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 THE 
 
 BIGLOW PAPERS
 
 . -JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 THE BIGLOW 
 
 PAPERS 
 
 -> BY IIOA\ER W1LBER, A. A\. 
 
 %^ pastor f thC r rst Church 
 
 .^. ^s^ ^-^/ r" <r<^ 
 
 *v* >. (S$ ) s \^ -/^2&Vi 
 
 ^?^ , r?/ 4 ^ ^ ^ O j cX \ 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 3^O Vk ^J <% /// 
 
 HENRY ALTEAUS 
 
 % FTt 
 
 lU
 
 n; 
 
 NOTE TO TITLE-PAGE. 
 
 IT will not have escaped the attentive eye, that 
 I have, on the title-page, omitted those honorary 
 appendages to the editorial name which not only 
 add greatly to the value of every book, but whet 
 and exacerbate the appetite of the reader. For not 
 only does he surmise that an honorary member 
 ship of literary and scientific societies implies a 
 certain amount of necessary distinction on the part 
 of the recipient of such decorations, but he is will 
 ing to trust himself more entirely to an author who 
 writes under the fearful responsibility of involving 
 the reputation of such bodies as the 8. ArcluvoL 
 DaJtom., or the Acad. Lit. et Sclent. Kamtscliat. I 
 cannot but think that the early editions of Shaks- 
 peare and Milton would have met with more rapid 
 and general acceptance, but for the barrenness of 
 their respective title-pages; and I believe, that, 
 even now, a publisher of the works of either of 
 those justly distinguished men would find his ac 
 count in procuring their admission to the member 
 ship of learned bodies on the Continent a proceed 
 ing no whit more incongruous than the reversal of 
 the judgment against Socrates, when he was al 
 ready more than twenty centuries beyond the reach 
 of antidotes, and when his memory had acquired a 
 deserved respectability. I conceive that it was a 
 
 5
 
 6 Xote to Title-Pagc. 
 
 feeling of the importance of this precaution which 
 induced Mr. Locke to style himself " Gent." on the 
 title-page of his Essay, as who should say to his 
 readers that they could receive his metaphysics on 
 the honor of a gentleman. 
 
 Nevertheless, finding, that, without descending to 
 a smaller size of type than would have been com 
 patible with the dignity of the several societies 
 to be named, I could not compress my Intended 
 list within the limits of a single page, and think 
 ing, moreover, that the act would carry with It an 
 air of decorous modesty, I have chosen to take 
 the reader aside, as it were, into my private closet, 
 and there not only exhibit to him the diplomas 
 which I already possess, but also to furnish him 
 with a prophetic vision of those which I may, 
 without undue presumption, hope for, as not be 
 yond the reach of human ambition and attainment. 
 And I am the rather induced to this from the fact, 
 that my name has been unaccountably dropped 
 from the last triennial catalogue of our beloved 
 Alma Mater. Whether this is to be attributed to 
 the difficulty of Latinizing any of those honorary 
 adjuncts (with a complete list of which I took care 
 to furnish the proper persons nearly a year be 
 forehand), or whether it had its origin in any more 
 culpable motives, I forbear to consider In this 
 place, the matter being in course of painful investi 
 gation. But, however this may be, I felt the omis 
 sion the more keenly, as I had, in expectation of 
 the new catalogue, enriched the library of the
 
 Xote to Title-Page. 7 
 
 Jaalam Athenaeum with the old one then In my 
 possession, by which means it has come about that 
 my children will be deprived of a never-weary 
 ing winter-evening s amusement in looking out the 
 name of their parent in that distinguished roll. 
 Those harmless innocents had at least committed 
 
 no but I forbear, having intrusted my reflections 
 
 and animadversions on this painful topic to the 
 safe-keeping of my private diary, intended for 
 posthumous publication. I state this fact here, in. 
 order that certain nameless individuals, who are, 
 perhaps, overmuch congratulating themselves upon 
 my silence, may know that a rod is in pickle which 
 the vigorous hand of a justly incensed posterity 
 will apply to their memories. 
 
 The careful reader will note, that, in the list 
 which I have prepared, I have included the names 
 of several Cisatlantic societies to which a place is 
 not commonly assigned in procession of this na 
 ture. I have ventured to do this, not only te en 
 courage native ambition and genius, but also be 
 cause I have never been able to perceive in what 
 way distance (unless we suppose them at the end 
 of a lever) could increase the weight of learned 
 bodies. As far as I have been able to extend my 
 researches among such stuffed specimens as oc 
 casionally reach America, I have discovered no- 
 generic difference between the antipodal Fogrum 
 Japoiiiciim and the F. Americanum sufficiently com 
 mon in our own immediate neighborhood. Yet, 
 with a becoming deference to the popular belief,
 
 8 Xote to Titlc-Page. 
 
 that distinctions of this sort are enhanced iu value 
 by every additional mile they travel, I have inter 
 mixed the names of some tolerably distant literary 
 and other associations with the rest. 
 
 I add here, also, an advertisement, which, that 
 it may be the more readily understood by those 
 persons especially interested therein, I have writ 
 ten in that curtailed and otherwise maltreated ca 
 nine Latin, N to the writing and reading of which 
 they are accustomed. 
 
 OMNIB. PER TOT. ORB. TERRAR. CATALOG. ACADEM. 
 EDD. 
 
 Minim, gent, diplom. ab inclytiss. acad. ve&t. 
 orans, vir. honorand. operosiss., at sol. ut sciat 
 quant, glor. nom. meum (dipl. fort, concess.) catal. 
 vest. temp, futur. affer., ill. subjec., addit. omnib. 
 titul. honorar. qu. adh. non tant. opt. quarn pro- 
 bab. put. 
 
 *#* Litt. Uncial, distinx. ut Prscs. 8. Hist. Nat. Jaal. 
 
 EOMEKUS WILBUR, Mr., Episc. Jaalam. S. T. 
 D. 1850, et Yal. 1849, et Neo-Cics. et Brun. et 
 Gulielm. 1852, et Gul. et Mar. et Bowd. et Georgiop. 
 et Viridimont. et Columb. Nov. Ebor. 1853, et Am- 
 herst. et Watervill. et S. Jarlath. Hib. et S. Mar. 
 et S. Joseph, et S. And. Scot. 1854, et Nashvill. et 
 Dart, et Dickins. ct Concord, et Wash, et Colum 
 bian, et Chariest, et Jeff, et Dubl. et Oxon. et Can 
 tab, et csct. 1855, T. U. N. C. H. et J. U. D. Gott. 
 et Osnab. et Heidelb. I860, et Acad. BORE us.
 
 Xote to Title-Page. 9 
 
 Berolin. Soc. et SS. RR. Lugd. Bat. et Patav. et 
 Lond. et Edinb. et Ins. Feejee. et Null. Terr, et 
 Pekin. Soc. Hon. et S. H. S. et S. P. A. et A. A. S. 
 et S. Humb. Univ. et S. Omn. Eer. Quarund. q. 
 Aliar. Prornov. Passamaquod. et H. P. C. et I. O. 
 II. et A. J. $. et II. K. P. et (p. B. K. et Peucin. 
 et Erosopb. et Pbiladelpb. et Frat. in Unit, et I, 
 T. et S. Archneolog. Athen. et Acad. Sclent, et Lit. 
 Panorm. et SS. R. H. Matrit. et Beeloocbist. et 
 Caffrar. et Caribb. et M. S. Reg. Paris, et S. Am. 
 Antiserv. Soc. Hon. et P. D. Gott. et LL.D. 1852, 
 et D. C. L. et Mus. Doc. Oxon. 18GO, et M. M. S. S. 
 et M. D. 1854, et Med. Fac. Univ. Harv. Soc. et S. 
 pro Convers. Pollywog. Soc. Hon. et Higgl. Piggl. 
 et LL.B. 1853, et S. pro Cbristianiz. Moscbet. Soc., 
 et SS. Aute-Diluv. ubiq. Gent. Soc. Hon. et Civit. 
 Cleric. Jaalarn. et S. pro Diffus. General. Tenebr. 
 Secret. Corr.
 
 NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT 
 PRESS. 
 
 [I HAVE observed, reader, (bene-or male-volent, 
 as it may happen,) that it is customary to append 
 to the second editions of books, and to the 
 second works of authors, short sentences com 
 mendatory of the first, under the title of Notices 
 of the Press. These, I have been given to under 
 stand, are procurable at certain established rates, 
 payment being made either in money or advertis 
 ing patronage by the publisher, or by an adequate 
 outlay of servility on the part of the author. Con 
 sidering these things with myself, and also that 
 such notices are neither intended, nor generally be 
 lieved, to convey any real opinions, being a purely 
 ceremonial accompaniment of literature, aud re 
 sembling certificates to the virtues of various mor- 
 biferal panaceas, I conceived that it would be not 
 only more economical to prepare a sufficient num 
 ber of such myself, but also more immediately sub 
 servient to the end in view to prefix them to this 
 our primary edition rather than await the con 
 tingency of a second, when they would seem to be 
 of small utility. To delay attaching the bobs until 
 the second attempt at flying the kite would indi 
 cate but a slender experience in that useful art. 
 10
 
 Notices of an Independent Press. 11 
 
 Neither has it escaped my notice, nor failed to 
 afford me matter of reflection, that, when a circus 
 or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial 
 step is to send forward large and highly orna 
 mented bills of performance to be hung In the bar 
 room and the post office. These having been suf 
 ficiently gazed at, and beginning to lose their at 
 tractiveness except for the flies, and, truly, the 
 boys also, (in whom I find it impossible to repress, 
 even during school-hours, certain oral and tele 
 graphic correspondences concerning the expected 
 show,) upon some fine morning the band enters in 
 a gaily-painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and 
 with noisy advertisement, by means of brass, 
 wood, and sheepskin, makes the circuit of our 
 startled village-streets. Then, as the exciting 
 sounds draw nearer and nearer, do I desiderate 
 those eyes of Aristarchus, " whose looks were as 
 a breeching to a boy." Then do I perceive, with 
 vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage 
 of a pancratic or pantechnic education, since he is 
 most reverenced by my little subjects who can 
 throw the cleanest summerset or walk most se 
 curely upon the revolving cask. The story of the 
 Pied Piper becomes for the first time credible to 
 me, (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating 
 their legal instruments from the period of his exit,) 
 as I behold how those strains, without pretence of 
 magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor 
 leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For 
 these reasons, lest my kingly prerogative should
 
 12 Notices of an Independent Press. 
 
 suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless com 
 mons, whom I also follow into the street, chiefly 
 lest some mischief may chance befall them. After 
 the manner of such a band, I send forward the fol 
 lowing notices of domestic manufacture, to make 
 brazen proclamation, not unconscious of the advau- 
 tage which will accrue, if our little craft, cyinbula 
 sutiUfi, shall seem to leave port with a clipping 
 breeze, and to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone In 
 her mouth. Nevertheless, I have chosen, as being 
 more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently 
 objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find 
 a dish to their palate. I have modelled them upon 
 actually existing specimens, preserved in my own 
 cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, 
 I had copied with tolerable exactness from a notice 
 of one of my own discourses, which, from its su 
 perior tone and appearance of vast experience, 1 
 concluded to have been written by a man at least 
 three hundred years of age, though I recollected 
 no existing instance of such antediluvian longev 
 ity. Nevertheless, I afterward discovered the 
 author to be a young gentleman preparing for the 
 ministry under the direction of one of n;y brethren 
 in a neighboring town, and whom I had once in 
 stinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this 
 I have been forced to omit, from its too great 
 length. H. ^Y.] 
 
 From tJie Universal Littery Universe. 
 Full of passages which rivet the attention of the 
 reader. . . . Under a rustic garb, sentiments are
 
 Xoticcs of an Independent Press 13 
 
 conveyed which should be committed to the mem 
 ory and engraven on the heart of every moral and 
 social being. . . . We consider this a unique per 
 formance. . . . We hope to see it soon introduced 
 into our common schools. . . . Mr. Wilbur has per 
 formed his duties as editor with excellent taste 
 and judgment. . . . This is a vein which we hope 
 to see successfully prosecuted. . . . We hail the 
 appearance of this work as a long stride toward 
 the formation of a purely aboriginal, indigenous, 
 native, and American literature. We rejoice to 
 meet with an author national enough to break 
 away from the slavish deference, too common 
 among us, to English grammar and orthogra 
 phy. . . . Where all is so good, we are at a loss 
 how to make extracts. . . . On the whole, we may 
 call it a volume which no library, pretending to en 
 tire completeness, should fail to place upon Its 
 shelves. 
 
 From the Higginbottomopolis Snappiny-turtle. 
 A collection of the merest balderdash and dog 
 gerel that it was ever our bad fortune to lay eyes 
 on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor 
 a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong lan 
 guage, but should any of our readers peruse the 
 book, (frern which calamity Heaven preserve 
 them!) they will find reasons for it thick as the 
 leaves of Vallumbrozer, or, to use a still more ex 
 pressive comparison, as the combined heads of 
 author and editor. The work is wretchedly got
 
 14 Notices of an Intlepondout Press. 
 
 up. . . . We should like to know how much British 
 gold was pocketed by this libeller of our country 
 and her purest patriots. 
 
 From MIC Oldfogrumville Mentor. 
 We have not had time to do more than glance 
 through this handsomely printed volume, but the 
 name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr. Wil 
 bur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty 
 for the worth of its contents. . . . The paper is 
 white, the type clear, and the volume of a con 
 venient and attractive size. ... In reading this 
 elegantly executed work, it has seemed to us that 
 a passage or two might have been retrenched with 
 advantage, and that the general style of diction 
 was susceptible of a higher polish. . . . On the 
 whole, we may safely leave the ungrateful task of 
 criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, 
 that in volumes intended, as this is. for the illus 
 tration of a provincial dialect and turus of ex 
 pression, a dash of humor or satire might be 
 thrown in with advantage. . . . The work is ad 
 mirably got up. . . . This work will form an ap 
 propriate ornament to the centre-table. It is beau 
 tifully printed, on paper of an excellent quality. 
 
 From the Dckay Bulwark. 
 
 We should be wanting in our duty as the conduc 
 tor of that tremendous engine, a public press, as 
 an American, and as a man. did we allow such an
 
 Xotices of an Independent Press. 15 
 
 opportunity as is presented to us by " The Biglow 
 Papers " to pass by without entering our earnest 
 protest against such attempts (now, alas! too com 
 mon) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Un 
 der a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, 
 war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable 
 and time-honored institutions justly dear to our 
 common humanity and especially to republicans, 
 are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry 
 by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the 
 respectable and religious portion of our community 
 should be aroused to the alarming inroads of 
 foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. 
 It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of 
 this contagion, that these secret stabs at religion 
 and virtue are given from under the cloak (crcdite, 
 postcri!) of a clergyman. It is a mournful specta 
 cle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see lib 
 erality and new ideas (falsely so called, they are 
 as old as Eden) invading the sacred precincts of 
 the pulpit. . . . On the whole, we consider this 
 volume as one of the first shocking results which 
 we predicted would spring out of the late French 
 " Revolution " < !) 
 
 From the Bungtoicn Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin 
 
 (a Iry-iceakly family journal). 
 
 Altogether an admirable work. . . . Full of 
 humor, boisterous, but delicate, of wit withering 
 and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool as 
 morning dew, of satire ponderous as the mace of
 
 16 Notices of an Independent Press. 
 
 Richard, yet keen as the scymitar of Saladiu. 
 . . . A work full of " mountain mirth," mis 
 chievous as Puck and lightsome as Ariel. . . . We 
 know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, 
 and discursive concinnity of the author, or his play 
 ful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, 
 at once both objective and subjective. . . . We 
 might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the 
 author other than he is^ he would be a different 
 being. As it is, he has a wonderful pose, which 
 flits from flower to flower, and bears the reader 
 irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Gany 
 mede) to the " highest heaven of invention." . . . 
 We love a book so purely objective. . . . Many of 
 his pictures of natural scenery have an extraordi 
 nary subjective clearness and fidelity. ... In fine, 
 we consider this as one of the most extraordinary 
 Tolumes of this or any age. We know of no Eng 
 lish author who could have written it. It Is a 
 work to which the proud genius of our country, 
 standing with one foot on the Aroostook and the 
 other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the star- 
 spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the 
 crush of worlds, may point with bewildering scorn 
 of the punier efforts of enslaved Europe. . . . We 
 hope soon to encounter our author among those 
 higher walks of literature in which he is evidently 
 capable of achieving enduring fame. Already we 
 should be inclined to assign him a high position in 
 the bright galaxy of our American bards.
 
 Notices of an Independent Press. 17 
 
 From tlie Saltriver Pil jt and Flay of Frec.l >m. 
 A volume in bad grammar and worse taste. . . . 
 While the pieces here collected were confined to 
 their appropriate sphere in the corners of obscure 
 newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath 
 contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come 
 forward in this public manner, he must expect the 
 lash he so richly merits. . . . Contemptible slanders. 
 Vilest Billingsgate. . . . Has raked all the gutters 
 of our language. . . . The most pure, upright, and 
 consistent politicians not safe from his malignant 
 venom. . . . General Gushing comes in for a share 
 of his vile calumnies . . . the Rcrcrcnd Homer Wil 
 bur is a disgrace to his cloth. . 
 
 From the World-Harmonic-sEolian- Attachment. 
 Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance 
 more Orphic than this. While, therefore, as high 
 est author, we reverence him whose works con 
 tinue heroically unwritten, we have also our hope 
 ful word for those who with pen (from wing of 
 goose loud-cackling, or seraph God-commissioned) 
 record the thing that is revealed. . . . Under mask 
 of quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm- 
 tost (nigh shipwrecked) soul, thunder-scarred, 
 serniarticulate, but ever climbing hopefully toward 
 the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow. . . . 
 Yes, thou poor, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire- 
 flaming soul in thee, for thee also this life of ours 
 has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity 
 
 2
 
 18 Notices of an Independent Press. 
 
 and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! 
 Through coarse Thersites-cloak, we have revela 
 tion of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, 
 that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the life- 
 problem as it presents itself to him. uncombed, 
 shaggy, careless of the " nicer proprieties," Inex 
 pert of " elegant diction," yet with voice audible 
 enough to whoso hath ears, up there on the 
 gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy, India- 
 rubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this 
 soul also the Necessity of Creating somewhat has 
 unveiled its awful front. If not CEdipuses and 
 Electras and Alcestises, then in God s name Birdo- 
 fredum Sawins! These also shall get born into 
 the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsist 
 ence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of 
 his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will 
 not sit to him. Yet in him also are Xibelungen-lays, 
 and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine 
 Comedies, if only once he could come at them! 
 Therein lies much, nay all; for what truly is this 
 we name All, but that which we do not possess? 
 . . . Glimpses also are given us of an old father 
 Ezekiel, not without paternal pride, as is the wont 
 of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of 
 the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we 
 fancy, queued perhaps, with much weather-cunning 
 and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding 
 fair in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. 
 After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is 
 seen no more. ... Of " Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M.,
 
 Xotices of an Independent Press. 19" 
 
 rastor of the First Church in Jaalam," we have- 
 small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of 
 his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the blind 
 ness! A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous eld 
 erly gentleman, with infinite faculty of sermoniz 
 ing, muscularized by long practice, and excellent 
 digestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-mean 
 ing enough, and with small private illuminations 
 (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. 
 To him, there, " Pastor of the First Church in 
 Jaalarn," our Hosea presents himself as a quite 
 inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty of 
 Latin and Greek, so far is clear enough, even to 
 eyes peering myopic through horn-lensed editorial 
 spectacles, but naught farther? O pur-blind, well- 
 meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, 
 there are things in him incommunicable by stroke 
 of birch! Did it ever enter that old bewildered 
 head of thine that there was the Possibility of the 
 Infinite in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even 
 featherless) biped, has not so much even as a 
 dream of wings ever come? "Talented young 
 parishioner"? Among the Arts whereof thou art 
 Mayister, does that of seeing happen to be one? 
 Unhappy Artium Mayister! Somehow a Neinean 
 lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad- 
 howling sand-wilderness of a sufficiently rare 
 spirit-Libya (it may be supposed) has got whelped 
 among the sheep. Already he stands wild-glaring, 
 with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots, 
 gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy
 
 20 Xotices of an Independent Press. 
 
 little fold. In Heaven s name, go not near him 
 with that fly-bite crook of thine! In good time, 
 thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the ap 
 pointed place of departed Artillery-Election Ser 
 mons, Right-Hands, of Fellowship, and Results of 
 Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with, 
 much Latin of the Epitaphial sort; thou, too, slialt 
 have thy reward; but on him the Eumenides have 
 looked, not Xautippes of the pit, snake-tressed, 
 finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on an 
 tique gems; for him paws impatient the winged 
 courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him 
 the starry deeps, the empj-rean glooms, and far- 
 flashing splendors await. 
 
