The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 53

Why talk so dreffle big, John, Of honor when it meant You didn't care a fig, John, But jest for _ten per cent?_ Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess He's like the rest,' sez he: 60 'When all is done, it's number one Thet's nearest to J.B., Ez wal ez t' you an' me!'

We give the critters back, John, Cos Abram thought 'twas right; It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, Provokin' us to fight.

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess We've a hard row,' sez he, 'To hoe jest now; but thet, somehow, 70 May happen to J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

We ain't so weak an' poor, John, With twenty million people.

An' close to every door, John, A school-house an' a steeple.

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, It is a fact,' sez he, 'The surest plan to make a Man Is, think him so, J.B., 80 Ez much ez you or me!'

Our folks believe in Law, John; An' it's for her sake, now, They've left the axe an' saw, John, The anvil an' the plough.

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Ef 'twarn't for law,' sez he, 'There'd be one s.h.i.+ndy from here to Indy; An' thet don't suit J.B.

(When't ain't 'twixt you an' me!) 90

We know we've got a cause, John, Thet's honest, just, an' true; We thought 'twould win applause, John, Ef nowheres else, from you.

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess His love of right,' sez he, 'Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton: There's natur' in J.B., Ez wal 'z in you an' me!'

The South says, '_Poor folks down!_' John, 100 An' '_All men up!_' say we,-- White, yaller, black, an' brown, John: Now which is your idee?

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, John preaches wal,' sez he; 'But, sermon thru, an' come to _du_, Why, there's the old J.B.

A-crowdin' you an' me!'

Shall it be love, or hate, John?

It's you thet's to decide; 110 Ain't _your_ bonds held by Fate, John, Like all the world's beside?

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess Wise men forgive,' sez he, 'But not forgit; an' some time yit Thet truth may strike J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!'

G.o.d means to make this land, John, Clear thru, from sea to sea, Believe an' understand, John, 120 The _wuth_ o' bein' free.

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, G.o.d's price is high,' sez he; 'But nothin' else than wut He sells Wears long, an' thet J.B.

May larn, like you an' me!'

No. III

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW

_With the following Letter from the_ REVEREND HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 7th Feb., 1862.

RESPECTED FRIENDS,--If I know myself,--and surely a man can hardly be supposed to have overpa.s.sed the limit of fourscore years without attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning (_e coelo descendit_, says the pagan poet),--I have no great smack of that weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr.

Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in connection with a topick of interest to all those engaged in the publick ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my preaching,--never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the erection of the new house (where we now wors.h.i.+p) in 1845. He did, indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable ba.s.s in the choir; but, whether on some umbrage (_omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus_) taken against the ba.s.s-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 (_aet._ 77,) under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to have preserved (_alta mente repostum_), as it were, in the pickle of a mind soured by prejudice, a lasting _scunner_, as he would call it, against our staid and decent form of wors.h.i.+p; for I would rather in that wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe in an evil spirit which they call _ar c'houskezik_, whose office it is to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eyeshot of the t.i.thing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome _reveil_. It is true, I have numbered among my paris.h.i.+oners some who are proof against the prophylactick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who, nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a philosophick turn have a.s.sured us that our pulpits were set too high, and that the soporifick tendency increased with the ratio of the angle in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This were a curious topick for investigation. There can be no doubt that some sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur! _Quare fremuerunt gentes?_ Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has eloquence (_ut ita dicam_) always on tap? A good man, and, next to David, a sacred poet (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this particular), has said,--

'The worst speak something good: if all want sense, G.o.d takes a text and preacheth patience.'

There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the Southern States were settled by a cla.s.s of emigrants from the Old World socially superior to those who founded the inst.i.tutions of New England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact that such superst.i.tions are sometimes not without their effect on the course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Ma.s.sachusetts at least paid their pa.s.sages; no felons were ever s.h.i.+pped thither; and though it be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord Bacon had in mind when he wrote: 'It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the sc.u.m of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant.' That certain names are found there is nothing to the purpose, for, even had an _alias_ been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse and character were 'food for the Plantations' (and this before the settlement of New England), but also that any drab would suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. 'Never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia,' says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the counterfeit n.o.bility of the Old Dominion became a topick of ridicule in the Mother Country may be learned from a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on the Rebellion of Bacon: for even these kennels of literature may yield a fact or two to pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper of a Virginia ordinary, calls herself the daughter of a baronet, 'undone in the late rebellion,'--her father having in truth been a tailor,--and three of the Council, a.s.suming to themselves an equal splendor of origin, are shown to have been, one 'a broken exciseman who came over a poor servant,'

another a tinker transported for theft, and the third 'a common pickpocket often flogged at the cart's tail.' The ancestry of South Carolina will as little pa.s.s muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience'

sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. But of what use to discuss the matter? An expert genealogist will provide any solvent man with a _genus et pro avos_ to order. My Lord Burleigh used to say, with Aristotle and the Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 'n.o.bility was ancient riches,' whence also the Spanish were wont to call their n.o.bles _ricos hombres_, and the aristocracy of America are the descendants of those who first became wealthy, by whatever means.

