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oration.* He was a new comer there, and his fellow-citizens had selected him for this high and important function, not as a compliment to his abilities and character, but to discover who and what he was. Where he had come from, or his business, nobody knew, nor did he care to tell. He was, in fact, a remarkably silent man, of grave and unsocial deportment, who went to the post-office, at ten o'clock precisely, each morning, for his Tribune, and after that was not seen for the rest of the day. All the gossips had speculated about his condition and pedigree until they had nearly broken their weasands, but without coming to any satisfactory result. One of them, indeed, had gone so far as to ask him "point blank to his face," who he was, when he stared confusedly for a while, then laughed, and finally turned on his heels.

The glorious day, the immortal Fourth, was ushered in, if we may be allowed so novel an expression, with the ringing of the bell and the firing of a cannon. Little boys exploded several crackers in the street, a squad of overgrown, larger lads shot off a horse-pistol; a farmer, with his wife and three daughters dressed in white, rode about in their farm-wagon; a couple of negroes pitched pennies in the shadow of a wood-shed, and the starspangled banner drooped triumphantly from the top of the liberty-pole. It was as hot as griddle-cakes, of course, and the majority of the free and independent citizens appeared in their shirt-sleeves.

The only exceptions were two dozen persons who had the honor to belong to Company A, division 1, of the second battalion of the Jehosaphat Indefensibles. These having been dressed, from an early hour in the morning, in a heavy blue cloth coat and black leather hat, and carrying about fifty pounds of matchlock, buttons and feathers, looked distressed even before the drum had beaten the call to parade. Their faces were as red and wet as a lobster just taken from the kettle; while their bodies were as limp as washed rags. But the first strains of the inspiring martial music, consisting entirely of a base drum and a willow fife, put mettle into their limbs,

and they gathered in front of the hotel, with all the ardor of veteran warriors. Captain Joe Mott was officer of the day, and he performed prodigies in getting his men into line. "Tention, the hull," he cried, with a voice like that of the German Emperor who could be heard from one end of his army to the other-"Companee! Fall in!-Dress!" But as a considerable number of the

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companee" had begun quite early to fortify themselves against any premature application of the Maine Law, their "dress" did not answer, in every respect, to the definition of a mathematical line.

"Companee!" shouted Captain Joe, once more- "Tention! Eyes right!dress!" and again, after considerable movement, the line represented Hogarth's line of beauty rather more than any other line.

Captain Joe strode up and down the front several times in the greatest perplexity, and finally exclaimed-“ Now, sodgers, look-o'-here! I want you all to form in as straight a column as you can; with your backs to that are house, and your noses pintin' to the liberty-pole ! Now, then-Companee !-'Tention the hull!-Eyes right!-Dress!"

It was an unhappy order the Captain had given; for, each man after pointing his nose to the pole, looked over his shoulder afterwards to see if his back was right, so that the greater part of them had the appearance of lay figures, with the heads set the wrong way.

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Very well," said Captain Joe Mott, seeing that he was not likely to get his men any nearer to a right line, Tention, the hull! Show'd ums!" there was a general shaking of muskets.

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"Music! For'd, march!" and the military moved off in procession, to the manifest admiration of the entire circle of spectators. The orator, with the reader of the Declaration and a clergyman, rode behind in a barouche, drawn by two steeds splendidly caparisoned in Dutch collars and sprigs of asparagus to keep off the flies.

Arrived at the church, the clergyman made a prayer. Mr. Zeph. Conover, the promising young lawyer of the place, read the Declaration, in a full, loud, round voice, and with a determination

* If any over inquisitive reader is disposed to ask us how we could get a report of the doings on that day, seeing that our Magazine is printed several days beforehand, we deem it sufficient to reply that we keep "a medium," who anticipates the mails and the telegraph, whenever we have an occasion.-EDITOR.

of manner that would have frightened any crowned head in Europe out of his wicked designs, if he could only have heard it; and the choir sung an ode wirtten expressly for the occasion, by the gifted editor of the Independent and Democratic Bivalve-from which we extract the closing stanza, addressed to our emblematic bird:

"Oh! proud bird of freedom! oh! long may'st thou soar,

With thy storm-daring pinion, and sungazing eye!

Through the blue empyrean, where wild tempests roar,

And the lightning of battle gleams fiercely on high.

With thy bloody-red beak and thy talons of steel,

Swoop gallantly down upon tyranny's hawks,

Till those saucy and black-hearted minions shall feel

That our national chicken is cock of all walks!"