 From tJie Onion Grove PJurnlr. 
 A talented young townsman of ours, recently re 
 turned from a Continental tour, and who is already 
 favorably known to our readers by his sprightly let 
 ters from abroad which have graced our columns, 
 called at our office yesterday. We learn from 
 him, that, having enjoyed the distinguished privi 
 lege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the 
 celebrated Von Humbug, he took the opportunity 
 to present that eminent man with a copy of the 
 " Biglow Papers." The next morning he received 
 the following note, which he has kindly furnished 
 us for publication. We prefer to print verbatim, 
 knowing that our readers will readily forgive the 
 few errors into which thx? illustrious writer has 
 fallen, through ignorance of our language.
 
 Notices of an Independent Press. 21 
 
 " HIGH-WORTHY MISTER! 
 
 " I shall also now especially happy starve, be 
 cause I have more or less a work of one those abo 
 riginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf an 
 interest ever taken fullworthy on the self shelf 
 with our Gottsched to be upset. 
 
 " Pardon my in the English-speech unpractice! 
 
 " Vox 
 
 He also sent with the above note a copy of his 
 famous work on " Cosmetics," to be presented to 
 Mr. Biglow; but this was taken from our friend 
 by the English customhouse officers, probably 
 through a petty national spite. No doubt, it has 
 by this time found its way into the British 
 Museum. We trust this outrage will be exposed in 
 all our American papers. We shall do our best to 
 bring it to the notice of the State Department. 
 Our numerous readers will share in the pleasure 
 we experience at seeing our young and vigorous 
 national literature thus encouragingly patted on 
 the head by this venerable and world-renowned 
 German. We love to see these reciprocations of 
 good-feeling between the different branches of the 
 great Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 [The following genuine " notice " having met my 
 eye, I gladly insert a portion of it here, the more 
 especially us it contains a portion of one of Mr. 
 Biglow s poems not elsewhere printed. H. W.]
 
 22 Xotices of an Independent Press. 
 
 From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss. 
 . . /But, while we lament to see our young 
 townsman thus mingling in the heated contests of 
 party politics, we think we detect in him the pres 
 ence of talents which, If properly directed, might 
 give an innocent pleasure to many. As a proof 
 that he is competent to the production of other 
 kinds of poetry, we copy for our readers a short 
 fragment of a pastoral by him, the manuscript of 
 which was loaned us by a friend. The title of it 
 is " The Courtin ." 
 
 ZEKLE crep up, quite unbeknown, 
 An peeked in thru the winder, 
 
 An there sot Huldy all alone, 
 ith no one nigh to hender. 
 
 Agin the chimbly crooknecks hung, 
 
 An in amongst em rusted 
 The ole queen s arm thet gran ther Young 
 
 Fetched back frum Concord busted. 
 
 The wannut logs shot sparkles out 
 Toward the pootiest, bless her! 
 
 An leetle fires danced all about 
 The chiny on the dresser. 
 
 The very room, coz she wuz in, 
 Looked warm frum floor to ceilin , 
 
 An she looked full ez rosy agin 
 Ez th apples she wuz peelin .
 
 Xotices of an Independent Press. 23 
 
 She heerd a foot an knowed it, tu, 
 
 Araspiu on the scraper, 
 All ways to once her feelins flew 
 
 Like sparks in buriit-up paper. 
 
 He kin o 1 itered on the mat, 
 
 Some doubtfle o the seekle; 
 His heart key goin pitypat, 
 
 But hern went pity Zekle.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WHEX, more than three years ago, my tal 
 ented young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to 
 me and submitted to my animadversions the first 
 of his poems which he intended to commit to 
 the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it 
 never so much as entered my imagination to con 
 ceive that his productions would ever be gath 
 ered into a fair volume, and ushered into the 
 august presence of the reading public by myself. 
 So little are we short-sighted mortals able to 
 predict the event! I confess that there is to me 
 a quite new satisfaction in being associated 
 (though only as sleeping partner) in a book 
 which can stand by itself in an independent 
 unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is 
 always this drawback from the pleasure of print 
 ing a sermon, that whereas the queasy stomach 
 of this generation will not bear a discourse long 
 enough to make a separate volume, those re 
 ligious and godly-minded children (those Sam 
 uels, if I may call them so) of the brain must
 
 26 Introduction. 
 
 at first lie buried in an undistinguished heap, 
 and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed 
 to them, mummy-wrapt with a score of others 
 in a cheap binding, with no other mark of dis 
 tinction than the word "Miscellaneous " printed 
 upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any 
 credit for the quite unexpected popularity which 
 I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have 
 attained unto. If I know myself, I am meas 
 urably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may 
 be allowed to say that I was not backward to 
 recognize in them a certain wild, puckcry, acidu 
 lous (sometimes even verging toward that point 
 which, in cur rustic phrase, is termed shut-eye) 
 flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, 
 to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed 
 and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some 
 touches of my own, here and there, may have 
 led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from 
 my larger experience of literature and author 
 ship.* 
 
 * The reader curious in such matters may refer 
 (if he can liiid them) to "A Sermon Preached on 
 the Anniversary of the Dark Day," "An Artillery 
 Election Sermon," "A Discourse on the Late 
 Eclipse," " Dorcas, n Funeral Sermon on the Death 
 of Madam Submit Tidd. Relict of the late Experi 
 ence Tidd. Esq.," &c., &c.
 
 Introduction. 27 
 
 I was, at first, inclined to discourage Mr. Big- 
 low s attempts, as knowing that the desire to 
 poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident 
 to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be 
 not at once and with a bold hand applied, may 
 become chronic, and render one, who might else 
 have bee-erne in due time an ornament of the 
 social circle, a painful object even to nearest 
 friends and relatives. But thinking, on a fur 
 ther experience, that there was a germ of prom 
 ise in him which required onjy culture and the 
 pulling up of Aveeds from around it, I thought 
 it best to set before him the acknowledged ex 
 amples of English compositions in verse, and 
 leave the rest to natural emulation. With this 
 view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of 
 Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of 
 which he promised to devote his evenings. Not 
 long afterward, he brought me some verses writ 
 ten upon that model, a specimen of which I sub 
 join, having changed some phrases of less ele 
 gancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the 
 cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish 
 reminiscences, and the sketches which follow 
 will not seem destitute of truth to those whose 
 fortunate education began in a country village.
 
 28 Introduction. 
 
 And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait 
 of the school-dame. 
 
 " Propt on the marsh, a dwelling now. I see 
 The humble schoolhouse of my A. B, C. 
 Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, 
 Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, 
 Then all together, when the signal canio. 
 Discharged their a-b abs against the dame. 
 Who, mid the volleyed learning, firm and calm, 
 Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, 
 And, to our wonder, could detect at once 
 Who flashed the pan, and who was downright 
 
 dunce. 
 
 There young Devotion learned to climb with ease 
 The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, 
 And he was most commended and admired 
 Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; 
 Each name was called as many various ways 
 As pleased the reader s ear on different days, 
 So that the weather, or the ferule s stiugs, 
 Colds in the head, or fifty other things, 
 Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week 
 To guttural Pequot or resoundiug Greek, 
 The vibrant accent skipping here and there, 
 Just as it pleased invention or despair: 
 No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; 
 With or without the points pleased her the same; 
 If any tyro found a name too tough. 
 And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; 
 She nerved her larnyx for the desperate thing, 
 And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring.
 
 Introduction. 29 
 
 Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, 
 Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; 
 From books degraded, there I sat at ease, 
 A drone, the envy of compulsory bees." 
 
 I add only one further extract, which will 
 possess a melancholy interest to all such as have 
 endeavored to glean the materials of Kevolution- 
 ary history from the lips of aged persons, who 
 took a part in the actual making of it, and, 
 finding the manufacture profitable, continued 
 the supply in an adequate proportion to the de 
 mand. 
 
 " Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad 
 
 His slow artillery up the Concord road, 
 
 A tale which grew in wonder, year by year, 
 
 As, every time he told it, Joe drew near 
 
 To the main fight, till, faded aud grown gray, 
 
 The orginal scene to bolder tints gave way; 
 
 Then Joe had heard the foe s scared double-quick 
 
 Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick, 
 
 And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, 
 
 Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop; 
 
 Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight 
 
 Had squared more nearly to his sense of right, 
 
 And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, 
 
 Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail." 
 
 I do not know that the foregoing extracts 
 ought not to be called my own rather than Mr.
 
 3 ;) Introduction. 
 
 Biglow s, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that 
 my file had left nothing of his in them. I 
 should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take 
 so great liberties with them, had I not more than 
 suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, 
 a very near ancestor having written a Latin 
 poem in the Harvard Gratulatio on the acces 
 sion of George the Third. Suffice it to ^ay, 
 that, whether not satisfied with such limited ap 
 probation as I could conscientiously bestow, or 
 from a sense of natural inaptitude, I know not, 
 certain it is that my young friend could never 
 be induced to any further essays in this kind. 
 He affirmed that it was to him like writing 
 in a foreign tongue, that Mr. Pope s versifica 
 tion was like the regular ticking of one of Wil- 
 lard s clocks, in which one could fancy, after 
 long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, 
 but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, 
 tick, after all, and that he had never seen a 
 sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in 
 forms so pleasing to the eye, as a fox-grape over 
 a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not 
 what, to the effect that the sweet-water would 
 only be the more disfigured by having its leaves 
 starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so
 
 Introduction. 31 
 
 he called him) hardly looked right with his 
 mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other 
 3uch opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, 
 attributing them rather to a defective education 
 and series untuned by too long familiarity with 
 purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral 
 sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency 
 since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that 
 his verses, as wanting as they certainly were in 
 classic polish and point, had somehow taken 
 hold of the public ear in a surprising manner. 
 So, only setting him right as to the quantity 
 of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow 
 the bent of his natural genius. 
 
 There are two things upon which it would 
 seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in 
 this place, the Yankee character and the Yan 
 kee dialect. And, first, of the Y T ankee charac 
 ter, which has wanted neither open maligners, 
 nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons 
 of those unskilful painters who have given to it 
 that hardness, angularity, and want of proper 
 perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to 
 their subject, but to their own niggard and un 
 skilful pencil. 
 
 New England was not so much the colony of a
 
 Introduction. 
 
 mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into the 
 wilderness. The little self-exiled band which 
 came hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but 
 to found a democracy. They came that they 
 might have the privilege to work and pray, to sft 
 upon hard benches and listen to painful preach 
 ers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty- 
 seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, 
 if the Greek might boast his Thermopylae, 
 where three hundred men fell in resisting the 
 Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth 
 Rock, where a handful of men, women and chil 
 dren not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, 
 famine, the wilderness and the yet more invinci 
 ble storge that drew them back to the green 
 island far away. These found no lotus growing 
 upon the surly shore, the taste of which could 
 make them forget their little native Ithaca; nor 
 were they so wanting to themselves in faith as 
 to burn their ship, but could see the fair west 
 wind belly the homeward sail, and then turn 
 unrepining to grapple with the terrible Un 
 known. 
 
 As Want was the prime foe these hardy ex- 
 odists had to fortress themselves against, so it is 
 little wonder if that traditional feud is long in
 
 Introduction. 33 
 
 wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the 
 old warfare were long ahealing, and an east wind 
 of hard times puts a new ache in every one of 
 them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn 
 book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean 
 finger of the hard schoolmaster, Necessity. 
 Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled English 
 men that came hither, but a hard-faced, atra 
 bilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrest 
 ling with the Lord in prayer, and who had 
 taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. 
 Add two hundred years influence of soil, cli 
 mate, and exposure, with its necessary result of 
 idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, 
 full of expedients, half-master of all trades, in 
 ventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, 
 not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points 
 against the old enemy Hunger, longanimous, 
 good at patching, not so careful for what is best 
 as for what will do, with a clasp to his purse and 
 a button to his pocket, not skilled to build 
 against Time, as in old countries, but against 
 sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the 
 world with no ~oo <TTO but his own two feet, 
 and no lever but his own long forecast. A 
 strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstances beget, 
 
 3
 
 3-i Introduction. 
 
 here in the New World, upon the old Puritan 
 stock, and the earth never before saw such mys- 
 tic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such 
 calculating-fanatacism, such cast-iron-enthusi 
 asm, such unwilling-humor, such close-fisted- 
 generosity. This new Grceculus esuriens will 
 make a living out of anything. He will invent 
 new trades as well as tools. His brain is his 
 capital, and he will get education at all risks. 
 Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make 
 a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterward. 
 In ccelum jusseris, ibit, or the other way either, 
 it is all one, so any thing is to be got by it. 
 Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more 
 like the Englishman of two centuries ago than 
 John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in 
 solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but 
 more of the original groundwork of character 
 remains. He feels more at home with Fulke 
 Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarks, George 
 Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern 
 English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at 
 least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, 
 Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there 
 were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered 
 the idea of the Invisible to be very much fat-
 
 Introduction. 35 
 
 tened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still 
 that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well 
 as of the Seen. To move John, you must mal e 
 your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an ab 
 stract idea will do for Jonathan. 
 
 V T0 THE INDULGENT READER. 
 MY friend, the Reverend Mr. Wilbur, having 
 been seized with a dangerous fit of illness, before 
 this Introduction had passed through the press, 
 and being incapacitated for all literary exertion, 
 sent to me his notes, memoranda. &c.. and re 
 quested me to fashion them into some shape more 
 fitting for the general eye. This, owing to the frag 
 mentary and disjointed state of his manuscripts, 
 I have felt wholly unable to do; yet, being unwill 
 ing that the reader should be deprived of such 
 parts of his lucubrations as seemed more finished, 
 and not well discerning how to segregate these 
 from the rest, I have concluded to send them all 
 to the press precisely as they are. 
 
 COLUMBUS NYE, Pastor of a Cliurch in Bunytoicn 
 Corner. 
 
 IT remains to speak of the Yankee dialect. And, 
 first, it may be premised, in a general way, that 
 any one much read in the writings of the early 
 colonists need not be told that the far greater share 
 of the words and phrases now esteemed peculiar 
 to New England, and local there, were brought
 
 3<J Introduction. 
 
 from the mother country. A person familiar with 
 the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts 
 will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, 
 many words now noted in English vocabularies as 
 archaic, the greater part of which were in common 
 use about the time of the King James translation 
 of the Bible. Shakspeare stands less in need of a 
 glossary to most New Englanders than to many a 
 native of the Old Country. The peculiarities of our 
 speech, however, are rapidly wearing out. As 
 there is no country where reading is so universal 
 and newspapers are so multitudinous, so no phrase 
 remains long local, but is transplanted in the mail 
 bags to every remotest corner of the land. Con 
 sequently our dialect approaches nearer to uni 
 formity than that of any other nation. 
 
 The English have complained of us for coining 
 new words. Many of those so stigmatized were 
 old ones by them forgotten, and all mako now an 
 unquestioned part of the currency, wherever Eng 
 lish is spoken. Undoubtedly, we have a right to 
 make new words, as they are needed by the fresh 
 aspects under which life presents itself here in the 
 New World; and, indeed, wherever a language is 
 alive, it grows. It might be questioned whether 
 we could not establish a stronger title to the own 
 ership of the English tongue than the mother- 
 Islanders themselves. Here, past all question, Is to 
 be its great home and centre. And not only is it 
 already spoken here by greater numbers, but with 
 a far higher popalar average of correctness, than
 
 Introduction. 37 
 
 in Britain. The great writers of it, too, we might 
 claim as ours, were ownership to be settled by the 
 number of readers and lovers. 
 
 As regards the provincialisms to be met with in 
 this volume, I may say that the reader will not 
 find one which is not (as I believe) either native or 
 imported with the early settlers, nor one which I 
 have not, with my own ears, heard in familiar use. 
 In the metrical portion of the book, I have en 
 deavored to adapt the spelling as nearly as possible 
 to the ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the 
 reader who deems me over-particular remember 
 this caution of Martial: 
 
 "Quern rccitas, meus cst, Fidentine, libellus; 
 Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuns." 
 
 A few further explanatory remarks will not be 
 impertinent. 
 
 I shall barely lay down a few general rules for 
 the reader s guidance. 
 
 1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough 
 sound to the r w T hen he can help it, and often dis 
 plays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even 
 before a vowel. 
 
 2. He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of self- 
 denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The 
 same of the final d, as han and stan for hand and 
 stand. 
 
 3. The h in such words as while, when, where, he 
 omits altogether. 
 
 4. In regard to a, he shows some inconsistency,
 
 38 Introduction. 
 
 sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, aa hev 
 for have, hendy for handy, ez for as, thet for that, and 
 again giving it the broad sound it has in father, aa 
 hdnsome for handsome. 
 
 5. To the sound ou he prefixes an c (hard to ex 
 emplify otherwise than orally). 
 
 The following passage in Shakspeare he would 
 recite thus: 
 
 " Neow is the winta uv eour discontent 
 
 Med glorious summa by this sun o Yock, 
 
 An all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour heouse 
 
 In the deep buzzum o the oshin buried; 
 
 Neow air eour breows beouud ith victorious 
 
 wreaths; 
 
 Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce; 
 Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins, 
 Eour dreffle marches to delightful measures. 
 Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled 
 
 front, 
 
 An neow, instid o mountin barebid steeds 
 To fright the souls o ferfle edverseries, 
 He capers nimly in a lady s chamber, 
 To the lascivious pleasiu uv a loot." 
 
 G. Au, in such words as daughter and slaughter, 
 he pronounces ah. 
 
 7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl ad 
 libitum. 
 
 [Mr. Wilbur s notes here become entirely frag 
 mentary. C. N.]
 
 Introduction. 31> 
 
 a. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biylow, I 
 thought the curious reader might be gratified with 
 a sight of the editorial effigies. And here a choice 
 between two was offered, the one a profile (en- 
 tirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait 
 painted by a native artist of much promise. The 
 first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in 
 the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs 
 has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire 
 of force on the part of the artist) into too close an 
 approach to actual strabismus. This slight diver 
 gence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary 
 model however, I may have been taught to regard 
 it in the light of a mercy rather than a cross, since 
 it enabled me to give as much of directness and 
 personal application to my discourses as met the 
 wants of my congregation, without risk of offend 
 ing any by being supposed to have him or her in 
 nay eye (as the saying is) seemed yet to Mrs. Wil 
 bur a sufficient objection to the engraving of the 
 aforesaid painting. We read of many who either 
 absolutely refused to allow the copying of their 
 features, as especially did Plotinus and Agesilaus 
 among the ancients, not to mention the more mod 
 ern instances of Scioppius Pakeottus, Pinellus.Vel- 
 serus, Gataker, and others, or were indifferent 
 thereto, as Cromwell. 
 
 j9. Yet was Ca?sar desirous of concealing his 
 baldness. Per contra, my, Lord Protector s careful-
 
 40 Introduction. 
 
 ness in the matter of his wart might be cited. Men 
 ^generally more desirous of being improved in their 
 * portraits than characters. Shall probably find 
 very unflattered likenesses of ourselves in Record 
 ing Angel s gallery. 
 
 Y- Whether any of our national peculiarities may 
 be traced to our use of stoves, as a certain close 
 ness of the lips in pronunciation, and a smothered 
 smoulcleringness of disposition, seldom roused to 
 open flame? An unrestrained intercourse with fire 
 probably conducive to generosity and hospitality 
 of soul. Ancient Mexicans used stoves, as the 
 friar Augustine Ruiz reports, Hakluyt. III., 468, 
 but Popish priests not always reliable authority. 
 
 To-day picked my Isabella grapes. Crop injured 
 by attacks of rose-bug in the spring. Whether 
 Xoah was justifiable in preserving this class of 
 insects? 
 
 8. Concerning Mr. Biglow s pedigree. Tolerably 
 certain that there was never a poet among his an 
 cestors. An ordination hymn attributed to a ma 
 ternal uncle, but perhaps a sort of production not 
 demanding the creative faculty. 
 