Petroleum will in this wise be the source of much good blood among our posterity. The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,--the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues thence. And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne consolingly says in his 'Present State of England,' 'to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed no disparagement to a Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother,' yet I conceive that he would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular trade in question. Oddly enough this trade reverses the ordinary standards of social respectability no less than of morals, for the retail and domestick is as creditable as the wholesale and foreign is degrading to him who follows it. Are our morals, then, no better than _mores_ after all? I do not believe that such aristocracy as exists at the South (for I hold with Marius, _fortissimum quemque generosissimum_) will be found an element of anything like persistent strength in war,--thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly called _inductionis dominus et Verulamii_) as true as it is pithy, that 'the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies.' It is odd enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's 'Memorial,' was conspiracy and rebellion,--odder yet, as showing the changes which are wrought by circ.u.mstance, that the first insurrection, in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of the Proprietary Government. I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,--a high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only _quadrumanous_ but _quidruminant_.

I confess that the present letter of Mr. Sawin increases my doubts as to the sincerity of the convictions which he professes, and I am inclined to think that the triumph, of the legitimate Government, sure sooner or later to take place, will find him and a large majority of his newly adopted fellow-citizens (who hold with Daedalus, the primal sitter-on-the-fence, that _medium tenere tutissimum_) original Union men. The criticisms towards the close of his letter on certain of our failings are worthy to be seriously perpended; for he is not, as I think, without a spice of vulgar shrewdness. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri_: there is no reckoning without your host. As to the good-nature in us which he seems to gird at, while I would not consecrate a chapel, as they have not scrupled to do in France, to _Notre Dame de la Haine_ (Our Lady of Hate), yet I cannot forget that the corruption of good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts (as too frequently in our publick conveyances) it becomes a positive crime when it leads us to look unresentfully on peculation, and to regard treason to the best Government that ever existed as something with which a gentleman may shake hands without soiling his fingers. I do not think the gallows-tree the most profitable member of our _Sylva;_ but, since it continues to be planted, I would fain see a Northern limb ingrafted on it, that it may bear some other fruit than loyal Tennesseeans.

A relick has recently been discovered on the east bank of Bushy Brook in North Jaalam, which I conceive to be an inscription in Runick characters relating to the early expedition of the Northmen to this continent. I shall make fuller investigations, and communicate the result in due season.

Respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

P.S.--I inclose a year's subscription from Deacon Tinkham.

I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started, To tech the leadin' featurs o' my gittin' me convarted; But, ez my letters hez to go clearn roun' by way o' Cuby, 'Twun't seem no staler now than then, by th' time it gits where you be.

You know up North, though secs an' things air plenty ez you please, Ther' warn't nut one on 'em thet come jes' square with my idees: They all on 'em wuz too much mixed with Covenants o' Works, An' would hev answered jest ez wal for Afrikins an' Turks, Fer where's a Christian's privilege an' his rewards eusuin', Ef 'taint perfessin' right and eend 'thout nary need o' doin'? 10 I dessay they suit workin'-folks thet ain't noways pertic'lar, But nut your Southun gen'leman thet keeps his parpendic'lar; I don't blame nary man thet casts his lot along o' _his_ folks, But ef you cal'late to save _me_, 't must be with folks thet _is_ folks; Cov'nants o' works go 'ginst my grain, but down here I've found out The true fus'-fem'ly A 1 plan,--here's how it come about.

When I fus' sot up with Miss S., sez she to me, sez she, 'Without you git religion, Sir, the thing can't never be; Nut but wut I respeck,' sez she, 'your intellectle part, But you wun't noways du for me athout a change o' heart; 20 Nothun religion works wal North, but it's ez soft ez spruce, Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound,' sez she, 'upon the goose; A day's experunce 'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z pull a trigger.

It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise ten bales a n.i.g.g.e.r; You'll fin' thet human natur', South, ain't wholesome more 'n skin-deep, An' once 't a darkie's took with it, he wun't be wuth his keep,'

'How _sh.e.l.l_ I git it, Ma'am?'--sez I, 'Attend the nex' camp-meetin','

Sez she, 'an' it'll come to ye ez cheap ez onbleached sheetin'.'