The orator of the day then came forward, with a white handkerchief in one hand, and his manuscript in the other, and said:

Friends and fellow-citizens: It is universally admitted, that this day, which we have now assembled to celebrate, is a great day-the natal day of freedom, when liberty was born and independence was cradled, and which has never been surpassed since the primeval day on which the world was created, and will never be equaled till the ultimate day of judgment. As the Greek poet felicitously expresses it:

Τον ἀμηρα ότι προς τι ἐπσιλον.” ” -At this classical allusion, the clergyman nodded approvingly to the schoolmaster, who sat upon the same bench with him on the stage, and smiled foolishly in return.

"On this day," the orator continued, "the free and happy people of fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty-nine villages (the precise number of villages in the United States, according to the last census) send up their grateful hearts to God, in thanks that they are the greatest people of all the earth. On this day, nine hundred and fifty-two cities or towns named Washington, seven hundred and thirty-six named Jefferson, five hundred Hamiltons, three hundred and twenty Madisons, three

hundred and nineteen Jacksons, three hundred and ten Clays, ninety-eight Clintons, and seventy-five Calhouns, recall the noble deeds and heroic virtues of the immortal demigods, after whom, with a brilliant fecundity of patriotism, if not of invention, they are called. How mighty and beautiful the spectacle, reminding us of the sweet lines which the great Roman Consul so aptly applied to the legions worshiping in the Sacred Temple :

'O! forsitan patria pulchra,

Nemo decorum et dulce est!'"

-Here the schoolmaster nodded to the clergyman, who frowned, in reply,— probably at the Pagan sentiment of the poetry.

"But why this general joy and acclamation? Why this ringing of bells and firing of crackers, and waving of flags, and drinking of ginger-beer, with other liquors, and setting off of fire-works in the evening? Is there any one in this intelligent and enlightened assembly who cannot tell? The child unborn might give the answer. It is because we are freemen, and we meet to celebrate the rights and triumphs of freedom. Our fathers, who lived, as it has been sagaciously observed, in times that tried men's souls,' bequeathed to us the precious heritage of liberty and equality; and we come up together annually to testify to each other our devotion to those sacred principles. We are all free, and we are all equal! The rights, the dignity, the sacredness of man, as man, is the corner-stone of our political faith; and where is the dastard, the slanderer, and the liar, who dares to intimate that any of our political and social relations are not built on that foundation?"

-The orator here paused a few minutes for a reply, and to wipe his forehead.

"It is common, I know," he resumed, "for envious and unprincipled foreign tourists to say that four millions of people among us are not 'free and equal'-in fact, that they are nothing more nor less than s-l-a-v-e-sbut this is a libel and an untruth, and ought to blister the mouth of every lily-livered, pink-hearted, black-coated, venial sycophant of royalty who utters it! There are a few of the swarthy children of Africa, who, rescued from the brutalities of their native kings, are held in an involuntary servitude under

a system inherited from the British two centuries ago, but they are not half as much slaves as the white serfs of Birmingham and Manchester! Are not their mouths ever full of possum-fat and hominy? Are they not dressed in the best tow-cloth half the year,-while it is too hot to wear anything the other half? Do they not raise their own pig and chickens, and fish for 'cats' and snapping-turtles of Saturday nights? And have they not the Gospel statedly preached to them by one of their own number on the Sabbath day? Slaves, forsooth! why they are the happiest working people on the globe! Well would it be, friends and fellowcitizens, for the poor Irish bog-trotter, and the English coal-heavers, and the French sans-culottes, and the German eater of sour-crout, and the consumers of macaroni at Naples, if they could be as well fed and cared for as these objects of misguided and fanatical philanthropy! Well would it be for us, even, if we were always so sure of our rice and sweet-potatoes! The supreme and ultimate end of human existence being, as the Scriptures tell us, 'what we shall eat and wherewithal we shall be clothed,' the greatest and happiest of mortals are they whose mouths are stuffed with good fat bacon, and whose persons are ornamented with a red bandanna handkerchief!

Besides, friends and fellow-citizens, -as those eminent philosophers Messrs. Nott and Gliddon inform us- -it has not yet been proved that Africans are men! It is true that they look like men, that they are formed like men, that they talk like men, that they reason and feel like men, but appearances, you know, are fallacious. In spite of such superficial resemblances, the wellattested physical facts that they often have projecting jaws like monkeys, sometimes a flat foot like a goose, and always wool on their heads like sheep, are facts which admit of no reply. They show that we should at least hesitate in recognizing their claims to humanity. It would be an awful thing to mistake a monkey for a man, and, under that terrible delusion, to plunge four millions of inferior animals into all the refinements and delights of civilization! fancies shrink appalled from the consequences the streets of populous cities running, red with pink-faced ba

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boons, and the domestic happiness of a thousand firesides wrecked by excess of ourang-outangs and ring-tailed apes!" —As the eloquent gentleman proceeded to unfold the outlines of this fearful picture, his voice was gradually drowned in the sobs and sighs of the female part of the audience, whose tender sensibilities were wrought up to a pitch of almost frantic excitement. He, therefore, magnanimously forbore to press the subject further.