 His grandfather a painter of the grandiose or 
 Michael Angelo school. Seldom painted objects 
 smaller than houses or barns, and these with un 
 common expression.
 
 Introduction. 41 
 
 . Of the Wilburs no complete pedigree. The 
 crest said to be a icild boar, whence, perhaps, the 
 name. (?) A connection with the Earls of Wilbra- 
 ham (quasi wild boar ham) might be made out. 
 This suggestion worth following up. In 1G67, John 
 
 W. m. Expect , had issue, 1. John. 2. Haggai, 
 
 3. Expect, 4. Ruhamah, 5. Desire. 
 
 "Hear lyes y e bodye of Mrs. Expect Wilber, 
 Y e crewell salvages they kil d her 
 Together w tl1 other Christian soles eleaven, 
 October y e ix da ye, 1707. 
 Y* stream of Jordan sh as crost ore 
 And now expeacts me on y e other shore: 
 I live in hope her soon to join; 
 Her earthlye yeeres were forty and nine." 
 From Gravestone in Pckussctt, North Parish. 
 
 This is unquestionably the same John who 
 afterward (1711) married Tabitha Hagg or Ragg. 
 
 But if this were the case she seems to have died 
 early; for only three years after, namely, 1714, we 
 have evidence that he married Winifred, daughter 
 of Lieutenant Tipping. 
 
 He seems to have been a man of substance, for 
 we find him in 1G96 conveying " one undivided 
 eightieth part of a salt-meadow " in Yabbok, and 
 he commanded a sloop in 1702. 
 
 Those who doubt the importance of genealogical, 
 studies fuste potiux quam aryumcnto erudiendi. 
 
 I trace him as far as 1723, and there lose hinu. 
 In that year he was chosen selectman.
 
 42 Introduction. 
 
 No gravestone. Perhaps overthrown when new 
 hearse-house was built, 1802. 
 
 He was probably the son of John, who came 
 from Bilham Comit. Salop, circa 1(542. 
 
 This first John was a man of considerable im 
 portance, being twice mentioned with the honor 
 able prefix of Mr. in the town records. Name spelt 
 with two 7-s. 
 
 " Hear lyeth y bod [stone unhappily broken. ] 
 Mr. Ihon Willber [Esq.] [Unclose this in brackets af 
 doubtful. To me it seems clear.] 
 
 Ob t die [illegible; looks like xviii. ] iii [prob 
 
 1693.] 
 
 paynt 
 
 . deseased seinte : 
 
 A friend and [fath]er untoe all y e opreast, 
 Hee gave y wicked familists noe reaet, 
 When Sat[an bl]ewe his Antinomian blaste, 
 Wee clong to [Willber as a steadfjast maste. 
 
 [ A ]gaynst y e horrid Qua[kers] 
 
 It is greatly to be lamented that this curiou? 
 epitaph is mutilated. It is said that the sacrile 
 gious British soldiers made a target of this stone 
 during the war of Independence. How odious an 
 animosity which pauses not at the grave! Ho\v 
 brutal that which spares not the monuments of 
 authentic history! This is not improbably from 
 the pen of Rev. Moody Pyram, who is mentioned 
 by Hubbard as having been noted for a silver vein 
 of poetry. If his papers be still extant, a copy 
 aiight possibly be recovered.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 No. I. A Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of 
 Jaalam to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, 
 Editor of the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem 
 of his Son, Mr. Hosea Biglow, 45 
 
 No. II. A Letter from Mr. Hosea Biglow to the 
 Hon. J. T. Buckingham, Editor of the Boston 
 Courier, covering a Letter from Mr. B. Sawin, 
 Private in the Massachusetts Regiment, .... 55 
 
 No. III. What Mr. Robinson thinks, 73 
 
 No. IV. Remarks of Increase D. O Phace, Esquire, 
 at an Extrumpery Caucus in State Street, re 
 ported by Mr. H. Biglow, 89 
 
 No. V. The Debate in the Sennit. Sot to a Nusry 
 
 Rhyme, 110 
 
 No. VI. The Pious Editor s Creed, 122 
 
 No. VII. A Letter from a Candidate for the Presi 
 dency in Answer to suttin Q.uestions proposed by 
 Mr. Hosea Biglow, inclosed in a Note from Mr. 
 Biglow to S. H. Gay, Esq. , Editor of the National 
 Anti-slavery Standard, 133 
 
 No. VIII. A Second Letter from B. Sawin, Esq., . 147 
 
 No. IX. A Third Letter from B. Sawin, Esq., . . 171 
 
 GLOSSARY, 195 
 
 INDEX, 201 
 
 (43)
 
 THE BIGLOW PAPERS. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE 
 HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE 
 BOSTON COURIER, INCLOSING A POEM OF HIS 
 SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW. 
 
 JAYLEM, June 1846. 
 
 MISTER EDDYTER: Our Hosea wuz down to 
 Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a 
 struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, 
 with 2 fellers a drumniin and flfin arter him like 
 nil nater. the sarjunt he tliotit Hosea hedn t gut 
 his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo s though he d 
 jest com down, so he cal lated to hook him in, 
 but Hosy woodn t take none o his sarse for all he 
 lied much as 20 Rooster s tales stuck onto his hat 
 and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down 
 on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and 
 trousis, let alone -wiit nater lied sot in his f eaters, 
 to make a G pounder out on. 
 
 wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and 
 arter I d gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin 
 round like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old
 
 46 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our 
 Hosee s gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, 
 don t you Bee skeered, ses I, he s oney amakin 
 pottery* ses i, he s oilers on hand at that ere 
 busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum 
 mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, 
 hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to 
 go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint 
 aney grate shows o book larnin himself, bimeby 
 he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled 
 with em as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz 
 True grit. 
 
 Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call em hisn now, 
 cos the parson kind o slicked off sum o the last 
 varses, but he told Hosee he didn t want to put 
 his ore in to tetch to the Rest on em, bein they wuz 
 verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed 
 suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes or sum 
 sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o didn t hear 
 him, for I never hearn o nobody o that name 
 in this villadge, and I ve lived here man and boy 
 76 year cum next tater diggin, and thair aint no 
 wheres a kitting spryer u I be. 
 
 If you print em I wish you d jest let folks know 
 who hosy s father is, cos my ant Keziah used to 
 say it s nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin 
 though, and he s a likely kind o lad. 
 
 EZEKIEL BIGLOW. 
 
 *Aut insanit, aut versos facit.H.. W.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 47 
 
 THRASH away, you ll hev to rattle 
 
 On them kittle drums o yourn, 
 Taint a knowin kind o cattle 
 
 Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; 
 Put in stiff, you fifer feller, 
 
 Let folks see how spry you be, 
 Guess you ll toot till you are yeller 
 
 Fore you git ahold o me! 
 
 Thet air flag s a lettle rotten, 
 
 Hope it aint your Sunday s best; 
 Fact! it takes a sight o cotton 
 
 To stuff out a soger s chest: 
 Sence we farmers hev to pay fer t, 
 
 Ef you must wear humps like these, 
 Sposin you should try salt hay fer t 
 
 It would du ez slick ez grease. 
 
 Twouldn t suit them Southern fellers, 
 
 They re a dreffle graspin set, 
 We must oilers blow the bellers 
 
 Wen they want their irons het; 
 May be it s all right ez preachm , 
 
 But my narves it kind o grates, 
 Wen I see the overreachin 
 
 them nigger-drivin States.
 
 48 The Biglow Paper-. 
 
 Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, 
 
 Haint they cut a thimderin swarth, 
 (Helped by Yankee renegaders,) 
 
 Thru the vartu o the Xorth! 
 We begin to think it s nater 
 
 To take sarse an not be riled; 
 Who d expect to see a tater 
 
 All on eend at bein biled? 
 
 Ez fer war, I call it murder, 
 
 There you hev it plain an flat; 
 I don t want to go no furder 
 
 Than my Testyment fer that; 
 God hez sed so plump an fairly, 
 
 It s ez long ez it is broad, 
 An you ve gut to git up airly 
 
 Ef you want to take in God. 
 
 Taint your eppyletts an feathers 
 
 Make the thing a grain more right; 
 Taint afollerin your bell-wethers 
 
 Will excuse ye in His sight; 
 Ef you take a sword an dror it, 
 
 An go stick a feller thru, 
 Guv ment aint to answer for it, 
 
 God ll send the bill to you.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 49 
 
 Wut s the use o meeting-goin 
 
 Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 
 Ef it s right to go amowin 
 
 Feller-men like oats an rye? 
 I dimno but wut it s pooty 
 
 Training round in bobtail coats, 
 But it s curus Christian dooty 
 
 This ere cnttin folks s throats. 
 
 They may talk o Freedom s airy 
 
 Tell they re pupple in the face, 
 It s a grand gret cemetary 
 
 Fer the barthrights of our race; 
 They jest want this Californy 
 
 So s to lug new slave-states in 
 To abuse ye, an to scorn ye, 
 
 An to plunder ye like sin. 
 
 Aint it cute to see a Yankee 
 
 Take sech everlastin pains, 
 All to git the Devil s thankee, 
 
 Hclpin on em weld their chains? 
 Wy, it s jest ez clear ez figgers, 
 
 Clear ez one an one make two, 
 Chaps thet make black slaves o nigg-ers 
 
 Want to make wite slaves o you.
 
 50 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Tell ye jest the eend I ve come to 
 
 Arter cipherin plaguy smart, 
 An it makes a handy sum, tu, 
 
 Any gump could larn by heart; 
 Laborin man an laborin ? woman 
 
 Hev one glory an one shame, 
 Ev y thin thet s done inhuman 
 
 Injers all on em the same. 
 
 Taint by turnin out to hack folks 
 
 You re agoin to git your right, 
 Nor by lookin down on black folks 
 
 Coz you re put upon by wite; 
 Slavery aint o nary color, 
 
 Taint the hide thet makes it wus, 
 All it keers fer in a feller 
 
 S jest to make him fill its pus. 
 
 "\Yant to tackle me in, du ye? 
 
 I expect you ll hev to wait; 
 "Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye 
 
 You ll begin to kal late; 
 Spose the crows wun t fall to pickin 
 
 All the carkiss from your bones, 
 Coz you helped to give a lickin 
 
 To them poor half-Spanish drones?
 
 The Biglow Papers. 51 
 
 Jest go home an ask our Nancy 
 
 Wether I d be sech a goose 
 Ez to jine ye, guess you d fancy 
 
 The etarnal bung wuz loose! 
 She wants me for home consumption, 
 
 Let alone the hay s to mow, 
 Ef you re arter folks o gumption, 
 
 You ve a darned long row to hoe. 
 
 Take them editors thet s crowin 
 
 Like a cockerel three months old, 
 Don t ketch any on em goin , 
 
 Though they be so blasted bold; 
 Aint they a prime set o fellers? 
 
 Tore they think on t they will sprout, 
 (Like a peach thet s got the yellers,) 
 
 With the meanness bustin out. 
 
 Wai, go long to help em stealin 
 
 Bigger pens to cram with slaves, 
 Help the men thet s oilers dealin 
 
 Insults on your fathers graves; 
 Help the strong to grind the feeble, 
 
 Help the many agin the few, 
 Help the men thet call your people 
 
 Witewashed slaves an peddlin crewl
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Massachusetts, God forgive her, 
 
 She s akneelin with the rest, 
 She, thet ough to ha clung fer ever 
 
 In her grand old eagle-ne&t; 
 She thet ough to stand so fearless 
 
 Wile the wracks are round her hurled, 
 Holdin up a beacon peerless 
 
 To the oppressed of all the world! 
 
 Haint they sold your colored seamen? 
 
 Haint they made your env ys wiz? 
 TFwfll make ye act like freemen? 
 
 WwHl git your dander riz? 
 Come, I ll tell ye wut I m thinkin 
 
 Is our clooty in this fix, 
 They d ha done ; t ez quick ez winkin 
 
 In the days o* seventy-six. 
 
 Clang the bells in every steeple, 
 
 Call all true men to disown 
 The tradoocers of our people, 
 
 The enslavers o their own; 
 Let our dear old Bay State proudly 
 
 Put the trumpet to her mouth, 
 Let her ring this messidge loudly 
 
 In the ears of a]i the South:
 
 The Biglow Papers. 53 
 
 " I ll return ye good fer evil 
 
 Much ez we frail mortils can, 
 But I wun t go help the Devil j 
 
 Makin man the cus o man; 
 Call me coward, call me traitor, 
 
 Jest ez suits your mean idees, 
 Here I stand a tyrant-hater, 
 
 An the friend o God an Peace!" 
 
 Ef I d my way I hed ruther 
 
 We should go to work an part, 
 They take one way, we take t other, 
 
 Guess it wouldn t break my heart; 
 Man lied ough to put asunder 
 
 Them thet God has noways jined; 
 An I shouldn t gretly wonder 
 
 Ef there s thousands o my mind. 
 
 [The first recruiting sergeant on record I con 
 ceive to have been that individual who is men 
 tioned in the Book of Job as going to and fro in the 
 earth, and walking up and down in it. Bishop Lati- 
 mer will have him to have been a bishop, but to 
 me that other calling would appear more con 
 genial. The sect of Cainites is not yet extinct, 
 who esteemed the first-born of Adam to be the 
 most worthy, not only because of that privilege of 
 primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able to
 
 54 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 overcome and slay his younger brother. That was 
 a wise saying of the famous Marquis Pescara to 
 the Papal Legate, that it was impossible for men to 
 serve Mars and Christ at the same time. Yet in time 
 past the profession of arms was judged to be 
 X.O.T i^H^r t > that of a gentleman, nor does this 
 opinion want for strenuous upholders even in our 
 day. Must we suppose, then, that the profession 
 of Christianity was only intended for losels, or, at 
 best, to afford an opening for plebeian ambition? 
 Or shall we hold with that nicely metaphysical 
 Pomeranian, Captain Vratz. who was Count 
 Konigsmark s chief instrument in the murder of 
 Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salvation has 
 been arranged with an especial eye to the neces 
 sities of the upper classes, and that " God would 
 consider a gentleman and deal with him suitably to 
 the condition and profession he had placed him 
 in" ? It may be said of us all, Exemplo plus quam 
 ratione viiitnus.H. \V.]
 
 No. II. 
 A LETTER 
 
 FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J. T. 
 BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, 
 COVERING A LETTER FROM MR. B. SAWIN, 
 PRIVATE IN THE MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT. 
 
 [Tins letter of Mr. Sawin s was not originally 
 written in verse. Mr. Biglow, thinking it peculiarly 
 susceptible of metrical adornment, translated it, 
 so to speak, into his own vernacular tongue. This 
 is not the time to consider the question, whether 
 rhyme be a mode of expression natural to the 
 human race. If leisure from other and more im 
 portant avocations be granted, I will handle the 
 matter more at large in an appendix to the 
 present volume. In this place I will barely remark 
 that I have sometimes noticed in the unlanguaged 
 prattlings of infants a fondness for alliteration, 
 assonance, and even rhyme, in which natural pre 
 disposition we may trace the three degrees 
 through which our Anglo-Saxon verse rose to its 
 culmination in the poetry of Pope. I would not 
 be understood as questioning in these remarks 
 that pious theory which supposes that children, if 
 left entirely to themselves, would naturally dis 
 course in Hebrew. For this the authority of one 
 
 65
 
 56 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 experiment is claimed, and I could, with Sir 
 Thomas Browne, desire its establishment, inas 
 much as the acquirement of that sacred tongue 
 would thereby be facilitated. I am aware that 
 Herodotus states the conclusion of Psammeticus 
 to have been in favor of a dialect of the Phrygian. 
 But, beside the chance that a trial of this im 
 portance would hardly be blessed to a Pagan 
 monarch whose only motive was curiosity, we 
 have on the Hebrew side the comparatively recent 
 investigation of James the Fourth of Scotland. I 
 will add to this prefatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, 
 though a native of Jaalam, has never been a 
 stated attendant on the religious exercises of my 
 congregation. I consider my humble efforts pros 
 pered in that not one of my sheep hath ever 
 indued the wolf s clothing of war, save for the 
 comparatively innocent diversion of a militia 
 training. Not that my flock are backward to 
 undergo the hardship of defcnsirc warfare. They 
 serve cheerfully in the great army which fights 
 even unto death t>ro aria ct focix, accoutred with 
 the spade, the axe. the plane, the sledge, the 
 spelling-book, and other such effectual weapons 
 against want and ignorance and unthrift. I have 
 taught them (under God) to esteem our human 
 institutions as but tents of a night, to be stricken 
 whenever Truth puts the bugle to her lips and 
 sounds a march to the heights ,of wider-viewed 
 intelligence and more perfect organization. 
 H. \V.]
 
 The Biglow Papers. 57 
 
 MISTER BuciuxrM, the follerin Billet was writ 
 hum by a Yung feller of our town that wuz cussed 
 fool enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a 
 Drum and fife, it ain t Nater for a feller to let 
 on that he s sick o any bizness that He went intn 
 off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather 
 cal late he s middlin tired voluntearin By this 
 Time. I bleeve u may put dependunts on his 
 statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on 
 him let Alone his haviii what Parson Wilbur cals 
 a ponyxJtony for cocktales, and he ses it wuz a 
 soshiashun of idees sot him agoin arter the Crootin 
 Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat. 
 
 his Folks gin the letter to me and i shew it to 
 parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed, 
 send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, i don t oilers 
 agree with him, ses he, but by Time,* ses he, I du 
 like a feller that ain t a Feared. 
 
 I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns hear 
 and thair. We re kind o prest with Ilayiu. 
 Ewers respecfly 
 
 HOSEA BIGLOW". 
 
 * In relation to this expression, I cannot but 
 think that Mr. Biglow has been too hasty in 
 attributing it to me. Though Time be a compar 
 atively innocent personage to swear by, and though 
 Lougiuus in his discourse lhp: Y > l ou<s has com 
 mended timely oaths as not only a useful but sub 
 lime figure of speech, yet I have always kept my 
 lips free from that abomination. Odi profantim 
 vulf/us, I hate your swearing and hectoring fel 
 lows. H. W.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 THIS kind o sogerin aint a mite like our Octo 
 ber trainin , 
 
 A chap could clear right out from there ef t 
 only looked like rainin . 
 
 Air th Cimnles, tu, could kivcr up their shap- 
 poes with bandanners, 
 
 An send the insines skootin to the barroom 
 with their banners, 
 
 (Fear o gittin on em spotted,) an a feller could 
 cry quarter 
 
 Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum 
 an water. 
 
 Recollect wut fun we lied, you n I an Ezry 
 Hollis, 
 
 Up there to Waltham plain last fall, ahavin the 
 Cornwallis ? * 
 
 This sort o thing aint jest like thet, I wish 
 thet I was f urder, f 
 
 Nimepunce a day fer killin folks comes kind o 
 low fer murder, 
 
 (Wy I ve worked out to slarterin some fer Dea 
 con Cephas Billins, 
 
 * i bait the Site of a feller with a uiuskit as I du 
 pizii But their is fuii to a cornwallis I aint agoiu 
 to deny it. H. B. 
 
 t he means Not quite so fur i guess. H. B.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 59 
 
 An in the hardest times there wuz I oilers 
 tetched ten shillins,) 
 
 There s sntthin gits into my throat thet makes 
 it hard to swaller, 
 
 It comes so nateral to think about a hempen col 
 lar; 
 
 It s glory, but, in spite o all my tryin to git 
 callous, 
 
 I feel a kind o in a cart, arid in to the gallus. 
 
 But wen it comes to beiii killed, I tell ye I felt 
 streaked 
 
 The fust time ever I found out wy baggonets 
 wuz peaked; 
 
 Here s how it wuz: I started out to go to a fan 
 dango, 
 
 The sentinul he ups an sez, " Thet s lurder an 
 you can go." 
 
 " X one o your sarse," sez I; sez he, " Stan 
 back!" "Aint you a buster?" 
 