Wal, so I went along an' hearn most an impressive sarmon About besprinklin' Afriky with fourth-proof dew o' Harmon: 30 He didn't put no weaknin' in, but gin it tu us hot, 'Z ef he an' Satan 'd ben two bulls in one five-acre lot: I don't purtend to foller him, but give ye jes' the heads; For pulpit ellerkence, you know, 'most ollers kin' o' spreads.

Ham's seed wuz gin to us in chairge, an' shouldn't we be li'ble In Kingdom Come, ef we kep' back their priv'lege in the Bible?

The cusses an' the promerses make one gret chain, an' ef You snake one link out here, one there, how much on 't ud be lef'?

All things wuz gin to man for 's use, his sarvice, an' delight; 39 An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words thet mean a Man mean White?

Ain't it belittlin' the Good Book in all its proudes' featurs To think 'twuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'la.s.ses-colored creaturs, Thet couldn' read it, ef they would, nor ain't by lor allowed to, But ough' to take wut we think suits their naturs, an' be proud to?

Warn't it more prof'table to bring your raw materil thru Where you can work it inta grace an' inta cotton, tu, Than sendin' missionaries out where fevers might defeat 'em, An' ef the butcher didn' call, their p'ris.h.i.+oners might eat 'em?

An' then, agin, wut airthly use? Nor 'twarn't our fault, in so fur Ez Yankee skippers would keep on atotin' on 'em over. 50 'T improved the whites by savin' 'em from ary need o' workin', An' kep' the blacks from bein' lost thru idleness an' s.h.i.+rkin'; We took to 'em ez nat'ral ez a barn-owl doos to mice, An' hed our hull time on our hands to keep us out o' vice; It made us feel ez pop'lar ez a hen doos with one chicken, An' fill our place in Natur's scale by givin' 'em a lickin': For why should Caesar git his dues more 'n Juno, Pomp, an' Cuffy?

It's justifyin' Ham to spare a n.i.g.g.e.r when he's stuffy.

Where'd their soles go tu, like to know, ef we should let 'em ketch Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' sech? 60 When Satan sets himself to work to raise his very bes' muss, He scatters roun' onscriptur'l views relatin' to Ones'mus.

You'd ough' to seen, though, how his facs an' argymunce an' figgers Drawed tears o' real conviction from a lot o' pen'tent n.i.g.g.e.rs!

It warn't like Wilbur's meetin', where you're shet up in a pew, Your d.i.c.keys sorrin' off your ears, an' bilin' to be thru; Ther' wuz a tent clost by thet hed a kag o' sunthin' in it, Where you could go, ef you wuz dry, an' damp ye in a minute; An' ef you did dror off a spell, ther' wuzn't no occasion To lose the thread, because, ye see, he bellered like all Bashan. 70 It's dry work follerin' argymunce an' so, 'twix' this an' thet, I felt conviction weighin' down somehow inside my hat; It growed an' growed like Jonah's gourd, a kin' o' whirlin' ketched me, Ontil I fin'lly clean gin out an' owned up thet he'd fetched me; An' when nine tenths o' th' perrish took to tumblin' roun' an' hollerin', I didn' fin' no gret in th' way o' turnin' tu an' follerin'.

Soon ez Miss S. see thet, sez she, '_Thet_'s wut I call wuth seein'!

_Thet_'s actin' like a reas'nable an' intellectle bein'!'

An' so we fin'lly made it up, concluded to hitch hosses, An' here I be 'n my ellermunt among creation's bosses; 80 Arter I'd drawed sech heaps o' blanks, Fortin at last hez sent a prize, An' chose me for a s.h.i.+nin' light o' missionary entaprise.

This leads me to another pint on which I've changed my plan O' thinkin' so's't I might become a straight-out Southun man.

Miss S. (her maiden name wuz Higgs, o' the fus' fem'ly here) On her Ma's side's all Juggernot, on Pa's all Cavileer, An' sence I've merried into her an' stept into her shoes, It ain't more 'n nateral thet I should modderfy my views: I've ben a-readin' in Debow ontil I've fairly gut So 'nlightened thet I'd full ez lives ha' ben a Dook ez nut; 90 An' when we've laid ye all out stiff, an' Jeff hez gut his crown, An' comes to pick his n.o.bles out, _wun't_ this child be in town!