"But," he remarked, "to change the theme, if there be any one so insane as to believe that we Americans fall short of the lofty and beautiful ideal of our fathers, let me point him to our liberal and magnanimous treatment of foreign immigrants. As our great maxim is that 'man is man,' we make our country emphatically the 'home of the exile and the asylum of the oppressed.' The half million refugees from European despotin, who annually come to us, we welcome with warm hugs and very open hands. They touch our country-and, we set 'em to work on the rail-road, at six shillings a day! They take part in our political life,and, instead of seeking to deprive them of the privilege, we often pay them for voting. But it may be questioned whether we have not, in this, reversed the true and patriotic process. Far be it from me to intimate that our political arrangements are not perfect in any respect: but, as the citizens of Athens, in the most flourishing period of their democracy, caused themselves to be paid out of the public treasury, for the discharge of their laborious duties in attending public assemblies, listening to the orators, talking politics, and monopolizing legislation: so it seems but just, considering how much more exacting our duties are in all these respects, that every native of the United States should go untaxed, and be supported at public expense. I say every native, because of the extraordinary merit of that class of citizens, in having got themselves born on this continent, and because it is clear that aliens, with their foreign manners and habits of thought, can never be made to understand the peculiarities of our institutions. Let me, therefore, suggest this proposal to the Hermetical Benevolent Societies, or those which, sealed at both ends, devote themselves so industriously to the good of themselves, and the public !”

-At this point in the discourse some disturbance was created by an Irishman, who cried" Bravo," when several native and stalwart Jehosaphatians fell upon him, and, after beating his face into a semblance of raw beef-steak, ejected him from the window. As soon as the cheering, with which their prompt interference was greeted by the whole assembly, had subsided, the speaker resumed.

"Yes, my dearly-beloved friends and fellow-citizens, it is the glory of our institutions and our society, that every man is allowed to pursue his happiness in his own way. The impartial spirit of our laws, while it confers no privileges and suffers no monopolies, doesn't interfere materially with anybody.

"But not to waste your time, fellowcitizens, upon irrelevant topics, let me recur to more pleasing contemplations!* Let me remind you of what, in your habitual modesty, you are so apt to forget-your sure and solid and stupendous greatness as a nation! Let me recall that distinguishing and consolatory fact, that your country covers already ar area of nearly four million square miles, and that it would be still bigger if the two oceans were filled in. Who shall say, in view of the accomplishments of modern enterprise, that it is not practicable to level the Apalachians and so obtain sufficient material for this purpose, whenever it shall be demanded by the increasing density of our population and be warranted by the price of lots? What were Greece and Rome, about which the historians keep up such a bother, compared to this? Why Greece, with all her pretensions to art and science, was only a little peninsula about twice the size of Long Island, and Rome, though she called herself, in her vainglorious pride, the Mistress of the Globe, was nothing more than a single city, situated on a river no deeper than one of our goose creeks! What, too, is England compared to us-that boastful and arrogant England, whose morning drum-beat,' as some one has ludicrously said, 'follows the sun in his course?' A narrow, misty, marshy, miserable coal pit, easily contained in a Virginia cornfield, and which you would have to look for with a telescope on an Illinois prairie !

"In respect to natural productions and national industry we have also every reason for exultation and pride. The display of those useful domestic crea

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tures called Babies, at the recent exhi bition in the Great American Museum, exceeded everything of the kind ever before conceived. Why there were infants there, not twelve months old, so prosperous in fat that not a single feature of their innocent faces was distinguishable! There were American mothers there, who could throw threes far more easily than you could turn up double-sixes in a dice-box!

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'Again, do they not slaughter more hogs in Cincinnati than in all the rest of the world? Do they not make better champagne at Newark than in France, or even in Broad street? What oysters are equal to the Blue Pointers of Downing, or in what region of the habitable world, barbarian or civilized, bond or free, are there canvas-back ducks like ours? Oh! my friends, I could weary your patience almost with agreeable statistics of this kind, and you ought to thank the beneficent Power, for the inconceivable greatness of your endowments and the overwhelming grandeur of your destinies !