 Sez I, " I m up to all thet air, I guess I ve ben 
 to muster; 
 
 I know wy sentinuls air sot; you aint agoin to 
 eat us; 
 
 Caleb haint no monopoly to court the seenoree- 
 tas;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 My folks to hum air full ez good ez hisn be by 
 
 golly!" 
 An so ez I wuz goin by, not thinkin wut would 
 
 folly, 
 The everlastin cus he stuck his one-pronged 
 
 pitchfork in me 
 An made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz 
 
 an in my. 
 Wai, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin in ole 
 
 Funnel 
 Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our 
 
 Leftenant Cunnle, 
 (It s Mister Secondary Bolles,* thet writ the 
 
 prize peace essay; 
 Thet s why he didn t list himself along o us, I 
 
 dessay,) 
 An Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but don t 
 
 put his foot in it, 
 Coz human life s so sacred thet he s principled 
 
 agin it, 
 Though I myself can t rightly see it s any wus 
 
 achokin on em 
 Than puttin bullets thru their lights, or with 
 
 a bagnet pokin on em; 
 
 * the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he 
 oilers stuck to his books like cobbler s wax to an 
 ile-stone. H. B.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 61 
 
 How dreffle slick he reeled it off, (like Blitz at 
 
 our lyceum 
 Ahaulin ribbins from his chops so quick you 
 
 skeercely see em,) 
 About the Anglo-Saxon race (an saxons would 
 
 be handy 
 To du the buryin down here upon the Rio 
 
 Grandy), 
 About our patriotic pas an our star-spangled 
 
 banner, 
 Our country s bird alookin on an singin out 
 
 hosanner, 
 An how he (Mister B. himself) wuz happy fer 
 
 Ameriky, 
 I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a leetle mite his- 
 
 tericky. 
 I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind 
 
 o privilege 
 Atrampin round thru Boston streets among 
 
 the gutter s drivelage; 
 I act lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little 
 
 drummin , 
 An it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acom- 
 
 in 
 
 Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore 
 in the state prison)
 
 62 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 An every feller felt ez though all Mexico wuz 
 
 hisn.* 
 This ere s about the meanest place a skunk 
 
 could wal diskiver 
 (Saltillo s Mexican, I b lieve, fer wut we call 
 
 Saltriver). 
 The sort o trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all 
 
 nater, 
 
 I d give a year s pay fer a smell o one good blue- 
 nose tater; 
 The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to 
 
 be so charmin 
 Throughout is swarmin with the most alarmin 
 
 kind o varmin . 
 He talked about delishis froot?, but then it wuz 
 
 a wopper all, 
 The holl on t s mud an prickly pears, with here 
 
 an there a chapparal; 
 
 * it must be aloud that thare s a streak o natt r 
 in loviu sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest 
 things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods 
 dealer (deekon off a cbutch inayby) u riggiu him 
 self out in the Weigh they du and struttin round 
 in the Reign aspilin his trowsis and makiu wet 
 goods of himself. Ef any thin s foolisher and 
 moor dieklus than militerry gloary it is milisliy 
 gloary. H. B.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 63 
 
 You see a feller peekin out, an , fust you know, 
 
 a lariat 
 Is round your throat an you a copse, fore you 
 
 can say, " Wut air ye at?"* 
 You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not 
 
 be irrelevant 
 To say I ve seen a scarobceus pilularius f big ez 
 
 a year old elephant,) 
 The rigiment come up one day in time to stop 
 
 a red bug 
 From runnin off with Cunnle Wright, t wuz 
 
 jest a common cimex lectularius. 
 One night I started up on eend an thought I 
 
 wuz to hum agin, 
 I heern a horn, thinks I it s Sol the fisherman 
 
 hez come agin, 
 His bellowses is sound enough, ez I m a livin 
 
 creeter, 
 I felt a thing go thru my leg, t wuz nothin 
 
 more ii a skeeter! 
 
 * these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank 
 Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more 
 Herowick tha bekum. H. B. 
 
 t it wuz " tumblebug " as he Writ it, but the 
 parson put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid 
 better uieeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl 
 to Boston and tha wouldn t stan it no how. 
 idnow as tha icood and idnow as tha wood. H. B.
 
 64 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Then there s the yaller fever, tu, they call it 
 
 here el vomito, 
 (Come, thet wun t du, you landcrab there, I tell 
 
 ye to le go my toe! 
 My gracious! it s a scorpion thet s took a shine 
 
 to play with t, 
 I darsn t skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he d run 
 
 away with t.) 
 Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong 
 
 persuasion 
 Thet Mexicans worn t human beans,* an 
 
 ourang outang nation, 
 A sort o folks a chap could kill an never dream 
 
 on t arter, 
 No more n a feller d dream o pigs thet he hed 
 
 hed to slarter; 
 I d an idee thet they were built arter the darkie 
 
 fashion all, 
 An kickin colored folks about, you know, s a 
 
 kind o national; 
 But wen I jined I worn t so wise ez thet air 
 
 queen o Sheby, 
 Fer, come to look at em, they aint much dif- 
 
 f rent from wut we be, 
 
 * ho means human beins, that s wut he means, 
 i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans 
 ware the Xisle Poles conies from. H. B.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 65 
 
 An here we air ascrougin em out o thir own 
 
 dominions, 
 Ashelterin em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle s 
 
 pinions, 
 Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack 
 
 o s trowsis 
 An walk him Spanish clean right out o all his 
 
 homes an houses; 
 Wai, it does seem a curus way, but then hooraw 
 
 fer Jackson! 
 It must be right, fer Caleb sez it s reg lar Anglo- 
 
 saxon. 
 The Mex cans don t fight fair, they say, they 
 
 pk n all the water, 
 An du amazin lots o things thet isn t wut they 
 
 ough to; 
 Bein they haint no lead, they make tlrair bullets 
 
 out o copper 
 An shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Ca 
 leb sez aint proper; 
 He sez they d ough to stan right up an let us 
 
 pop em fairly, 
 (Guess wen he ketches em at thet he ll hev to 
 
 git up airly,) 
 Thet our nation s bigger n theirn an so its 
 
 rights air bigger, 
 
 5
 
 66 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 An thet it s all to make em free thet we air pul- 
 
 lin trigger, 
 Thet Anglo Saxondom s idee s abreakin em io 
 
 pieces, 
 An thet idee s thet every man doos jest wut he 
 
 damn pleases; 
 Ef I don t make his meanin clear, perhaps in 
 
 some respex I can, 
 I know thet " every man " don t mean a nigger 
 
 or a Mexican; 
 An there s another thing I know, an thet is, 
 
 ef these creeturs, 
 
 Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State- 
 prison feeturs, 
 Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an 
 
 spout on t, 
 The gals ould count the silver spoons the min- 
 
 nit they cleared out on t. 
 
 This goin ware glory waits ye haint one agree 
 able feetur, 
 
 An if it worn t fer wakin snakes, I d home agin 
 short meter; 
 
 0, wouldn t I be off, quick time, eft worn t thet 
 I wuz sartin
 
 The Biglow Papers. 67 
 
 They d let the daylight into me to pay me fer 
 
 desartin! 
 I don t anprove o tellin tales, but jest to you I 
 
 may state 
 OUT ossifers aint wut they wuz afore they left 
 
 the Bay-state; 
 Then it wuz " Mister Sawin, sir, you re middlin* 
 
 well now, be ye? 
 Step up an take a nipper, sir; I m dreffle glad 
 
 to see ye"; 
 But now it s "Ware s my eppylet? here, Sawin, 
 
 step an fetch it! 
 An mind your eye, be thund rin spry, or, damn 
 
 ye, you shall ketch it!" 
 Wai, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, 
 
 but by mighty, 
 Ef I hed some on em to hum, I d give em 
 
 linkum vity, 
 I d play the rogue s march on their hides an 
 
 other music follerin 
 
 But I must close my letter here, for one on em s 
 
 ahollerin , 
 These Anglosason ossifers, wal, taint no use 
 
 ajawin , 
 
 I m safe enlisted fer the war, 
 Yourn, 
 BIEDOFREDOM SAWIN.
 
 68 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 [Those have not been wanting (as. indeed, when 
 hath Satan been to seek for attorneys?) who have 
 maintained that our late inroad upon Mexico was 
 undertaken, not so much for tne avenging of any 
 national quarrel, as for the spreading of free insti 
 tutions and of Protestantism. Capita rlx duaTjus 
 Anticyris medenda! Verily I admire that no pious 
 sergeant among these new Crusaders beheld 
 Martin Luther riding at the front of the host upon 
 a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion 
 of Mexico, the zealous Diaz (spawn though he were 
 of the Scarlet Woman) was favored with a vision 
 of St. James of Gompostella, skewering the infidels 
 upon his apostolical lance. We read, also, that 
 Richard of the lion heart, having gone to Palestine 
 on a similar errand of mercy, was divinely encour 
 aged to cut the throats of such Paynims as re 
 fused to swallow the bread of life (doubtless that 
 they might thereafter be incapacitated for swallow 
 ing the filthy gobbets of Mahound) by angels of 
 heaven, who cried to the king and his knights, 
 Seigneurs, tuez! tuez! providentially using the 
 French tongue, as being the only one understood 
 by their auditors. This would argue for the pan- 
 toglottisni of these celestial intelligences, while, on 
 the other hand, the Devil, tcstc Cotton Mather, is 
 unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet 
 must he be a semeiologist the most expert, making 
 himself intelligible to every people and kindred by 
 signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, 
 than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his
 
 The Biglow Papers. 69 
 
 finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can 
 by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string 
 captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial 
 oratory is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails 
 a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; 
 before another, a Presidential chair, or a tide- 
 waiter s stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter 
 what. To us, dangling there over our heads, they 
 seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven, 
 sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, 
 they are all one, bits of fuzzy cotton. 
 
 This, however, by the way. It is time now 
 revocare {/radiiin. While so many miracles of this 
 sort, vouched by eyewitnesses, have encouraged 
 the arms of Papists, not to speak of those Dioscuri 
 (whom we must conclude imps ef the pit) who 
 sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, 
 it is strange that our first American crusade was 
 not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is 
 said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our 
 armies. This opens the question, whether, 
 when our hands are strengthened to make great 
 slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and 
 demonstratively certain that this might is added 
 to us from above, or whether some Potentate from 
 an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, 
 as there are few pies into which his meddling 
 digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and 
 Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a 
 victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the 
 hue warV Or lias that day become less an object
 
 70 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 of his especial care since the year 1(J97, when so 
 manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William 
 Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he 
 and all on shipboard with him were starving, a 
 dolphin was sent daily, " which was enough to 
 serve ern; only on Saturdays they still catched a 
 couple, and on the Lord s Dayx they could catch 
 none at all " ? Haply they might have been per 
 mitted, by way of mortification, to take some few 
 sculping (those banes of the salt-water angler), 
 which unseemly fish would, moreover, have con 
 veyed to them a symbolical reproof for their 
 breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect 
 of our mariners as Cape Cod Clergymen. 
 
 It has been a refreshment to many nice con 
 sciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would 
 not regard with eyes of approval the (by many 
 esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own 
 myself to be so far of that mind, that I could not 
 but set my face against this Mexican Polka, 
 though danced to the Presidential piping with 
 a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country 
 should be seized with another such mania dc 
 propaganda Jide, I think it would be wise to fill our 
 bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge 
 Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which 
 would produce a mixture of the highest explosive 
 power, and to wrap every one of our cannon balls 
 in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of 
 which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of 
 Popery- Those iron evangelists would thus bo
 
 The Biglow Papers. 71 
 
 able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth 
 in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. 
 I have seen lads, uuimpregnate with the more 
 sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure 
 pickerel, taking their unwary aicxta beneath the 
 lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and 
 small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was 
 unknown to the Apostles (not to enter here upon 
 the question whether it were discovered before 
 that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to 
 the age in which we live and say shooters as well 
 as fisltcrs of men? 
 
 I do much fear that, we shall be seized now 
 and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we 
 have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in 
 Papistical mire excite our horror in exact propor 
 tion to the size and desirableness of their vine 
 yards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants 
 have been made by this war, I moan those who 
 protested against it. Fewer they were than I could 
 wish, for one might imagine America to have been 
 colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African 
 animals of the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word Is ^Vo 
 to us all. There is some malformation or defect 
 of the vocal organs, which either prevents our 
 uttering it at all. or gives it so thick a pronuncia 
 tion as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with 
 the national pudding, or watering in expectation 
 thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory 
 mojosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public 
 Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to pro-
 
 72 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 test against e corde cordium. And by what College 
 of Cardinals is this our God s-vicar, our binder 
 and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred con 
 clave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious 
 atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that 
 we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit, 
 cushion, this guides the editor s pen, this wags the 
 senator s tongue. This decides what Scriptures 
 are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into tho 
 Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered 
 upon Solon, OUTCU d^fioytov xaxuv e/o/ T at ^ xa ^ 
 ixdaru). This unclean spirit is skilful to assume 
 various shapes. I have known it to enter my own 
 study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under 
 the semblance of a wealthy member of my con 
 gregation. It were a great blessing, if every par 
 ticular of what in the sum we call popular senti 
 ment could carry about the name of its manu 
 facturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab 
 under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy, "Our 
 country, right or wrong," by tracing its original 
 to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the 
 Bungtown Feneibles. H. W.]
 
 No. III. 
 WHAT MR. EOBINSON THINKS. 
 
 [A FEW remarks on the following verses will not 
 be out of place. The satire in them was not meant 
 to have any personal, but only a general, applica 
 tion. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they 
 were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow had 
 never heard, until he saw the letter itself. The 
 position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he 
 would not have chosen had the election been left 
 to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is 
 obliged to select some individual who has made 
 himself their exponent, and in whom they are im 
 personate, to the end that what he says may not, 
 through ambiguity, be dissipated temtes in auras. 
 For what says Seneca? Longum itcr iw prtfcepta, 
 breve ct eftiracc per c.rcmpla. A bad principle is 
 comparatively harmless while it continues to be 
 an abstraction, nor can the general mind compre 
 hend it fully till it is printed in that large type 
 which all men can read at sight, namely, the life 
 and character, the sayings and doings, of partic 
 ular persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches 
 of Satan, that he never exposes himself directly 
 to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this 
 neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to 
 wound him through them, if at all. He holds our
 
 74 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 affections as hostages, the while he patches up a 
 truce with our conscience. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the 
 true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but 
 only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood 
 start from the same point, and sometimes even go 
 along together for a little way, his business Is to 
 follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and 
 to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. 
 Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There 
 is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no 
 more be made ridiculous than an oak or pine. The 
 danger of the satirist is, that continual use may 
 deaden his sensibility to the force of language. 
 He becomes more and more liable to strike harder 
 than he knows or intends. He may be careful to 
 put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget, that, the 
 older they grow, the more plainly may the 
 knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of 
 contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of 
 victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that 
 dust of the ring which obscures Truth s wreath of 
 simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my 
 young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand 
 laid on his arm, aliquid sufllaminandus crat. I 
 have never thought it good husbandry to water 
 the tender plants of reform with aqua fortis, yet, 
 where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry 
 gardener who should wage a whole day s war with 
 an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the 
 garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of
 
 The Biglow Papers. 75 
 
 Attic salt will wither them up. Est ars ct am 
 malcdicendi, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard 
 thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the 
 lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may 
 conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that 
 " one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in 
 hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses 
 which are not lions." H. W.] 
 
 GUVEXER B. is a sensible man; 
 
 He stays to his home an looks arter his folks; 
 He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, 
 An into nobody s tater-patch pokes; 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 
 
 My! aint it terrible? "Wut shall we du? 
 
 We can t never choose him, o course, thet s 
 
 flat; 
 
 Guess we shall hev to come round, (don t you?) 
 An go in fer thunder an guns, an all that; 
 Fer John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 
 
 Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: 
 
 He s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
 
 76 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, 
 He s ben true to one party, an thet is him 
 self; 
 
 So John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 
 
 Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; 
 
 He don t vally principle more n an old cud; 
 "Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, 
 But glory an gunpowder, plunder an blood? 
 So John P. 
 Eobinson he 
 Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 
 
 "We were gittin on nicely up here to our village, 
 "With good old idees o wut s right an wut 
 
 aint, 
 We kind o thought Christ went agin war an 
 
 pillage, 
 
 An thet eppyletts worn t the best mark of a 
 saint; 
 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez this kind o thing s an exploded idee.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 77 
 
 The side of our country must oilers be took, 
 An Presidunt Polk, you know, lie is our coun 
 try; 
 
 An the angel thet writes all our sins in a book 
 Puts the debit to him, an to us the per contry; 
 An John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez this is his view o the thing to a T. 
 
 Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; 
 Sez they re nothin on airth but jest fee, faw, 
 
 fum; 
 An thet all this big talk of our destinies 
 
 Is half on it ignorance, an t other half rum; 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 
 Sez it aint no sech thing; an , of course, so 
 must we. 
 
 Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life 
 Thet th Apostles rigged out in their swaller- 
 
 tail coats, 
 
 An marched round in front of a drum an a fife, 
 To git some on em office, an some on em 
 votes; 
 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 
 Sez they didn t know everythin down ia 
 Judee.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Wai, it s a marcy we ve gut folks to tells us 
 The rights an the wrongs o these matters, I 
 
 vow, 
 
 God sends country lawyers, an other wise fellers, 
 To drive the world s team wen it gits in a 
 slough; 
 
 Fer John P. 
 Robinson he 
 
 Sez the world ll go right, ef he hollers out 
 Gee! 
 
 [THE attentive reader will doubtless have per 
 ceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that 
 pernicious sentiment," Our country, right or 
 wrong." It is an abuse of language to call a cer 
 tain portion of land, much more, certain person 
 ages elevated for the time being to high station, our 
 country. I would not sever nor loosen a single one 
 of those ties by which we are united to the spot 
 of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the respect due 
 to the Magistrate. I love our own Bay State too 
 well to do the one, and as for the other, I have 
 myself for nigh forty years exercised, however un 
 worthily, the function of Justice of the Peace, 
 having been called thereto by the unsolicited 
 kindness of that most excellent man and upright 
 patriot, Caleb Strong. Patriot fumus igne alieno 
 lucuhntior is best qualified with this. Ubi Zi.Vr/fM, 
 ibi vatria. "We are inhabitants of two worlds, and
 
 The Biglow Papers. 79 
 
 owe a double, but not a divided, allegiance. In 
 virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts 
 a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as 
 spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible 
 and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of 
 the soul whose claim absolves us from our other 
 and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal 
 realm which we represent to ourselves uuder the 
 names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terres 
 trial organizations are but far-off approaches to so 
 fair a model, and they all are verily traitors who 
 resist not any attempt to divert them from this 
 their original iatendment. When, therefore, one 
 would have us to fling up our caps and shout with 
 the multitude," Our country, howcrer bounded ! " 
 he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the 
 less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to 
 the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our 
 duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our 
 true country is bounded on the north and the 
 south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and 
 when she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by 
 so much as a hair s breadth, she ceases to be our 
 mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon 
 quasi noverca. That is a hard choice, when our 
 earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one 
 path and our duty points us to another. We must 
 make as noble and becoming an election as did 
 Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling 
 our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty 
 to follow her.
 
 80 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Shortly after the publication of the foregoing 
 poem there appeared some comments upon it in one 
 of the public prints which seemed to call for some 
 animadversion. I accordingly addressed to Mr. 
 Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the following 
 letter: 
 
 " JAALAM, November 4, 1847. 
 " To the Editor of tlie Courier: 
 
 " RESPECTED SIR, Calling at the post office this 
 morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster 
 offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston 
 Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain 
 effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to 
 the pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell. For aught 
 I know or can affirm to the contrary, this Mr. 
 Lowell may be a very deserving person and a 
 youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his 
 which I could never rightly understand); and if he 
 be such, he, I am certain, as well as I. would be 
 free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself 
 whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly be 
 long to another. I am confident, that, in penning 
 these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer 
 from that young gentleman, whose silence hither 
 to, when rumor pointed to himward, has excited in 
 my bosom mingled emotions of sorrow and sur 
 prise. Well may my young parishioner, Mr. Big- 
 low, exclaim with the poet, 
 
 Sic vos 11011 vobis &c.;
 
 The Biglovv Papers. 81 
 
 though, in saying this, I would not convoy the 
 impression that he is a proficient in the Latin 
 tongue, the tongue, I might arid, of a Horace an 1 
 a Tully. 
 
 " Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely 
 say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be exalted 
 by the carnal plaudits of men, digito monstrari, 
 &c. He does not wait upon Providence for 
 mercies, and in his heart mean mcrces. But I 
 should esteem myself as verily deficient in my 
 duty (who am his friend and in some unworthy 
 sort his spiritual fidus Achates, &c.), if I did not 
 step forward to claim for him whatever measure 
 of applause might be assigned to him by the 
 judicious. 
 
 " If this were a fitting occasion, I might venture 
 here a brief dissertation touching the manner and 
 kind of my young friend s poetry. But I dubitate 
 whether this abstruser sort of speculation (though 
 enlivened by some apposite instances from Aris 
 tophanes) would sufficiently interest your oppidan 
 readers. As regards their satirical tone and their 
 plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in nay 
 pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch- 
 Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as 
 a religious, moral, and intellectual being, and that 
 there is no apage Sathanas! so potent as ridicule. 
 But it is a kind of weapon that must have a 
 button of good-nature on the point of it. 
 
 " The productions of Mr. B. have been stigma 
 tized in some quarters as unpatriotic; but I can
 
 82 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 vouch that he loves his native soil with that 
 hearty, though discriminating attachment which 
 springs from an intimate social intercourse of 
 many years standing. In the ploughing season, no 
 one has a deeper share in the well-being of the 
 country than he. If Dean Swift were right in 
 saying that he who makes two blades of grass 
 grow where one grew before confers a greater 
 benefit on the state than he who taketh a city, Mr. 
 B. might exhibit a fairer claim to the Presidency 
 than General Scott himself. I think that some of 
 those disinterested lovers of the hard-handed de 
 mocracy, whose fingers have never touched any 
 thing rougher than the dollars of our common 
 country, would hesitate to compare palms with 
 him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, 
 to see that young man now. He cuts a cleaner 
 and wider swarth than any in this town. 
 
 " But it is time for me to be at my Post. It is 
 very clear that my young friend s shot has struck 
 the lintel, for the Post is shaken (Amos ix. 1). The 
 editor of that paper is a strenuous advocate of the 
 Mexican war, and a colonel, as I am given to 
 understand. I presume, that, being necessarily 
 absent in Mexico, he has left his journal in some 
 less judicious hands. At any rate, the Post has 
 been too swift on this occasion. It could hardly 
 have cited a more incontrovertible line from any 
 poem than that which it has selected for animad 
 version, namely, 
 
 4 We kind o thought Christ went agin war an 
 pillage.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 83. 
 
 " If the Post maintains the converse of this prop 
 osition, it can hardly be considered as a safe 
 guidepost for the moral and religious portions of 
 its party, however many other excellent qualities 
 of a post it may be blessed with. There is a sign 
 in London on which is painted, The Green Man. 
 It would do very well as a portrait of any indi 
 vidual who would support so unscriptural a thesis. 
 As regards the language of the line in question, 
 I am bold to say that He who readeth the hearts 
 of men will not account any dialect unseemly 
 which conveys a sound and pious sentiment. I 
 could wish that such sentiments were more com 
 mon, however uncouthly expressed. Saint Am 
 brose affirms, that veritas a quocunque (why not, 
 then, quomodocunquc?) dicatur, a spiritu sancto cst. 
 Digest also this of Baxter: The plainest words 
 are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest 
 matters. 
 
 " When the paragraph in question was shown to 
 Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed to 
 give him any dissatisfaction was that which 
 classed him with the Whig party. He says, that, 
 if resolutions are a nourishing kind of diet, that 
 party must be in a very hearty and flourishing con 
 dition; for that they have quietly eaten more good 
 ones of their own baking than he could have con 
 ceived to be possible without repletion. He has 
 been for some years past (I regret to say) an 
 ardent opponent of those sound doctrines of pro 
 tective policy which form so prominent a portion
 
 84 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 of the creed of that party. I confess, that, in 
 some discussions which I have had with him on 
 this point in my study, he has displayed a vein of 
 obstinacy which I had not hitherto detected in his 
 composition. He is also (Jwrrcsco refercns) infected 
 in no small measure with the peculiar notions of 
 a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I take 
 every proper opportunity of combating, and of 
 which, I thank God, I have never road a single 
 line. 
 
 " I did not see Mr. B. s verses until they 
 appeared in print, and there is certainly one thing 
 in them which I consider highly improper. I 
 allude to the personal references to myself by 
 name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual 
 who is laboring quietly in his vocation, and who 
 keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust 
 of the political arena (though va- mihi si non evan- 
 yelizavero), is no doubt an indecorum. The senti 
 ments which he attributes to me I will not deny 
 to be mine. They were embodied, though in a 
 different form, in a discourse preached upon the 
 last day of public fasting, and were acceptable to 
 my entire people (of whatever political views), ex 
 cept the postmaster, who dissented ex offlcio. I 
 observe that yeu sometimes devote a portion of 
 your paper to a religious summary. I should be 
 well pleased to furnish a copy of my discourse for 
 insertion in this department of your Instructive 
 journal. By omitting the advertisements, it might 
 easily be got within the limits of a single nuin-
 
 The Biglow Papers. 85 
 
 ber. and I venture to insure you the sale of some 
 scores of copies in this town. I will cheerfully 
 render myself responsible for ten. It might pos 
 sibly be advantageous to issue it as an extra. But 
 perhaps you will not esteem it an object, and I 
 will not press it. My offer does not spring from 
 any weak desire of seeing my name in print; for I 
 can enjoy this satisfaction at any time by turning 
 to the Triennial Catalogue of the University, 
 where it also possesses that added emphasis of 
 Italics with which those of my calling are dis 
 tinguished. 
 
 " I would simply add, that I continue to fit in 
 genuous youth for college, and that I have two 
 spacious and airy sleeping apartments at this 
 moment unoccupied. Ingenuas didicisse, &c. 
 Terms, which vary according to the circumstances 
 of the parents, may be known on application to 
 me by letter, post paid. In all cases the lad will be 
 expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. 
 W. desires me to add, has no exceptions. 
 " Respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 " HOMER WILBUR, A.M." 
 
 " P. S. Perhaps the last paragraph may look 
 like an attempt to obtain the insertion of my cir 
 cular gratuitously. If it should appear to you in 
 that light, I desire that you would erase it, or 
 charge for it at the usual rates, and deduct the 
 amount from the proceeds in your hands from the 
 sale of my discourse, when it shall be printed.
 
 &G The Biglqw Papers. 
 
 My circular is much longer and more explicit, and 
 will be forwarded without charge to any who 
 may desire it. It has been very neatly execute 1 
 on a letter sheet, by a very deserving printer, who 
 attends upon my ministry, and is a creditable 
 specimen of the typographic art. I have one hung 
 over my mantelpiece in a neat frame, where it 
 makes a beautiful and appropriate ornament, and 
 balances the profile of Mrs. W., cut with her toes 
 by the young lady born without arms. 
 
 " H. W." 
 
 I have in the foregoing letter mentioned General 
 Scott in connection with the Presidency, because I 
 have been given to understand that he has blown 
 to pieces and otherwise caused to be destroyed 
 more Mexicans than any other commander. His 
 claim would therefore be deservedly considered 
 the strongest. Until accurate returns of the Mexi 
 can killed, wounded, and maimed be obtain,.^, it 
 will be difficult to settle these nice points of prece 
 dence. Should it prove that any other officer has 
 been more meritorious and destructive than Gen 
 eral S., and has thereby rendered himself more 
 worthy of the confidence and support of the con 
 servative portion of our community, I shall 
 cheerfully insert his name instead of that of 
 General S., in a future edition. It may be 
 thought, likewise, that General S. has invali 
 dated his claims by too much attention to the 
 decencies of apparel, and the habits belonging
 
 The Biglow Papers. 87 
 
 to a gentleman. These abstruser points of 
 statesmanship are beyond my scope. I wonder 
 not that successful military achievement should 
 attract the admiration of the multitude. Rather 
 do I rejoice with wonder to behold how rapidly 
 this sentiment is losing its hold upon the popular 
 mind. It is related of Thomas Warton, the second 
 of that honored name who held the office of Poetry 
 Professor at Oxford, that, when one wished to find 
 him, being absconded, as was his wont, in some 
 obscure alehouse, he was counseled to traverse the 
 city with a drum and fife, the sound of which in 
 spiring music would be sure to draw the Doctor 
 from his retirement into the street. We are all 
 more or less bitten with this martial insanity. 
 Nescio qua, dulcedinc . . . cunctos ducit. I con 
 fess to some infection of that itch myself. When 
 I see a Brigadier-General maintaining his insecure 
 elevation in the saddle under the severe fire of the 
 training field, and when I remember that some 
 military enthusiasts, through haste, inexperience, 
 or an over-desire to lend reality to those fictitious 
 combats, will sometimes discharge their ramrods, 
 I cannot but admire, while I deplore, the mistaken 
 devotion of those heroic officers. Semcl insani- 
 r I M MS omnes. 1 was myself, during the late war 
 with Great Britain, chaplain of a regiment, which 
 was fortunately never called to active military 
 duty. I mention this circumstance with regret 
 rather than pride. Had I been summoned to- 
 actual warfare, I trust that I might have been
 
 88 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 strengthened to bear myself after the manner of 
 that reverend father in our New England Israel, 
 Dr. Benjamin Colman, who, as we are told in 
 Turell s life of him, when the vessel in which he 
 had taken passage for England was attacked by a 
 French privateer, " fought like a philosopher and 
 a Christian . . . and prayed all the while he 
 charged and fired." As this note is already long, 
 I shall not here enter upon a discussion of the 
 question, whether Christians may lawfully be sol 
 diers. I think it is sufficiently evident, that, dur 
 ing the first two centuries of the Christian era, 
 at least, the two professions were esteemed incom 
 patible. Consult Jortiu on this head. H. W.]
 
 No. IV. 
 
 REMARKS OP INCREASE D. o PHACE, ESQUIRE, 
 AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE STREET 
 REPORTED BY MR. H. BIGLOW. 
 
 [THE ingenious reader will at once understand 
 that no such speech as the following was ever 
 tfitidcrn icrMs pronounced. But there are simpler 
 and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which 
 such an explanation may be needful. For there 
 are certain invisible lines, which as Truth succes 
 sively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and 
 another of us, as a large river, flowing from one 
 kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new 
 name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how 
 small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of 
 fiction more veracious than the truth of fact, as 
 that of the Poet, which represents to us things 
 and events as they ought to be, rather than ser 
 vilely copies them as they are imperfectly imaged 
 in the crooked and smoky glass of our mundane 
 affairs. It is this which makes the speech of 
 Antonius, though originally spoken in no wider a 
 forum than the brain of Shakspeare. more his 
 torically valuable than that other which Appian 
 has reported, by as much as the understanding of 
 the Englishman was more comprehensive than 
 that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the 
 
 89
 
 90 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 present instance has only made use of a license 
 assumed by all the historians of antiquity, who 
 put into the mouths of various characters such 
 words as seem to them most fitting to the occa 
 sion and to the speaker. If it be objected that 
 no such oration could ever have been delivered, I 
 answer, that there are few assemblages for 
 speech-making which do not better deserve the 
 title of Parliamentum Indoctortim than did the sixth 
 Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men 
 still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle 
 of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in hn 
 letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambas 
 sador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written 
 two letters, one to her Majesty rind the other to 
 his wife, directed them at cross-purposes, so that 
 the Queen was beducked and bedeared and re 
 quested to send a change of hose, and the wife 
 was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly be- 
 superlatived, till the one feared for the wits of her 
 ambassador, the other for those of her husband. 
 In like manner it may be presumed that our 
 speaker has misdirected some of his thoughts, and 
 given to the whole theatre what he would have 
 wished to confide only to a select auditory at the 
 back of the curtain. For it is seldom that wo 
 can get any frank utterance from men, who ad 
 dress, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this 
 world or the next. As for their audiences, it may 
 be truly said of our people, that they enjoy OLIO 
 political institution in common with the ancient
 
 The Biglow Papers. 91 
 
 Athenians: I mean a certain profitless kind of 
 ostracism, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem 
 hitherto well enough content. For in Presidential 
 elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I 
 observe that the oysters fall to the lot of compara 
 tively few, the shells (such as the privilges of 
 voting as they are told to do by the ostrivori 
 aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings) are 
 very liberally distributed among the people, as 
 being their prescriptive and quite sufficient 
 portion. 
 
 The occasion of the speech is supposed to be Mr. 
 Palfrey s refusal to vote for the Whig candidate 
 for the Speakership. H. W.] 
 
 No? Hcz he? He haint, though? Wut! 
 
 Voted agin him? 
 Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, 
 
 she d skin him; 
 It seem s though I see her, with wrath in each 
 
 quill, 
 
 Lake a chancery lawyer, afilin her bill, 
 An grindin her talents ez sharp ez all nater, 
 To pounce like a writ on the back o the traiter. 
 Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, 
 But a crisis like this must with vigor be met; 
 Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner be- 
 
 stains, 
 Holl Fourth o Julys seem to bile in my veins.
 
 92 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Who ever d ha thought sech a pisonons rig 
 Would be run by a chap thet wuz chose fer a 
 
 Wig? 
 "We knowed wut his principles wuz fore we 
 
 sent him"? 
 Wut wuz ther in them from this vote to per- 
 
 vent him? 
 
 A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler 
 purpose thet we might our principles swaller; 
 It can hold any quantity on em, the belly can, 
 An bring em up ready fer use like the pelican, 
 Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is 
 
 stranger) 
 
 Puts her family into her pouch wen there s dan 
 ger. 
 Aint principle precious? then, who s goin to 
 
 use it 
 Wen there s risk o some chap s gittin up to 
 
 abuse it? 
 
 I can t tell the wy on t, but nothin is so sure 
 Ez thet principle kind o gits spiled by expos 
 ure; * 
 
 * The speaker Is of a different mind from Tully, 
 who, in his recently discovered tractate De Repub- 
 lica, tells us, Nee vtro liabcrc vietutem satis est, 
 quasi artem aliqam, nisi utare, and from our Mil 
 ton, who says," I cannot praise a fugitive and
 
 The Biglow Papers. 93 
 
 A man thet lets all sorts o folks git a sight on t 
 Ongh to hev it all took right away, every mite 
 
 on t; 
 
 Ef he can t keep it to himself wen it s wise to, 
 He aint one it s fit to trust nothin so nice to. 
 
 Besides, thers a wonderful power in latitude 
 To shift a man s morril relations an attitude; 
 Some flossifers think thet a fakkilty s granted 
 The minnit it s proved to be thoroughly wanted, 
 Thet a change o demand makes a change o con 
 dition, 
 
 An thet everythin s nothin except by posi 
 tion; 
 Ez, for instance, thet rubber-trees fust begun 
 
 bearin 
 
 Wen p litickle conshunces come into wearin , 
 Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt chanced 
 
 to fail, 
 Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail; 
 
 cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that 
 never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but 
 slinks out of the race where that immortal garland 
 is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Artiop. 
 He had taken the words out of the Roman s mouth, 
 without knowing it, and might well exclaim with 
 Austin (if a saint s name may stand sponsor for 
 a curse), Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint ! 
 H. W.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 So, wen one s chose to Congriss, ez soon ez he s 
 
 in it, 
 A collar grows right round his neck in a min- 
 
 nit, 
 
 An sartin it is thet a man cannot be strict 
 In hem himself, wen he gits to the Deestrict, 
 Fer a coat thet sets wal here in ole Massachu 
 setts, 
 
 Wen it gits on to Washinton, somehow askew 
 sets. 
 
 Resolves, do you say, o* the Springfield Conven 
 tion? 
 
 Thet s percisely the pint I was goin to men 
 tion; 
 
 Resolves air a thing we most gen ally keep ill, 
 They re a cheap kind oi dust fer the eyes o the 
 
 people; 
 
 A parcel o delligits jest git together 
 An chat fer a spell o the crops an the weather, 
 Then, comin to order, they squabble awile 
 An let off the speeches they re ferful 11 spile; 
 Then Resolve, That we wunt hev an inch o 
 
 slave territory; 
 
 Thet President Polk s holl perceedins air very 
 tory;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 95 
 
 Thet the war s a damned war, an them thet en 
 list in it 
 Should hev a cravat with a dreffle tight twist in 
 
 it; 
 
 Thet the war is a war fer the spread in o slav 
 ery; 
 Thet our army desarves our best thanks fer their 
 
 bravery; 
 
 Thet we re the original friends o the nation, 
 All the rest air a paltry an base fabrication; 
 Thet we highly respect Messrs. A, B, an C, 
 An ez deeply despise Messrs. E, F, an G. 
 In this way they go to the eend o the chapter, 
 An then they bust out in a kind of a raptur 
 About their own vartoo, an folk s stone-blind 
 ness 
 
 To the men thet ould actilly do em a kind 
 ness, 
 
 The American eagle, the Pilgrims thet landed, 
 Till on ole Plymouth Eock they git finally 
 
 stranded. 
 Wai, the people they listen and say, " Thet s the 
 
 ticket; 
 
 Ez fer Mexico, taint no great glory to lick it, 
 But t would be a darned shame to go pullin o 
 triggers
 
 9G The Biglow Papers. 
 
 To extend the aree of abusin the niggers." 
 So they march in percessions, an git up hoo- 
 
 raws, 
 An tramp thru the mud fcr the good o the 
 
 cause, 
 
 An think they re a kind o fulfillin the prophe 
 cies, 
 Wen they re on y jest changin the holders of 
 
 offices; 
 
 Ware A sot afore, B is comf tably seated, 
 One humbug s victorious, an t other defeated. 
 Each honnable doughface gits jest wut he axes, 
 An the people their annooal soft sodder an 
 taxes. 
 
 Now, to keep unimpaired all these glorious fee- 
 
 turs 
 
 Thet characterize morril an reasonin creeturs, 
 Thet give every paytriot all he can cram, 
 Thet oust the untrustworthy Presidunt Flam, 
 And stick honest Presidnnt Sham in his place, 
 To the manifest gain o the holl human race, 
 An to some indervidgewals on t in partickler, 
 Who love Public Opinion an know how to tickle 
 
 her, 
 
 I eay thet a party with great aims like these 
 Jj ,-t >:iick jest ez close ez a hive full o bees.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 97 
 
 J m willin a man should go tollable strong 
 Agin wrong in the abstract, fer thet kind o 
 
 wrong 
 
 Is oilers nnpop lar an never gits pitied, 
 Because it s a crime no one never committed; 
 But he mus n t be hard on partickler sins, 
 Coz then he ll be kickin the people s own shins; 
 On y look at the Demmercrats, see wut they ve 
 
 done 
 
 Jest simply by stickin together like fun; 
 They ve sucked us right into a mis able war 
 Thet no one on airth aint responsible for; 
 They ve run us a hunderd millions in debt, 
 (An fer Demmercrat Homers ther s good plums 
 
 left yet); 
 
 They talk agin tayriffs, but act fer a high one, 
 An so coax all parties to build up their Zion; 
 To the people they re oilers ez slick ez molasses, 
 An butter their bread on both sides with The 
 
 Masses, 
 Half o whom they ve persuaded, by way of a 
 
 joke, 
 
 Thet "VTashinton s mantelpiece fell upon Polk. 
 Now all o these blessins the Wigs might enjoy,
 
 98 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Ef they d gumption enough the right means to 
 
 imploy; * 
 Fer the silver spoon born in Dermocracy s 
 
 mouth; 
 
 Is a kind of scringe thet they hev to the South; 
 Their masters can cuss em an kick em an wale 
 
 em, 
 
 An they notice it less an the ass did to Balaam; 
 In this way they screw into second-rate offices 
 Wich the slaveholder thinks ould substract too 
 
 much off his ease; 
 The file-leaders, I mean, du, fer they, by their 
 
 wiles, 
 
 Unlike the old viper, grow fat on their files. 
 Wai, the Wigs hev been tryin to grab all this 
 
 prey frum em 
 An to hook this nice spoon o good f ortin away 
 
 frum em, 
 
 An they might ha succeeded, ez likely ez not 
 In lickin the Demmercrats all round the lot, 
 Ef it warn t thet, wile all faithful Wigs were 
 
 their knees on, 
 Some stuffy old codger would holler out, 
 
 " Treason! 
 
