I question whether the
Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours
at the seat of government.
Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours
at the seat of government.
James Russell Lowell
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.
I question whether the
Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours
at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow
himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against
sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse
the vile smutch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key.
_Ahenea clavis_, a brazen Key indeed!
Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to
think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon
as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched,
he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the
North, but I should conjecture that something more than a
pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny
out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the Past.
The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or
later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask
the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will not do for
us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out
her arms and asks us to come to her.
But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that
little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken
away from us, and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get
into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire
revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we
get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more
than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither
as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is
boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold,
and gulp down our dignity along with it.
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.
I question whether the
Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours
at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow
himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against
sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse
the vile smutch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key.
_Ahenea clavis_, a brazen Key indeed!
Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to
think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon
as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched,
he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the
North, but I should conjecture that something more than a
pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny
out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the Past.
The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or
later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask
the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will not do for
us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out
her arms and asks us to come to her.
But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that
little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken
away from us, and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get
into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire
revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we
get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more
than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither
as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is
boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold,
and gulp down our dignity along with it.