We'll hev an Age o' Chivverlry surpa.s.sin' Mister Burke's, Where every fem'ly is fus'-best an' nary white man works: Our system's sech, the thing'll root ez easy ez a tater; For while your lords in furrin parts ain't noways marked by natur', Nor sot apart from ornery folks in featurs nor in figgers, Ef ourn'll keep their faces washed, you'll know 'em from their n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Ain't _sech_ things wuth secedin' for, an' gittin' red o' you Thet waller in your low idees, an' will tell all is blue? 100 Fact is, we _air_ a diff'rent race, an' I, for one, don't see, Sech havin' ollers ben the case, how w'ever _did_ agree.

It's sunthin' thet you lab'rin'-folks up North hed ough' to think on, Thet Higgses can't bemean themselves to rulin' by a Lincoln,-- Thet men, (an' guv'nors, tu,) thet hez sech Normal names ez Pickens, Accustomed to no kin' o' work, 'thout 'tis to givin' lickins, Can't measure votes with folks thet get their living from their farms, An' prob'ly think thet Law's ez good ez hevin' coats o' arms.

Sence I've ben here, I've hired a chap to look about for me To git me a transplantable an' thrifty fem'ly-tree, 110 An' he tells _me_ the Sawins is ez much o' Normal blood Ez Pickens an' the rest on 'em, an' older 'n Noah's flood.

Your Normal schools wun't turn ye into Normals, for it's clear, Ef eddykatin' done the thing, they'd be some skurcer here.

Pickenses, Boggses, Pettuses, Magoffins, Letchers, Polks,-- Where can you scare up names like them among your mudsill folks?

Ther's nothin' to compare with 'em, you'd fin', ef you should glance, Among the tip-top femerlies in Englan', nor in France: I've hearn frum 'sponsible men whose word wuz full ez good's their note, Men thet can run their face for drinks, an' keep a Sunday coat, 120 That they wuz all on 'em come down, an' come down pooty fur, From folks thet, 'thout their crowns wuz on, ou' doors wouldn' never stir, Nor thet ther' warn't a Southun man but wut wuz _primy fashy_ O' the bes' blood in Europe, yis, an' Afriky an' Ashy: Sech bein' the case, is 't likely we should bend like cotton wickin', Or set down under anythin' so low-lived ez a lickin'?

More 'n this,--hain't we the literatoor an science, tu, by gorry?

Hain't we them intellectle twins, them giants, Simms an' Maury, Each with full twice the ushle brains, like nothin' thet I know, 'thout 'twuz a double-headed calf I see once to a show? 130

For all thet, I warn't jest at fust in favor o' secedin'; I wuz for layin' low a spell to find out where 'twuz leadin', For hevin' South-Carliny try her hand at sepritnationin', She takin' resks an' findin' funds, an' we co-operationin',-- I mean a kin' o' hangin' roun' an' settin' on the fence, Till Prov'dunce pinted how to jump an' save the most expense; I recollected thet 'ere mine o' lead to s.h.i.+raz Centre Thet bust up Jabez Pettibone, an' didn't want to ventur'

'Fore I wuz sartin wut come out ud pay for wut went in, For swappin' silver off for lead ain't the sure way to win; 140 (An', fact, it _doos_ look now ez though--but folks must live an' larn-- We should git lead, an' more 'n we want, out o' the Old Consarn;) But when I see a man so wise an' honest ez Buchanan A-lettin' us hev all the forts an' all the arms an' cannon, Admittin' we wuz nat'lly right an' you wuz nat'lly wrong, Coz you wuz lab'rin'-folks an' we wuz wut they call _bong-tong_, An' coz there warn't no fight in ye more 'n in a mashed potater, While two o' _us_ can't skurcely meet but wut we fight by natur', An' th' ain't a bar-room here would pay for openin' on 't a night; Without it giv the priverlege o' bein' shot at sight, 150 Which proves we're Natur's n.o.blemen, with whom it don't surprise The British aristoxy should feel boun' to sympathize,-- Seein' all this, an' seein', tu, the thing wuz strikin' roots While Uncle Sam sot still in hopes thet some one'd bring his boots, I thought th' ole Union's hoops wuz off, an' let myself be sucked in To rise a peg an' jine the crowd thet went for reconstructin',-- Thet is to hev the pardners.h.i.+p under th' ole name continner Jest ez it wuz, we drorrin' pay, you findin' bone an' sinner,-- On'y to put it in the bond, an' enter 't in the journals, Thet you're the nat'ral rank an' file, an' we the nat'ral kurnels. 160

Now this I thought a fees'ble plan, thet 'ud work smooth ez grease, Suitin' the Nineteenth Century an' Upper Ten idees, An' there I meant to stick, an' so did most o' th' leaders, tu, Coz we all thought the chance wuz good o' puttin' on it thru; But Jeff he hit upon a way o' helpin' on us forrard By bein' unannermous,--a trick you ain't quite up to, Norrard.