 * That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits 
 our politicians without a wrinkle, llayister artis, 
 ingeniique largitor venter. H. AV.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 99 
 
 You must keep a sharp eye on a dog thet hez 
 
 bit you once, 
 
 An / aint agoin to cheat my constitoounts," 
 Wen every fool knows thet a man represents 
 Not the fellers thet sent him, but them on the 
 
 fence, 
 
 Impartially ready to jump either side 
 An make the fust use of a turn o the tide, 
 The waiters on Providunce here in the city, 
 AVho compose wut they call a State Centerl 
 
 Committy. 
 
 Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in, 
 But arterwards don t weigh the heft of a pin. 
 "Wy, the people can t all live on Uncle Sam s pus, 
 So they ve nothin to du with t fer better or 
 
 wus; 
 
 It s the folks thet air kind o brought up to de 
 pend on t 
 
 Thet hev any consarn in t, an thet is the end 
 on t. 
 
 Now here wuz New England ahevin the honor 
 Of a chance at the Speakership showered upon 
 
 her; 
 
 Do you say, " She don t want no more Speak 
 ers, but fewer;
 
 100 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 She s hed plenty o them; wut she wants is a 
 doer " ? 
 
 Fer the matter o thet, it s notorons in town 
 
 Thet her own representatives du her quite 
 brown. 
 
 But thet s nothin to du with it; wut right hed 
 Palfrey 
 
 To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? 
 
 Warn t we gittin on prime with our hot an cold 
 blowin , 
 
 Acondemnin the war wilst we kep it agoin ? 
 
 "We d assumed with gret skill a commandin posi 
 tion, 
 
 On this side or thet, no one couldn t tell wich 
 one, 
 
 So, wutever side wipped, we d a chance at the 
 plunder 
 
 An could sue fer infringin our paytented thun 
 der; 
 
 We were ready to vote fer whoever wuz eligi 
 ble, 
 
 Ef on all pints at issoo he d stay unintelligible. 
 
 Wai, sposin we hed to gulp down our perfes- 
 sions, 
 
 We were ready to come out next mornin with 
 fresh ones;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 1011 
 
 Besides, ef we did, twas our business alone, 
 Fer couldn t we du wut we would with our own? 
 An ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so, 
 Eat up his own words, it s a marcy it is so. 
 
 \Vy, these chaps frum the North, with back 
 bones to em, darn em, 
 Ould be wuth more an Gennle Tom Thumb is; 
 
 to Barnum; 
 
 Ther s enough thet to office on this very plan- 
 grow, 
 
 By exhibitin how very small a man can grow; 
 But an M. C. frum here oilers hastens to state he 
 Belongs to the order called invertebraty, 
 "Wence some gret filologists judge primy fash y 
 Thet M. C. is M. T. by paronomashy; 
 An these few exceptions air loosus naytury 
 Folks ould put down their quarters to stare at,, 
 
 like fury. 
 
 It s no use to open the door o success, 
 Ef a member can bolt so fer nothin or less; 
 Wy, all o them grand constitootional pillers 
 Our four fathers fetched with em over the bil- 
 
 lers, 
 
 Them pillers the people so soundly hev slept on,, 
 Wile to slav ry, invasion, an debt they were: 
 swept on,
 
 102 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Wile our Destiny higher an higher kep mount- 
 in , 
 
 (Though I guess folks 11 stare wen she hends 
 her account in,) 
 
 Ef members in this way go kickin agin em, 
 
 They wunt hev so much ez a feather left in em. 
 
 An , ez fer this Palfrey,* we thought wen we d 
 
 gut him in, 
 He d go kindly in wutever harness we put him 
 
 in; 
 ^Supposin we did know thet he wuz a peace 
 
 man? 
 Doos he think he can be Uncle Samwell s 
 
 policeman, 
 
 An wen Sam gits tipsy an kicks up a riot, 
 Lead him off to the lockup to snooze till he s 
 
 quiet? 
 Wy, the war is a war thet true paytriots can 
 
 bear, ef 
 
 It leads to the fat promised land of a tayriff; 
 We don t go and fight it, nor aint to be driv on, 
 .!Nor Demmercrats uuther, thet hev wut to live 
 
 on; 
 
 * There is truth iu this of Juvenal, 
 "Dat veniam corvia, vexat censura columbas."
 
 The Biglow Papers. 103 
 
 Ef it aint jest the thing thet s well pleasin to 
 
 God, 
 It makes us thought highly on elsewhere 
 
 abroad; 
 
 The Rooshian black eagle looks blue in his eerie 
 An shakes both his heads wen he hears o Mon- 
 
 teery; 
 
 In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, 
 An reads, with locked doors, how we won 
 
 Cherry Buster; 
 An old Philip Lewis thet come an kep school 
 
 here 
 
 Fer the mere sake o scorin his ryalist ruler 
 On the tenderest part of our kings in futuro 
 Hides his crown underneath an old shut in his 
 
 bureau, 
 Breaks off in his brags to a suckle o merry 
 
 kings, 
 How he often hed hided young native Amer- 
 
 rikins, 
 An , turnin quite faint in the midst of his 
 
 fooleries, 
 Sneaks down stairs to bolt the front door o the 
 
 Tooleries.* 
 
 * Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles be 
 sides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of
 
 104 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 You say, " We d ha scared em by growin in 
 
 peace, 
 A plaguy sight more than by bobberies like 
 
 these" ? 
 
 Who is it dares say thet "our naytional eagle 
 Wunt much longer be classed with the birds 
 
 thet air regal, 
 Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an she, arter this 
 
 slaughter, 
 11 bring back a bill ten times longer n she 
 
 oug t to" ? 
 
 other prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan 
 to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, 
 the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser. I 
 esteem it, to give chance the credit of the success 
 ful ones. What is said here of Louis Philippe was 
 verified in some of its minute particulars within 
 a few months time. Enough to have made 
 the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks 
 to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea 
 "will suit here: 
 
 " Rapida fortuna ac levis, 
 Prtecepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit." 
 Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfor 
 tune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty 
 meanwhile in our censure of the French people, 
 left for the first time to govern themselves, re 
 membering that wise sentence of ^Eschylus, 
 <JT;C av -/ZDV xparr. 
 
 H. W.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 105 
 
 Wut s your name? 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 1 
 lurdcr, 
 
 Thet feller would like nothin better n a mur 
 der; 
 
 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, 
 
 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 lioll of our civilized, free institutions;
 
 10G The Biglow Papers. 
 
 He writes fer thet rather unsafe print, the 
 Courier, 
 
 An likely ez not hez a sqnintin to Foorier; 
 
 I ll be , thet is, I mean I ll be blest, 
 
 Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 
 
 I shan t talk with him, my religion s too fer 
 vent. 
 
 Good mornin , my friends, I m your most 
 humble servant. 
 
 [L\TO the question, whether the ability to ex 
 press 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 intelli 
 gible, 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 hand 
 some heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the 
 earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gab 
 ble. 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
 
 The IBiglow Papers. 107 
 
 been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignor- 
 . i rice of other languages as a kind of Martello- 
 tower, in which I am safe from the furious bom 
 bardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I 
 have ever preferred the study of the dead lan- 
 sruages, those primitive formations being Ararats 
 upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch 
 this new deluge withoiit fear, though it rain 
 figures (simulacra, semblances) of speech forty 
 clays 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 idea of th? 
 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 fan 
 cied, that, after the subsidence of those painful 
 buzzings in the brain which result from such exer-
 
 108 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 cises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable 
 information. 1 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 i~ivd core- 
 debaters and controversialists the admirable ex 
 ample of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth cen 
 tury, stood for half an hour in the midst of a 
 great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichnean 
 antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. 
 As for those who quarrel in print, I have no con 
 cern with them here, since the eyelids are a 
 Divinely-granted shield against all such. More 
 over, 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 laud. 
 
 I have wondered, in the Representatives Cham 
 ber of our own Commonwealth, to mark how little 
 impression seemed to be produced by that emblem 
 atic fish suspended over the heads of the mem 
 bers. Our wiser ancestors, no doubt, hung it there 
 as being the animal which the Pythagoreans rev 
 erenced for its silence, and which certainly in that 
 particular does not so well merit the epithet cold 
 blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as cer 
 tain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 109 
 
 who take occasion to tap themselves in Fanueil 
 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 unsuc 
 cessful 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 se 
 cure of the theoretic as they now are of the prac 
 tical 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 he is named Key, who would allow him 
 self 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. Ahcnea clatis, 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 scare-crow of 
 dissolving the Union. This may do for the North,
 
 The Biglow Papers. Ill 
 
 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. 
 
 Rut 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. Daine 
 Earth, meanwhile, who has more than enough 
 household matters to mind, goes bustling hither 
 and hither as a hiss or a sputter tells her that 
 this or that kettle of hers is boiling over, ami be 
 fore bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold, 
 and gulp down our dignity along with it. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of 
 a great statesman, and, if it be great statesman 
 ship to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the 
 Spirit of tlie Age with the certainty of being next 
 moment hurled neck and heels into the dust amid 
 universal laughter, he deserves the title. He is
 
 112 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should 
 remember the old Scandinavian myths. Thor was 
 the strongest of gods, but he could not wrestle 
 with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the 
 great snake which knit the universe together; and 
 when he smote the Earth, though with his terrible 
 mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet 
 all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only 
 been wrestling with an old woman, striving to lift 
 a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head. 
 
 And in old times, doubtless, the giants were 
 stupid, and there wa s no better sport for the Sir 
 Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about cut 
 ting off their great blundering heads with en 
 chanted swords. But things have wonderfully 
 changed. It is the giants, nowadays, that have 
 the science and the intelligence, while the chival 
 rous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still cumber 
 themselves with the clumsy armor of a bygone 
 age. On whirls the restless globe through un 
 sounded time, with its cities and its silences, its 
 births and funerals, half light, half shade, but 
 never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into 
 the happy morning at last. With an involuntary 
 smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack 
 thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it 
 to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal 
 of the Past. H. W.] 
 
 TO MR. BUCKENAM. 
 
 MR. EDITER, As i wuz kinder primin round, in 
 a little nussry sot out a year or 2 a go, the Dbait
 
 The Biglow Papers. 113 
 
 in the sennit cum inter my mine An so i took & 
 Sot it to wut I call a nussry rime. I hev made 
 sum onnable Gentlemim speak that dident 
 speak in a Kind uv Poetikul lie sense the seeson 
 is dreffle backcrd up This way 
 
 ewers as ushul 
 
 HOSEA BIGLOW. 
 
 "HERE we stan on the Constitution, by 
 
 thunder! 
 
 It s a fact o wich ther s bushils o proofs; 
 Fer how could we trample on t so, I wonder, 
 Ef t worn t thet it s oilers under our hoofs?" 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 
 " Human rights haint no more 
 Right to come on this floor, 
 No more n the man in the moon," sez he. 
 
 " The Xorth haint no kind o bisness with 
 
 nothin , 
 
 An you ve no idee how much bother it saves; 
 We aint none riled by their frettin an frothin , 
 We re used to layin the string on our slaves," 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 Sez Mister Foote,
 
 114 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 " I should like to shoot 
 The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon ! " 
 sez he. 
 
 " Freedom s Keystone is Slavery, thet ther s no 
 
 doubt on, 
 It s sutthin thet s wha d ye call it? 
 
 divine, 
 An the slaves thet we oilers make the most out 
 
 en 
 
 Air them north o Mason an Dixon s line/ 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 "Fer all thet," says Mangum, 
 " Twould be better to hang em, 
 An so git red on em soon," sez he. 
 
 " The mass ough to labor an we lay on soffies, 
 Thet s the reason I want to spread Freedom s 
 
 aree; 
 
 It puts all the cunninest on us in office, 
 An reelises our Maker s orig nal idee/ 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 " Thet s ez plain," sez Cass, 
 " Ez thet some one s an ass, 
 It s ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez he.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 115- 
 
 " Now don t go to say I m the friend of oppres 
 sion, 
 But keep all your spare breath fer coolin 
 
 your broth, 
 
 Fer I oilers hev strove (at least thet s my im 
 pression) 
 To make cussed free with the rights o the 
 
 North," 
 
 Sez John G. Calhoun, sez he; 
 " Yes," sez Davis o Miss., 
 " The perfection o bliss 
 Is in skinnin thet same old coon," sez he. 
 
 " Slavery s a thing thet depends on complexion, 
 It s God s law thet fetters on black skins don t 
 
 chafe; 
 
 Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) 
 Wich of our onnable body d be safe?" 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 Sez Mister Hannegan, 
 Afore he began agin, 
 
 " Thet exception is quite oppertoon," sez 
 he. 
 
 " Gen nle Cass, Sir, you needn t be twitchin 
 your collar,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Your merit s quite clear by the dut on your 
 
 knees, 
 At the Xorth we don t make no distinctions o 
 
 color; 
 You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you 
 
 please," 
 
 Sez John C. Calhonn, sez he; 
 Sez Mister Jarnagin, 
 " They wunt hev to larn agin, 
 They all on em know the old toon," sez he. 
 
 " The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin . 
 Xorth an South hev one int rest, it s plain to 
 
 a glance; 
 No thern men, like us patriarchs, don t sell their 
 
 childrin, 
 But they du sell themselves, ef they git a 
 
 good chance," 
 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 Sez Atherton here, 
 " This is gittin severe, 
 I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he. 
 
 " It 11 break up the Union, this talk about free 
 dom, 
 
 An your fact ry gals (soon ez we split) 11 
 make head,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 117 
 
 An gittin some Miss chief or other to lead em, 
 11 go to work raisin promiscoous Ned/ 
 Sez John C. Calhoim, sez he; 
 
 " Yes, the North/ sez Colquitt, 
 " Ef we Southerners all quit, 
 Would go clown like a busted balloon/ sez 
 he. 
 
 " Jest look wut is doin , wut annyky s brewin 
 In the beautiful clime o the olive an vine, 
 All the wise aristoxy is tumblin to ruin, 
 An the sankylots drorin an drinkin their 
 
 wine," 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 
 " Yes," sez Johnson, " in France 
 They re beginnin to dance 
 Beelzebub s own rigadoon," sez he. 
 
 " The South s safe enough, it don t feel a mite 
 
 skeery, 
 Our slaves in their darkness an dut air tu 
 
 blest 
 
 Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery 
 Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional 
 
 nest," 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;
 
 118 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 " 0," sez Westcott o Florida, 
 "Wut treason is horrider 
 Then our priv leges tryin to proon?" sez 
 he. 
 
 "It s coz they re so happy, thet, wen crazy 
 
 sarpints 
 Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so 
 
 darned riled; 
 We think its our dooty to give pooty sharp 
 
 hints, 
 Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth shan t 
 
 be spiled," 
 
 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
 " Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, 
 " It perfectly true is 
 
 Thet slavery s airth s grettest boon," sez 
 he. 
 
 [!T was said of old time, that riches have wings; 
 and, though this be not applicable in a literal 
 strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal 
 brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their 
 possessions have legs, and an unaccountable pro 
 pensity for using them in a northerly direction. I 
 marvel that the grand jury of Washington did not 
 find a true bill against the North Star for aiding 
 and abetting Drayton and Sayres. It would have
 
 The Biglow Papers. 119 
 
 been quite of a piece with the intelligence dis 
 played by the *5outh on other questions connected 
 with slavery. I think that no ship of state was 
 ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than 
 this same domestic institution of ours. Mephis- 
 topheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so 
 satirically sad a sight as this of three millions 
 of human beings crushed beyond help or hope 
 by this one mighty argument, Our fathers knew 
 no better! Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable des 
 tiny of Jonahs to be cast overboard sooner or 
 later. Or shall we try the experiment of hiding 
 our Jonah in a safe place, that none may lay 
 hands on him to make jetsam of him? Let us, 
 then, with equal forethought and wisdom, lash 
 ourselves to the anchor, and await in pious confi 
 dence, the certain result. Perhaps our suspicious 
 passenger is no Jonah after all, being black. For 
 it is well known that a superintending Providence 
 made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descen 
 dants, to be devoured by the Caucasian race. 
 
 In God s name, let all, who hear nearer and 
 nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the 
 growl of the breakers, speak out! But, alas! we 
 have no right to interfere. If a man pluck up an 
 apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; 
 but if he steal my brother, I must be silent. Who 
 says this? Our Constitution, consecrated by the 
 callous suetude of sixty years, and grasped in tri 
 umphant argument in the left hand of him whose 
 right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip. Justice,.
 
 120 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 venerable with the imdethronaJble majesty of 
 countless seons, says, SPEAK ! The Past, wise 
 with the sorrows and desolations of ages, from 
 amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, 
 echoes, SPEAK ! Nature, through her thousand 
 trumpets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her 
 seas, her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue 
 with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encouragement, 
 and cries, SPEAK ! From the soul s trembling 
 N abysses the still, small voice not vaguely mur 
 murs, SPEAK! But, alas! the Constitution and 
 the Honorable Mr. Bagowiud, M. C., say, BE 
 DUMB ! 
 
 It occurs to me to suggest as a topic of inquiry 
 in this connection, whether, on that momentous 
 occasion when the goats and the sheep shall be 
 parted, the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. 
 Bagowiud, M. C., will be expected to take their 
 places on the left as our hircine vicars. 
 
 Quid sum miser tune dicturitsf 
 Quern patronum royatunis? 
 
 There is a point where toleration sinks into sheer 
 baseness and poltroonery. The toleration of the 
 worst leads us to look on what is barely better as 
 good enough, and to worship what is only moder 
 ately good. Woe to that man, or that nation, to 
 whom mediocrity has become an ideal ! 
 
 Has our experiment of self-government suc 
 ceeded, if it barely manage to rub and go? Here, 
 now, is a piece of barbarism which Christ and
 
 The Biglow Papers. 121 
 
 the nineteenth century say shall cease, and which 
 Messrs. Smith, Brown, and others say shall not 
 cease. I would by no means deny the eminent 
 respectability of those gentlemen, but I confess, 
 that, in such a wrestling-match, I cannot help 
 having my fears for them. 
 
 Discite justitiarn; moniti. et non temnere divos. 
 
 H. W.]
 
 No. VI. 
 THE PIOUS EDITOR S CREED. 
 
 [Ar 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 shep 
 herds of Israel." Since the Sabbath on which this 
 discourse was delivered, the editor of the " Jaalam 
 Independent Blunderbuss " has unaccountably ab 
 sented 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. In 
 deed, the position which he holds is that which the 
 clergyman should hold even now. But the clergy 
 man 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 cau 
 cus, 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 
 122
 
 The Biglow Papers. 123 
 
 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, 
 iu 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 
 feederof certain theologic dogmes, which, when oc 
 casion offers, he unkennels with a staboy! " to bark 
 and bite as it is their nature to," whence that re 
 proach of odium theologicum has arisen. 
 
 " Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor mounts 
 daily, sometimes with a congregation of fifty thou 
 sand 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 noifj.r t v 
 Aativ, which Horner bestows upon princes. He 
 would be the Moses of our nineteenth century, and 
 whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a com-
 
 124 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 ruon 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 fac 
 tories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin (Num 
 bers 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. 
 
 Immcnwr, 0, fidci, pccoruinque oblite tuorum! 
 
 For which reason I would derive the name editor 
 not so much from cdo, to publish, as from cdo, to 
 eat, that being the peculiar profession to which he 
 esteems himself called. He blows up the flames 
 of political discord for no other occasion than that, 
 he may thereby handily boil his own pot. I believe 
 there are two thousand of these mutton-loving 
 shepherds in the United States, and of these how 
 many have even the dimmest perception of their 
 immense power, and the duties consequent thereon? 
 Here and there, haply, one. Nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine labor to impress upon the people the 
 great principles of Ticccdlcdum, and other nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine preach with equal earn 
 estness the gospel according to Tweedlcdee."- 
 H. W.]
 
 The Biglow Papers. 125 
 
 I DU believe in Freedom s cause, 
 
 Ez fur away ez Paris is; 
 I love to see her stick her claws 
 
 In them infarnal Pharisees; 
 It s wal enough ain a kin^ 
 
 o o o 
 
 To clror resolves an triggers, 
 But libbaty s a kind o thing 
 Thet don t agree with niggers. 
 
 I du believe the people want 
 
 A tax on tea an coffees, 
 Thet nothin aint extravygunt, 
 
 Purvidin I m in office; 
 Fer I hev loved my country sence 
 
 My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
 An Uncle Sam I reverence, 
 
 Partic larly his pockets. 
 
 I du believe in any plan 
 
 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 o rouses 
 The folks to vote, an keeps us in 
 
 Our quiet customhouses.
 
