Complete. Number 6 of Biglow Papers.
[At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface the following satire with an extract from a sermon preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Since the Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, the editor of the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss has unaccountably absented himself from our house of worship. |
I KNOW of no so responsible position as that of the public journalist. The editor of our day bears the same relation to his time that the clerk bore to the age before the invention of printing. Indeed, the position which he holds is that which the clergyman should hold even now. But the clergyman chooses to walk off to the extreme edge of the world, and to throw such seed as he has clear over into that darkness which he calls the Next Life. As if next did not mean nearest, and as if any life were nearer than that immediately present one which boils and eddies all around him at the caucus, the ratification meeting, and the polls! Who taught him to exhort men to prepare for eternity, as for some future era of which the present forms no integral part? The furrow which Time is even now turning runs through the Everlasting, and in that must he plant, or nowhere. Yet he would fain believe and teach that we are going to have more of eternity than we have now. This going of his is like that of the auctioneer, on which gone follows before we have made up our minds to bid,in which manner, not three months back, I lost an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. So it has come to pass that the preacher, instead of being a living force, has faded into an emblematic figure at christenings, weddings, and funerals. Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as keeper and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, which, when occasion offers, he unkennels with a staboy! to bark and bite as it is their nature to, whence that reproach of odium theologicum has arisen.
Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor mounts daily, sometimes with a congregation of fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and never so much as a nodder, even, among them! And from what a Bible can he choose his text,a Bible which needs no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity,the open volume of the world, upon which with a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of ποιμὴν λαῶν, which Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nineteenth century, and whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a common mountain stared at by the elegant tourist and crawled over by the hammering geologist, he must find his tables of the new law here among factories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin (Numbers xxxiii. 12) called Progress of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order.
Nevertheless, our editor will not come so far within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet did, but chooses rather to construe Moses by Joe Smith. He takes up the crook, not that the sheep may be fed, but that he may never want a warm woolen suit and a joint of mutton.
Immemor, O, fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum! |
I du believe in Freedoms cause, | |
Ez fur away ez Paris is; | |
I love to see her stick her claws | |
In them infarnal Pharisees: | |
It s wal enough agin a king | |
To dror resolves an triggers, | |
But libbatys a kind o thing | |
Thet dont agree with niggers. | |
I du believe the people want | |
A tax on tea an coffees, | |
Thet nothin aint extravygunt, | |
Purvidin Im in office; | |
Fer I hev loved my country sence | |
My eye-teeth filled their sockets | |
An Uncle Sam I reverence, | |
Particlarly his pockets. | |
I du believe in any plan | |
O levyin the taxes, | |
Ez long ez, like a lumberman, | |
I git jest wut I axes; | |
I go free-trade thru thick an thin, | |
Because it kind orouses | |
The folks to vote,an keeps us in | |
Our quiet customhouses. | |
I du believe its wise an good | |
To sen out furrin missions, | |
Thet is, on sartin understood | |
An orthydox conditions; | |
I mean nine thousan dolls. per ann., | |
Nine thousan more fer outfit, | |
An me to recommend a man | |
The place ould jest about fit. | |
I du believe in special ways | |
O prayin an convartin; | |
The bread comes back in many days, | |
An buttered, tu, fer sartin; | |
I mean in preyin till one busts | |
On wut the party chooses, | |
An in convartin public trusts | |
To very privit uses. | |
I du believe hard coin the stuff | |
Fer lectioneers to spout on; | |
The peoples oilers soft enough | |
To make hard money out on; | |
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, | |
An gives a good-sized junk to all, | |
I dont care how hard money is, | |
Ez long ez mines paid punctooal. | |
I du believe with all my soul | |
In the gret Presss freedom, | |
To pint the people to the goal | |
An in the traces lead em; | |
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes | |
At my fat contracts squintin, | |
An withered be the nose thet pokes | |
Inter the govment printin! | |
I du believe thet I should give | |
Wuts hisn unto Cæsar, | |
Fer its by him I move an live, | |
Frum him my bread an cheese air; | |
I du believe thet all o me | |
Doth bear his souperscription, | |
Will, conscience, honor, honesty, | |
An things o thet description. | |
I du believe in prayer an praise | |
To him thet hez the grantin | |
O jobs,in every thin thet pays, | |
But most of all in Cantin; | |
This doth my cup with marcies fill, | |
This lays all thought o sin to rest, | |
I dont believe in princerple, | |
But, O, I du in interest. | |
I du believe in bein this | |
Or thet, ez it may happen | |
One way or tother hendiest is | |
To ketch the people nappin; | |
It aint by princerples nor men | |
My preudunt course is steadied, | |
I scent wich pays the best, an then | |
Go into it baldheaded. | |
I du believe thet holdin slaves | |
Comes natral tu a Presidunt, | |
Let lone the rowdedow it saves | |
To hev a wal-broke precedunt; | |
Fer any office, small or gret, | |
I couldnt ax with no face, | |
Without Id ben, thru dry an wet, | |
Th unrizzest kind o doughface. | |
I du believe wutever trash | |
ll keep the people in blindness, | |
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash | |
Right inter brotherly kindness, | |
Thet bombshells, grape, an powder n ball | |
Air good-wills strongest magnets, | |
Thet peace, to make it stick at all, | |
Must be druv in with bagnets. | |
In short, I firmly du believe | |
In Humbug generally, | |
Fer its a thing that I perceive | |
To hev a solid vally; | |
This heth my faithful shepherd ben, | |
In pasturs sweet heth led me, | |
An this ll keep the people green | |
To feed ez they hev fed me. |
Wonderful to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper! | |
Hither to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others as minute as he are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark Beyond. | |
Yes, the little show box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also. | |
Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death. | |
Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty;I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present (even if for a moment discerned as such) continue miraculous. We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggars broken victuals.H. W.] |