"In the arts of peace, and in the deeds of war, you are equally distinguished. It was your happy lot to have produced Singer's sewing machine, the clipper ship Blue Thunder, Blake's fire-proof paint, the aboriginal mintjulep, the improved sherry cobbler, and the trotting-horse Fanny Fern, as well as the authoress of the same name - alike the envy and admiration of mankind. In the department of the Fine Arts, your immortal Jackson and his horse, both standing on one hind leg, and the panorama of the Mississippi, painted on forty miles of canvas, cover you with renown. But, perhaps, the Washington National Monument will be considered by posterity as your most extraordinary performance. Composed of different sized stones from every part of the globe, and a few aerolites supposed to have been engendered in the moon, it also illustrates the peculiar architecture of every nation and age-from the Egyptian obelisk and the temple-cave of India to the wigwam of the red man and the corn-stalk orders of Western prairies. Indeed, that remarkable pile of stones (or bricks, were they?) once attempted on the plains of Shinar is the only edifice of history which can be compared to it, either in design or execution.

"Then, again, your literature has

created a new epoch in the brilliant autobiography of Barnum, which has sold to the number of a million copies at least, which has been translated into ten different languages, not including our native dialects, and which would have been translated into others but for the fears, on the part of the kings and princes, of its tremendous political influence among their subjects. Besides, it has been noticed in every leading review, though, it must be confessed, in an envious and carping spirit. Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Dumas, and all the other great writers of fiction, secretly own themselves beaten, and Macaulay delays his history in the vain hope that this novel excitement in the reading world will pass. Meritorious and inimitable Barnum-fortunate man! thine was the magic wand which took captive all our pockets-thine the fertile imagination which has added new forms to creation and new pleasures to existence -and thine the disinterested virtue which twines a wreath of very green evergreen round the altar of thy country's fame!"

-The irrepressible enthusiasm of the audience could be contained no longer, and, at this point, broke out in a distinct "Hurrah for Literature and Barnum!"

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Everybody," pursued the orator, "everybody, especially in this great country, admits the unprecedented advances that we have made in practical art,-of which fact there could not have been a more transcendent proof, if proof were needed, than the immeasurable superiority of our Crystal Palace to the World's Fair of London, the Dublin Exhibition, the present Exposition at Paris, and everything of the kind that has yet been attempted anywhere. Its variety and brilliancy were only equaled by its financial success. What wealth of plows, what splendors of sole-leather, what luxury and magnificence of corn-shellers and patent pumps! Who did not see, and seeing admire, the beautiful Central Temple erected by Genin, and hung round with baby-linen, as a heart-felt homage to nascent humanity? Who could turn to those huge cases of variegated soaps, without imagining himself in some grotto of the genii, where precious stones and gems flashed, in a thousand, thou

sand living lustres, from roof and wall and floor? But time would fail to specify the glories of that fairy scene. The foreign exhibitors themselves, ashamed of the figure they cut, slunk from the competition, and have never since dared to come for their goods, which still remain on hand, kicking about among the dust and cobwebs of the now deserted show! They say, to excuse this this neglect, for everybody who is beaten has always an excuse at hand,-that our Crystal Palace Company are insolvent, and have failed to return their goods; but the excuse proceeds from sheer envy-from the malicious envy of unprincipled foreigners! Do you suppose that an American could be guilty of such dishonorable conduct as the excuse implies? No! ten thousand hands would rush into their pockets rather than that such an indignity should fall upon our good

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Why, gentlemen, you ought not to be surprised if these same envious foreigners should next attempt to decry the moral uses of that great and peculiar institution of some parts of our happy country, which is excellently typified in our native and original invention, the Bowie-knife. I refer to the institution of a species of jurisprudence, which readily supersedes all other jurisprudence, and, without the tedious formalities of judges, juries, lawyers, statute-books and other antiquated contrivances of society, arrives at instant and substantial justice-a justice that does not often require any appeal! How would the bold pioneer of the frontier, you naturally ask, get rid of his enemies and supply his necessary wants, if he were compelled to look into musty and worm-eaten law-books to find out what he might and what he might not do? Law-books are not as thick as huckle-berries in the woods. How could the benevolent and patriotic citizen of Missouri control the elections of Kansas, if he had to consult the pandects of Justinian, and if he were not allowed to use his knife and rifle freely among the interloping marauders from other States? Some will, perhaps, reply, that, if others should resort to the same weapons, the condition of things must result in civil war. In civil war! will it? Ah! how little such greenhorns must have studied the theory of our constitution, which so strikingly

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