 126 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 I du believe it s wie 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 
 
 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 every privit uses. 
 
 I du believe hard coin the stuff 
 
 Fer lectioneers to spout on; 
 The people s oilers soft enough 
 
 To make hard money out on; 
 Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, 
 
 An gives a good-sized junk to all,- 
 I don t care how hard money is, 
 
 Ez long ez mine s paid punctooal.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 127 
 
 I du believe with all my soul 
 
 In the gret Press s 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 gov ment printin ! 
 
 I du believe thet I should give 
 
 Wilt s his n unto Ctesar, 
 Fer it s by him I move an live, 
 
 Frum him my bread an cheese air; 
 I do 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 
 jobs, in every thin thet pays, 
 
 But most of all in CAXTIX ; 
 This doth my cup with marcies fill, 
 
 This lays all thought o sin to rest> 
 I don t believe in princerple, 
 
 But, 0, I du in ink- rest.
 
 128 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 I du believe in bein this 
 
 Or thet, ez it may happen 
 One way or t other 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 nat ral tu a Presidunt, 
 Let lone the rowdedow it saves 
 
 To hev a wal-broke precedunt; 
 Fer any office, small or gret, 
 
 I couldn t ax with no face, 
 Without I d ben, thru dry an wet, 
 
 Th unrizzest kind o doughface. 
 
 I du believe wutever trash 
 
 11 keep the people in blindness, 
 Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash 
 
 Right inter brotherly kindness, 
 Thet bombshells, grape, an powder u ball 
 
 Air good-will s strongest magnets, 
 Thet peace, to make it stick at all, 
 
 Must be druv in with baguets.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 129 
 
 In short, I firmly du believe 
 
 In Humbug generally, 
 Fer it s a thing thet I perceive 
 
 To hev a solid vally; 
 This heth my faithful shepherd ben, 
 
 In pasturs sweet heth led me, 
 An this 11 keep the people green 
 
 To feed ez they hev fed me. 
 
 [I subjoin here another passage from niy before- 
 mentioned discourse. 
 
 " Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it 
 rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sit 
 ting 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 al-
 
 130 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 most as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar mi 
 croscope 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 tlint 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 irre 
 pressible 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 tlu> 
 slippery stage into the dark Beyond. 
 
 " Yes, the little show box has its solemner sug 
 gestions. 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
 
 The Biglow Tapers. 131 
 
 is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mat 
 tock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the 
 newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances 
 carelessly at a babe brought home from christen 
 ing. 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 sufBce, a handful of dust is enough to cover 
 and silence forever. Nay, we see the same flesh- 
 less fingers opening to clutch the showman him 
 self, 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 Apoll- 
 yon 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 promo 
 tions, 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.
 
 132 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 So that upon that mood of mind which seems to 
 isolate rue 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 
 Bruisgius? 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 won 
 der 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 beggar s broken victuals."- -H. W.]
 
 No. VII. 
 A LETTER 
 
 FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 
 ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY 
 MR. HOSEA BIGLOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE 
 FROM MR. BIGLOW TO S. II. GAY, ESQ., EDITOR 
 OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD- 
 
 [CURIOSITY may be said to be the quality which 
 pre-eminently distinguishes and segregates man 
 from the lower animals. As we trace the scale 
 of animated nature downward, we find this faculty 
 of the mind (as it may truly be called) diminished 
 in the savage, and quite extinct in the brute. The 
 first object which civilized man proposes to him 
 self I take to be the finding out whatsoever he can 
 concerning his neighbors. Niliil Jiumamim a me 
 alicnum puto; I am curious about even John Smith. 
 The desire next in strength to this (an opposite 
 pole, indeed, of the same magnet) is that of com 
 municating intelligence. 
 
 Men in general may be divided into the inquis 
 itive and the communicative. To the first class 
 belong Peeping Toms, eavesdroppers, navel-con 
 templating Brahmins, metaphysicians, travelers, 
 Empedocleses, spies, the various societies for pro 
 moting Rhinothism, Columbuses, Yankees, diseov-
 
 134 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 erers, and men of science, who present themselves 
 to the mind as so many marks of interrogation 
 wandering up and down the world, or sitting in 
 studies and laboratories. The second class I should 
 again subdivide into four. In the first subdivision 
 I would rank those who have an itch to tell us 
 about themselves, as keepers of diaries, insignifi 
 cant persons generally, Montaignes, Horace Wai- 
 poles, autobiographers, poets. The second includes 
 those who are anxious to impart information con 
 cerning other people, -as historians, barbers, and 
 such. To the third belong those who labor to give 
 us intelligence about nothing at all, as novelists, 
 political orators, the large majority of authors, 
 preachers, lecturers, and the like. In the fourth 
 come those who are communicative from motives 
 of public benevolence, as finders of mare s-nests 
 and bringers of ill-news. Each of us two-legged 
 fowls without feathers embraces all these subdi 
 visions in himself to a greater or less degree, for 
 none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a 
 chalk one, but straightway the whole barnyard 
 shall know it by our cackle or our cluck. Omnibus 
 J;oc ritium cst. There are different grades i;i all 
 these classes. One will turn his telescope toward 
 a backyard, another toward Uranus; one will tell 
 you that he dined with Smith, another that he 
 supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may 
 be considered as belonging to the first grand di 
 vision, inasmuch as they all seem equally desirous 
 of discovering the mote in their neighbor s eye.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 135 
 
 To one or another of these species every human 
 being may safely be referred. I think it beyond a 
 peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some inquir 
 ies into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that 
 Noah sealed up a letter in an empty bottle, that 
 news in regard to him might not be wanting in 
 case of the worst. They had else been super or 
 subter human. I conceive, also, that, as there are 
 certain persons who continually peep and pry at 
 the keyhole of that mysterious door through which, 
 sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there 
 are doubtless ghosts fidgeting and fretting on the 
 other side of it, because they have no means of 
 conveying back to the world the scraps of news 
 they have picked up. For there is an answer ready 
 somewhere to every question, the great law of give 
 and take runs through all nature, and if we see a 
 hook, we may be sure that au eye is waiting for it. 
 I read in every face I meet a standing advertise 
 ment of information wanted in regard to A. B., 
 or that the friends of C. D. can hear of him by ap 
 plication to such a one. , 
 
 It was to gratify the two great passions of ask 
 ing and answering that epistolary correspondence 
 was first invented. Letters (for by this usurped 
 title epistles are now commonly known) are of 
 several kinds. First, there are those which are 
 not letters at all, as letters patent, littles dismis- 
 sory, letters inclosing bills, letters of administra 
 tion, Pliny s letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, 
 of Mentor, of Lords Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and
 
 136 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St. 
 Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), let 
 ters from abroad, from sons in college to their 
 fathers, letters of marque, and letters generally, 
 which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are 
 real letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Wai- 
 pole, Howel, Lamb, the first letters from children 
 (printed in staggering capitals). Letters from New 
 York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for 
 the sake of the writer or the thing written. I 
 hare read also letters from Europe by a gentleman 
 named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and 
 which I hope to see collected for the benefit of the 
 curious. There are, besides, letters addressed to 
 posterity, as epitaphs, for example, written for 
 their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we 
 Lave lately become possessed of the names of sev 
 eral great conquerors and kings of kings, hitherto 
 unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable 
 to the student of the entirely dark ages. The let 
 ter which St. Peter sent to King Pepiu in the year 
 of grace 755 I would place in a class by itself, as 
 also the letters of candidates, concerning which I 
 shall dilate more fully in a note at the end of the 
 following poem. At present, sat prata bibcrunt. 
 Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are all 
 either square or oblong, to which general figures, 
 circular letters and round-robins also conform 
 themselves. H. W.] 
 
 DEER SIE its gut to be the fashim now to rite 
 letters to the candid 8s and i \vus chose at a
 
 The Biglow Papers. 137 
 
 publick Meetin in Jaalam to du wut wus nessary 
 fur that town, i writ to 271 ginerals and gut 
 ansers to 209. - tha air called candid 8s but I 
 don t see nothin candid about em. this here I 
 wich I send wus thought satty s factory. I 
 dunno as it s ushle to print Poscrips, but as all 
 the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus 
 best, times has gretly changed. Formaly to 
 knock a man into a cocked hat wus to use him 
 up, but now it ony gives him a chance fur the 
 cheef madgustracy. H. B. 
 
 DEAR SIR, You wish to know my notions 
 
 On sartin pints thet rile the land; 
 There s nothin thet my natur so shuns 
 
 Ez bein mum or underhand; 
 I m a straight-spoken kind o creetur 
 
 Thet blurts right out wut s in his head, 
 An ef I ve one pecooler feetur, 
 
 It is a nose thet wunt be led. 
 
 So, to begin at the beginning 
 
 Air come direcly to the pint, 
 I think the country s underpinning 
 
 Is some consid ble out o jint; 
 I aint agoin to try your patience 
 
 By tellin who done this or thet,
 
 138 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 I don t make no insinooations, 
 I jest let on I smell a rat. 
 
 Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, 
 
 But, ef the public think I m wrong, 
 I wunt deny but wut I be so, 
 
 An , fact, it don t smell very strong; 
 My mind s tu fair to lose its balance 
 
 An say wich party hez most sense; 
 There may he folks o greater talence 
 
 Thet can t set stiddier on the fence. 
 
 I m an eclectic; ez to choosin 
 
 Twixt this an thet, I m plaguy lawth; 
 I leave a side thet looks like losin , 
 
 But (wile there s doubt) I stick to both; 
 I stan upon the Constitution, 
 
 Ez preudent statesmun say, who ve planned 
 A way to git the most profusion 
 
 chances ez to ware they ll stand. 
 
 Ez fer the war, I go agin it, 
 
 I mean to say I kind o du, 
 Thet is, I mean thet, bein in it, 
 
 The best way wuz to fight it thru; 
 Not but wut abstract war is horrid, 
 
 I sign to thet with all my heart,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 139 
 
 But civlyzation doos git forrid 
 Sometimes upon a powder-cart. 
 
 About thet darned Proviso matter 
 
 I never hed a grain o doubt, 
 Nor I aint one my sense to scatter 
 
 So s no one couldn t pick it out; 
 My love fer Xortli an South is equil, 
 
 So I ll jest answer plump an frank, 
 No matter wut may be the sequil, 
 
 Yes, Sir, I am agin a Bank. 
 
 Ez to the answerin o questions, 
 
 I m an of: ox at bein druv, 
 Though I aint one thet ary test shuns 
 
 11 give our folks a helpin shove; 
 Kind o promiscoous I go it 
 
 Fer the holl country, an the ground 
 I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, 
 
 Is pooty gen ally all round. 
 
 I don t appruve o givin pledges; 
 
 You d ough to leave a feller free, 
 An not go knockin out the wedges 
 
 To ketch his fingers in the tree; 
 Pledges air a\vfle breachy cattle 
 
 Thet preudunt farmers don t turn out,
 
 140 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Ez long z the people git their rattle, 
 Wut is ther fer ra to grout about? 
 
 Ez to the slaves, there s no confusion 
 
 In my idecs consarnin them, 
 I think they air an Institution, 
 
 A sort of yes, jest so, ahem: 
 Do I own any? Of my merit 
 
 On thet pint you yourself may jedge: 
 All is, I never drink no sperit, 
 
 Nor I haint never signed no pledge. 
 
 Ez to my principles, I glory 
 
 In hevin nothin o the sort 
 I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, 
 
 I m jest a candidate, in short; 
 Thet s fair an square an parpendicler, 
 
 But, ef the Public cares a fig 
 To hev me an thin in particler, 
 
 Wy, I m a kind o peri-wig. 
 
 P. S. 
 Ez we re a sort o privateerin , 
 
 course, you know, it s sheer an sheer, 
 An there is sutthin wuth your hearin 
 
 I ll mention in your privit ear; 
 Ef you git me inside the White House,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 141 
 
 Your head with ile I ll kin o nint 
 By gittin you inside the Lighthouse 
 Down to the eend o Jaalam Pint. 
 
 An ez the Xorth hez took to brustlin 
 
 At bein scrouged frum off the roost, 
 I ll tell ye wut ll save all tusslin 
 
 An give our side a harnsome boost, 
 Tell cm thet on the Slavery question 
 
 I m RIGHT, although to speak I m lawth; 
 This gives you a safe pint to rest on, 
 
 An leaves me frontin South by Xorth. 
 
 [And now of epistles candidatial, which are of 
 two kinds, namely, letters of acceptance, and let 
 ters definitive of position. Our republic, on the 
 eve of an election, may safely enough be called a 
 republic or letters. Epistolary composition be 
 comes then an epidemic, which seizes one candi 
 date after another, not seldom cutting short the 
 thread of political life. It has come to such a pass, 
 that a party dreads less the attacks of its oppo 
 nents than a letter from its candidate. Litera 
 ncriftta manet, and it will go hard if something bad 
 cannot be made of it. General Harrison, it is well 
 understood, was surrounded, during his candidacy, 
 with the cordon sanitairc of a vigilance committee. 
 No prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously 
 deprived of writing materials. The soot was
 
 1-S2 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 scraped carefully from the chimney-places; out 
 posts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death 
 for any goose (who came clad in feathers) to ap 
 proach within a certain limited distance of North 
 Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises 
 were reduced to the condition of Plato s original 
 man. By these precautions the General was saved. 
 Pana componcre maynis, I remember, that, when 
 party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon 
 occasion of the choice of a new deacon, I, having 
 my preferences, yet not caring too openly fo ex 
 press them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring 
 about that result which I deemed most desirable. 
 My stratagem was no other than the throwing a 
 copy of the Complete Letter-Writer In the way 
 of the candidate whom I wished to defeat. He 
 caught the infection, and addressed a short note 
 to his constituents, in which the opposite party de 
 tected so many and so grave improprieties, (ho 
 had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady 
 accepting a proposal of marriage,) that he not on]y 
 lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion <;f 
 Sabellianism and I know not what, (the widow 
 Endive assured me that he was a Paralipomenon, 
 to her certain knowledge,) was forced to leave the 
 town. Thus it is that the letter killeth. 
 
 The object which candidates propose to them 
 selves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. 
 And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which 
 they successively plunge headlong. For it is pre 
 cisely in such cryptographies that mankind are
 
 The Biglow Papers. 143 
 
 prone to seek for arid find a wonderful amount and 
 variety of significance. Omne iynotum pro mirifl -o. 
 How do we admire at the antique world striving 
 to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Ham- 
 mon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I 
 so much as surmise that any kernel had ever 
 lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed 
 that he was mortal. One Didymus Is, moreover, re 
 lated to have written six thousand books on the 
 single subject of grammar, a topic rendered only 
 more tenebrific by the labors of his successors, 
 and which seems still to possess an attraction for 
 authors in proportion as they can make nothing of 
 it. A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is 
 the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, m the course 
 of my studies, I have noted two hundred and three 
 several interpretations, each lethiferal to all the 
 rest. Non nostrum cst tantas componcre lites, yet I 
 have myself ventured upon a two hundred and 
 fourth, which I embodied in a discourse preached 
 011 occasion of the demise of the late usurper, Na 
 poleon Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large 
 measure, the minds of my people. It is true that 
 my views on this important point were ardently 
 controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the then 
 preceptor of our academy, and in other particulars 
 a very deserving and sensible young man, though 
 possessing a somewhat limited knowledge of the 
 Greek tongue. But his heresy struck down no 
 deep root, and, he having been lately removed by 
 the hand of Providence, I had the satisfaction of
 
 144 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 reaffirming my cherished sentiments in a sermon 
 preached upon the Lord s day immediately suc 
 ceeding his funeral. This might seem like taking 
 an unfair advantage, did I not add that he had 
 made provision in his last will (being celibate) for 
 the publication of a posthumous tractate in sup 
 port of his own dangerous opinions. 
 
 I know of nothing in our modern times which 
 approaches so nearly to the ancient oracle as the 
 letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, among 
 the Greeks, the eating of beans was strictly for 
 bidden to all such as had it in mind to consult 
 those expert amphibologists, and this same prohi 
 bition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples 
 is understood to imply an abstinence from politics, 
 beans having been used as ballots. That other 
 explication, quod videlicet scnsus eo cibo obtundi cx- 
 istimarct, though supported jniynis et calcibus by 
 many of the learned, and not wanting the counte 
 nance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger experi 
 ence of New England. On the whole. I think it 
 safer to apply here the rule of interpretation which 
 now generally obtains in regard to antique cos 
 mogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions, 
 and knotty points generally, which is, to find a 
 common-sense meaning, and then select whatever 
 can be imagined the most opposite thereto. In 
 this way we arrive at the conclusion, that the 
 Greeks objected to the questioning of candidates. 
 And very properly, if, as I conceive, the chief 
 point be not to discover what a person in that po-
 
 The Biglow Papers. 145 
 
 sition is, or what be will do, but whether lie can 
 be elected. Tos c.rcmplaria Gnrca nocturna rersate 
 mann, rersate diitrna. 
 
 But, since an imitation of the Greeks in this par 
 ticular (the asking of questions being one chief 
 privilege of freemen) is hardly to bo hoped for. 
 and our candidates will answer, whether they are 
 questioned or not, I would recommend that these 
 ante-electionary dialogues should be carried on by 
 symbols, as were the diplomatic correspondences 
 of the Scythians and Macrobii, or confined to the 
 language of signs, like the famous interview of 
 Panurge and Goatsnose. A candidate might then 
 convey a suitable reply to all committees of in 
 quiry by closing one eye, or by presenting them 
 with a phial of Egyptian darkness to be speculated 
 upon by their respective constituencies. These an 
 swers would be susceptible of whatever retro 
 spective construction the exigencies of the politi 
 cal campaign might seem to demand, and the can 
 didate could take his position on either side of the 
 fence with entire consistency. Or, if letters must 
 be written, profitable use might be made of the 
 Dightou rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, 
 every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to 
 educe ji different meaning whereby a sculptured 
 stone or two supplies us, and will probably con 
 tinue to supply posterity, with a very vast and 
 various body of authentic history. For even the 
 briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dan 
 gerous. There is scarce any style so compressed 
 10
 
 146 The Biglow Tapers. 
 
 that superfluous words may not be detected in it. 
 A severe critic might curtail that famous brevity 
 of Caesar s by two-thirds, drawing his pen through 
 the supererogatory vent and vidi. Perhaps, after 
 all, the surest footing of hope is to be found in the 
 rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and 
 less of qualification in candidates. Already have 
 statesmanship, experience, and the possession (nny, 
 the profession, even) of principles been rejected as 
 superfluous, and may not the patriot reasonably 
 hope that the ability to write will follow? At 
 present, there may be death in pot-hooks as well 
 as pots, the loop of a letter may suffice for a bow 
 string, and all the dreadful heresies of Anti- 
 slavery may lurk in a flourish. H. W.]
 
 No. VIII. 
 A SECOND LETTEE FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. 
 
