sha'nt talk with _him_, my religion's too fervent.
Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant.
[Into the question whether the ability to express ourselves in
articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall
not here enter at large. The two faculties of speech and of
speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make
ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It
has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature
everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be
unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome
heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for
the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings,
School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses,
Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is
scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven
by milk-and-water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to
have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other
languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the
furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever
preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations
being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new
deluge without fear, though it rain figures (_simulacra_, semblances) of
speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens.
Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular
wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend
to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments
with hooks and eyes?
This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was
first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation
(being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had
received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of
larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could
not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the
single wall which protected people of other languages from the
incursions of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist should be broken
down.
In reading Congressional debates, I have fancied, that, after the
subsidence of those painful buzzings in the brain which result from such
exercises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable information. I made
the discovery that _nothing_ takes longer in the saying than anything
else, for as _ex nihilo nihil fit_, so from one polypus _nothing_ any
number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the
attention of _viva voce_ debaters and controversialists the admirable
example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half
an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichaean
antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who
quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids
are a divinely granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have
observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming
gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are
called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue,
books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian
bog yield to the advances of firm arable land.
The sagacious Lacedaemonians, hearing that Tesephone had bragged that he
could talk all day long on any given subject, made no more ado, but
forthwith banished him, whereby they supplied him a topic and at the
same time took care that his experiment upon it should be tried out of
earshot.
I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own
Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by
that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser
ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the
Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that
particular does not so well merit the epithet _cold blooded_, by which
naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with
ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil
Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort. --H. W. ]
No. V
THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT
SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME
[The incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following
verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give
freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians.
Had Tripoli, instead of Washington, been the scene of this undertaking,
the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as
they now are of the practical part of martyrdom.