 [!N the following epistle, we behold Mr. Sawin 
 returning, a miles emeritus, to the bosom of his 
 family. Quantum miitatus! The good Father of us 
 all had doubtless intrusted to the keeping of this 
 child of his certain faculties of a constructive kind. 
 He had put in him a share of that vital force, the 
 nicest economy of every minute atom of which is 
 necessary to the perfect development of Humanity. 
 He had given him a brain and heart, and so had 
 equipped his soul with the two strong wings of 
 knowledge and love, whereby it can mount to hang 
 its nest under the eaves of heaven. And this child, 
 so dowered, he had intrusted to the keeping of his 
 vicar, the State. How stands the account of that 
 stewardship? The State, or Society, (call her by 
 what name you will,) had taken no manner of 
 thought of him till she saw him swept out Into the 
 street, the pitiful leavings of last night s debauch, 
 with cigar-ends, lemon-parings, tobacco-quids, 
 xlops, vile stenches, and the whole loathsome next- 
 morning of the barroom, an own child of the Al 
 mighty God! I remember him as he was brought 
 to be christened, a ruddy, rugged babe; and now 
 there he wallows, reeking, seething, the dead 
 corpse, not of a man, but of a soul, a putrefying 
 
 147
 
 148 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 lump, horrible for the life that is in it. Comes the 
 wind of heaven, that good Samaritan, and parts 
 the hair upon his forehead, nor is too nice to kiss 
 those parched, cracked lips; the morning opens 
 upon him her eyes full of pitying sunshine, tlu> 
 sky yearns down to him, and there he lies fer 
 menting. O sleep! let me not profane thy holy 
 name by calling that stertorous unconsciousness a 
 slumber! By and by comes along the State, God s 
 vicar. Does she say," My poor, forlorn foster- 
 child! Behold here a force which I will make dig 
 and plant and build for me "? Not so, but," Here 
 is a recruit ready-made to my hand, a piece of de 
 stroying energy lying unprofltably idle." So she 
 claps an ugly gray suit on him, puts a musket in 
 his grasp, and sends him off, with Gubernatorial 
 and other godspeeds, to do duty as a destroyer. 
 I made one of the crowd at the last Mechanics 
 Fair, and, with the rest, stood gazing in wonder 
 at a perfect machine, with its soul of tire, its boil 
 er-heart that sent the hot blood pulsing along the 
 iron arteries, and its thews of steel. And while I 
 was admiring the adaptation of means to end, the 
 harmonious involutions of contrivance, and the 
 never-bewildered complexity, I saw a grimed and 
 greasy fellow, the imperious engine s lackey and 
 drudge, whose sole office was to let fall, at inter 
 vals, a drop or two of oil upon a certain joint. 
 Then my soul said within me, See there a piece of 
 mechanism to which that other you marvel at is 
 but as the rude first effort of a child, a foroe
 
 The Biglow Papers. 149 
 
 which not merely suffices to set a few wheels in 
 motion, but which can send an impulse all through 
 the infinite future, a contrivance,, not for turning 
 out pins, or stitching buttonholes, but for making 
 Hamlets and Lears. And yet this thing of iron 
 shall be housed, waited on, guarded from rust and 
 dust, and it shall be a crime but so much as to 
 scratch it with a pin; while the other, with its 
 fire of God in it, shall be buffeted hither and 
 thither, and finally sent carefully a thousand miles 
 to be the target for a Mexican cannon-ball. Un 
 thrifty Mother State! My heart burned within me 
 for pity and indignation, and I renewed this cove 
 nant with my own soul, In aliis mansuetus ero, at, 
 in blasphemiis contra Christum, non ita.ll. \>.] 
 
 I SPOSE you wonder ware I be; I can t tell, fer 
 
 the soul o me, 
 Exacly ware I be myself, meanin by thet the 
 
 holl o me. 
 Wen I left hum, I lied two legs, an they worn t 
 
 bad ones neither, 
 (The scaliest trick they ever played wuz bringin 
 
 on me hither,) 
 Now one on em s I dunno ware; they thought 
 
 I wuz adyin , 
 An 1 sawed it off because they said twuz kin o 
 
 mortify in ;
 
 150 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 I m willin to believe it wuz, an yit I don t see, 
 
 nuther, 
 A\ r y one should take to feelin cheap a minnit 
 
 sooner n t other, 
 Sence both wuz equilly to blame; but things is 
 
 ez they be; 
 It took on so they took it off, an thet s enough 
 
 fer me: 
 There s one good thing, though, to be said 
 
 about my wooden new one, 
 The liquor can t git into it ez t used to in the 
 
 true one; 
 So it saves drink; an then, besides, a feller 
 
 couldn t beg 
 A gretter blessin then to hev one oilers sober 
 
 peg; 
 
 It s true a chap s in want o two fer follerin a 
 
 drum, 
 But all the march I m up to now is jest to 
 
 Kingdom Come. 
 
 I ve lost one eye, but thet s a loss it s easy t > 
 
 supply 
 Out o the glory thet I ve gut, fer thet is all my 
 
 eye; 
 An one is big enough, I guess, by diligently 
 
 usin it,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 151 
 
 To see all I shall ever git by way o pay fer 
 
 losin it; 
 OfFcers, I notice, who git paid fer all our 
 
 thumps an kickins, 
 Du wal by keepin single eyes arter the fattest 
 
 pickins; 
 So, ez the eye s put fairly out, I ll learn to go 
 
 without it, 
 An not allow myself to be no gret put out about 
 
 it. 
 Now, le me see, thet isn t all ; I used, fore 
 
 leavin Jaalam, 
 To count things on my finger-eends, but sut- 
 
 thin seems to ail em: 
 
 Ware s my left hand? 0, darn it, yes, I recol 
 lect wut s come on t; 
 I haint no left arm but my right, an thet s gut 
 
 jest a thumb on t; 
 
 It aint so hendy ez it wuz to cal late a sum on t. 
 I ve hed some ribs broke, six (I b lieve), I 
 
 haint kep no account on em; 
 "Wen pensions git to be the talk, Til settle the 
 
 amount on em. 
 
 An now I m speakin about ribs, it kin o 
 brings to mind
 
 152 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 One thet I couldn t never break, the one I leP 
 
 behind; 
 Ef you should see her, jest clear out the spout 
 
 o your invention 
 An pour the longest sweetnin in about an 
 
 annooal pension, 
 An kin o hint (in case, you know, the critter 
 
 should refuse to be 
 Consoled) I aint so xpensive now to keep ez wut 
 
 I used to be; 
 There s one arm less, ditto one eye, an then 
 
 the leg thet s wooden 
 Can be took off an sot away wenever ther s a 
 
 puddin . 
 
 I spose you think I m comin back ez opperlunt 
 
 ez thunder, 
 With shiploads o gold images an varus sorts o 
 
 plunder; 
 Wai, fore I vullinteered, I thought this country 
 
 wuz a sort o 
 Canaan, a reg lar Promised Land flowin with 
 
 rum an water, 
 Ware propaty growed up like time, without no 
 
 cultivation,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 153 
 
 An gold AVUZ dug ez taters be among our 
 
 Yankee nation, 
 
 Ware nateral advantages were pufficly amazin , 
 Ware every rock there wuz about with precious. 
 
 stuns wuz blazin , 
 "Ware mill-sites filled the country up ez thick ez- 
 
 you could cram em, 
 An desput rivers run about abeggin folks to 
 
 dam em; 
 Then there were mcetinhouses, tu, chockful o 
 
 gold an silver 
 Thet you could take, an no one couldn t hand 
 
 ye in no bill fer; 
 Thet s wut I thought afore I went, thet s wut 
 
 them fellers told us 
 Thet stayed to hum an speechified an to the- 
 
 buzzards sold us; 
 I thought thet gold mines could be gut cheaper 
 
 than china asters, 
 An see myself acomin back like sixty Jacob 
 
 Astors; 
 But sech idees soon melted down an didn t 
 
 leave a grease-spot; 
 I vow my holl sheer o the spiles wouldn t come 
 
 nigh a V spot; 
 Although, most anyvvares we ve ben, you 
 
 needn t break no locks,
 
 154 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Nor run no kin o risks, to fill your pockets full 
 
 o rocks. 
 I guess I mentioned in my last some o the 
 
 nateral feeturs 
 this all-fiered buggy hole in th way o awfle 
 
 creeturs, 
 But I fergut to name (new things to speak on 
 
 so abounded) 
 How one day you ll most die o thust, an fore 
 
 the next git drownded. 
 The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot made 
 
 o pewter 
 Our Prudence lied, thet wouldn t pour (all she 
 
 could du) to suit her; 
 Fust place the leaves ould choke the spout, so s 
 
 not a drop ould dreen out, 
 Then Prude ould tip an tip an tip, till the holl 
 
 kit bust clean out, 
 The kiver-hinge-pin bein lost, tea-leaves an tea 
 
 an kiver 
 ould all come down kerswosh! ez though the 
 
 dam broke in the river. 
 Jest so t is here; holl months there aint a day 
 
 o rainy weather, 
 
 An jest ez th officers ould be alayin heads to 
 gether
 
 Tlie Biglow Papers. 155 
 
 Ez t how they d mix their drink at sech a 
 
 milingtary deepot, 
 T ould pour ez though the lid wtiz off the ever- 
 
 lastin teapot. 
 The cons quence is, thet I shall take, wen I m 
 
 allowed to leave here, 
 One piece o propaty along, an thet s the 
 
 shakin fever; 
 It s reggilar employment, though, an thet aint 
 
 thought to harm one, 
 JSTor t aint so tiresome ez it wuz with t other 
 
 leg an arm on; 
 An it s a consolation, tu, although it doesn t 
 
 pay> 
 
 To hev it said you re some gret shakes in any 
 
 kin o way. 
 T vvorn t very long, I tell ye wut, I thought o 
 
 fortin-makin , 
 One day a reg lar shiver-de-freeze, an next ez 
 
 good ez bakin , 
 One day abrilin in the sand, then smoth rin in 
 
 the mashes, 
 Git up all sound, be put to bed a mess o hacks 
 
 an smashes. 
 But then, thinks I, at any rate there s glory to 
 
 be hed,
 
 156 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Thet s an investment, arter all, thet may ir t 
 
 turn out so bad; 
 But somehow, wen we d fit an licked, I oBers 
 
 found the thanks 
 Gut kin o lodged afore they come ez low down 
 
 ez the ranks; 
 The Gin rals gut the biggest sheer, the Cuimk-s 
 
 next, an so on, 
 We never gut a blasted mite o glory cz I know 
 
 on ; 
 An spose we hed, I wonder how you re goin 
 
 to contrive its 
 Division so s to give a piece to twenty thousand 
 
 privits; 
 Ef you should multiply by ten the portion o 
 
 the brav st one, 
 You wouldn t git more n half enough to speak 
 
 of on a grave-stun; 
 We git the licks, we re jest the grist thet s 
 
 put into War s hoppers; 
 Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps pick 
 
 up the coppers. 
 It may suit folks thet go agin a body with a soul 
 
 in t, 
 An aint contented with a hide without a bagnet 
 
 hole in t;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 157 
 
 But glory is a kin o thing I shan t pursue no 
 
 furdcr, 
 Coz thet s the off cers parquisite, yonrn s on y 
 
 jest the murder. 
 \Val, arter I gin glory up, thinks I at least 
 
 there s one 
 Thing in the hills we aint hed yit, an thet s the 
 
 GLOEIOUS FUK; 
 Ef once we git to Mexico, we fairly may presume 
 
 we 
 All day an night shall revel in the halls o 
 
 Montezumy. 
 I 11 tell ye wut my revels wuz, an see how you 
 
 would like em; 
 We never gut inside the hall: the nighest ever I 
 
 come 
 Wuz stan in sentry in the sun (an , fact, it 
 
 seemed a cent ry) 
 A ketchin smells o biled an roast thet come 
 
 out thru the entry, 
 An hearin , ez I sweltered thru my passes an 
 
 repasses, 
 A rat-tat-too o knives an forks, a clinkty-clink 
 
 o glasses: 
 
 I can t tell off the bill o fare the Gin rals hed 
 inside;
 
 138 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 All I know is, thet out o doors a pair o soles 
 
 wuz fried, 
 An not a hundred miles aAvay frum ware this 
 
 child wuz posted, 
 A Massachusetts citizen wuz baked an biled an 
 
 roasted; 
 The on y thing like revellin thet ever come to 
 
 me 
 Wuz bein routed out o sleep by thet darned 
 
 revelee. 
 
 They say the quarrel s settled now; fer my part 
 
 I ve some doubt on t, 
 T 11 take more fish-skin than folks think to 
 
 take the rile clean out on t; 
 At any rate, I m so used up I can t do no more 
 
 fightin , 
 The on y chance thet s left to me is politics or 
 
 writin ; 
 Now, ez the people s gut to hev a milingtary 
 
 .man, 
 An I aint nothin else jest now, I ve hit upon 
 
 a plan; 
 The can idatin line, you know, ould suit me 
 
 toaT,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 159 
 
 An ef I lose, t wunt hurt my ears to lodge 
 
 another flea; 
 
 So I ll set up ez can idate fer any kin o office, 
 (I mean fer any thet includes good easy-cheers 
 
 an soffies; 
 Fer ez to runnin fer a place ware work s the 
 
 time o day, 
 You know thet s wut I never did, except the 
 
 other way;) 
 Ef it s the Presidential cheer fer wich I d 
 
 better run, 
 Wut two legs anywares about could keep up 
 
 with my one? 
 There ain t no kin o quality in can idates, it s 
 
 said, 
 So useful ez a wooden leg, except a wooden 
 
 head; 
 There s nothin aint so poppylar (wy, it s a 
 
 parfect sin 
 To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy Anny s 
 
 pin;) 
 Then I haint gut no principles, an , sence I wuz 
 
 knee-high, 
 
 I never did hev any gret, ez you can testify; 
 I m a decided peace-man, tu, an go agin the 
 
 war,
 
 ICO The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Fer now the holl on t s gone an past, wut is 
 
 there to go for? 
 Ef, wile you re lectioneerin round, some curus 
 
 chaps should beg 
 To know my views o state affairs, jest answer 
 
 WOODEN LEG ! 
 
 Ef they aint settisfied with thet, an kin o pry 
 
 an doubt 
 An ax fer sutthin deffynit, jest say OXE EYE 
 
 PUT OUT ! 
 Thet kin o talk I guess you ll find 11 answer 
 
 to a charm, 
 An wen you re druv tu nigh the wall, hoi up 
 
 my missin arm; 
 Ef they should nose round fer a pledge, put on 
 
 a vartoous look 
 An tell em thet s percisely wut I never gin 
 
 nor took! 
 
 Then you can call me " Timbertoes," thet s 
 
 wut the people likes; 
 Sutthin combinin morril truth with phrases 
 
 sech ez strikes; 
 Some say the people s fond o this, or thet, or 
 
 Avut you please,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 161 
 
 I tell ye wut the people want is jest correct 
 
 idees; 
 " Old Timbertoes," you see, s a creed it a safe 
 
 to be quite bold on, 
 There s nothin in t the other side can any 
 
 ways git hold on; 
 
 It s a good tangible idee, a sutthin to embody 
 Thet valooable class o men who look thru 
 
 brandy-toddy; 
 It gives a Party Platform, tu, jest level with the 
 
 mind 
 Of all right-thinkin , honest folks thet mean to 
 
 go it blind; 
 Then there air other good hooraws to dror on 
 
 ez you need em, 
 Sech ez the OXE-EYED SLARTERER, the BLOODY 
 
 BlRDOFREDUil : 
 
 Them s wut takes hold o folks thet think, ez 
 
 well ez o the masses, 
 An makes you sartin o the aid o good men of 
 
 all classes. 
 
 There s one thing I m in doubt about; in order 
 
 to be Presidunt, 
 It s absolutely ne ssary to be a Southern resi- 
 
 dunt;
 
 162 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 The Constitution settles thet, an also thet a 
 
 feller 
 Must own a nigger o some sort, jet black, or 
 
 brown, or yeller. 
 Now I haint no objections agin particklar 
 
 climes, 
 NOT agin ownin anythin (except the truth 
 
 sometimes), 
 But, ez I haint no capital, up there among ye, 
 
 may be, 
 You might raise funds enough fer me to buy 
 
 a low-priced baby, 
 An then, to suit the No thern folks, who feel 
 
 obleeged to say 
 They hate an cuss the very thing they vote fer 
 
 every day, 
 Say you re assured I go full butt fer Libbaty s 
 
 diffusion 
 An made the purchis on y jest to spite the In- 
 
 stitootion; 
 But, golly! there s the currier s hoss upon the 
 
 pavemenr pawin ! 
 I ll be more xplicit in my next. 
 Yourn, 
 
 BIEDOFEEDUM SAWIN.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 [We have now a tolerably fair chance of esti 
 mating how the balance-sheet stands between our 
 returned volunteer and glory. Supposing the en 
 tries to be set down on both sides of the account 
 in fractional parts of one hundred, we shall arrive 
 at something like the following result: 
 
 Cr. B. SAWIN, Esq., in acct. 
 By loss of one leg, . . 20 
 " do. one arm, . . 15 
 " do. four fingers, . 5 
 " do. One eye, . . 10 
 " the breaking of six 
 
 ribs, 6 
 
 " having served un 
 der Colonel Gush 
 ing one month, . 44 
 
 with (BLANK) GLORY. DB. 
 To one 675th three 
 cheers in Faneuil 
 Hall, 30 
 
 " do. do. on 
 occasion of presen 
 tation of sword to 
 Colonel Wright, . 
 
 " one suit of gray 
 clothes (ingeniously 
 unbecoming), 
 
 " musical entertain 
 ments (drum and 
 fife six months), . 
 
 one dinner after re 
 turn, 
 
 " chance of pension, . 
 
 " privilege of drawing 
 long-bow during rest 
 of natural life, . . 
 
 25 
 
 15 
 
 23 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 E. E. 
 
 It would appear that Mr. Sawin found the actual 
 feast curiously the reverse of the bill of fare ad 
 vertised in Faneuil Hall and other places. His 
 primary object seems to have been the making of 
 his fortune. Qucerenda pecunia primiim, virtus post
 
 164: The Biglow Papers. 
 
 mimmos. He lioisted sail for Eldorado, and ship 
 wrecked on Point Tribulation. Quid nou mortalia 
 pcctora cogis. auri sacra fames? The speculation 
 has sometimes crossed my mind, in that, dreary in 
 terval of drought which intervenes between quar 
 terly stipendiary showers, that Providence, by the 
 creation of a money-tree, might have simplified 
 wonderfully the sometimes perplexing problem of 
 human life. We read of bread-trees, the butter 
 for which lies ready-churned in Irish bogs. Milk- 
 trees we are assured of in South America, and 
 stout Sir John Hawkins testifies to water-trees in 
 the Canaries. Boot-trees bear abundantly in Lynn 
 and elsewhere; and I have seen, in the entries of 
 the wealthy, hat-trees with a fair show of fruit. 
 A family-tree I once cultivated myself, and found 
 therefrom but a scanty yield, and that quite taste 
 less and innutritions. Of trees bearing men we are 
 not without examples; as those in the park of 
 Louis the Eleventh of France. Who has forgotten, 
 moreover, that olive-tree, growing in the Athen 
 ian s back-garden, with its strange uxorious crop, 
 for the general propagation of which, as of a new 
 and precious variety, the philosopher Diogenes, 
 hitherto uninterested in arboriculture, was so 
 zealous? In the sylia of our own Southern States, 
 the females of my family have called my attention 
 to the china-tree. Not to multiply examples, I 
 will barely add to my list tlie birch-tree, in the 
 smaller branches of which has been implanted so 
 miraculous a virtue for communicating the Latin
 
 The Biglow Papers. 165 
 
 and Greek languages, and which may well, there 
 fore, be classed among the trees producing neces 
 saries of life.vcneraliile donnm fatalis virg<R. That 
 money-trees existed in the golden age there want 
 not prevalent reasons for our believing. For does 
 not the old proverb, when it asserts that money 
 does not grow on crcry bush, imply a fortiori that 
 there were certain bushes which did produce it? 
 Again, there is another ancient saw to the effect 
 that money is the root of all evil. From which two 
 adages it may be safe to infer that the aforesaid 
 species of tree first degenerated into a shrub, then 
 absconded underground, and finally, in our iron 
 age, vanished altogether. In favorable exposures 
 it may be conjectured that a specimen or two sur 
 vived to a great age, as in the garden of the Hes- 
 perides; and, indeed, what else could that tree in 
 the Sixth yEneid have been, with a branch whereof 
 the Trojan hero procured admission to a territory, 
 for the entering of which money is a surer pass 
 port than to a certain other more profitable (too) 
 foreign kingdom? Whether these speculations of 
 mine have any force in them, or whether they will 
 not rather, by most readers, be deemed impertinent 
 to the matter in hand, is a question which I leave 
 to the determination of an indulgent posterity. 
 That there were, in more primitive and happier 
 times, shops where money was sold, and that, too, 
 on credit and at a bargain, I take to be matter of 
 demonstration. For what but a dealer in this ar 
 ticle was that ^Eolus who supplied Ulysses with..
 
 16G The Biglow Papers. 
 
 motive power for his fleet in bags? What that 
 Ericus, king of Sweden, who is said to have kept 
 the winds in his cap? What, in more recent times, 
 those Lapland Xoruas who traded in favorable 
 breezes? All which will appear the more clearly 
 when we consider, that, even to this day, raising 
 tlte irind is proverbial for raising money, and that 
 brokers and banks were invented by the Venetians 
 at a later period. 
 
 And now for the improvement of this digression. 
 I find a parallel to Mr. Sawin s fortune in an ad 
 venture of my own. For, shortly after I had first 
 broached to myself the before-stated natural-his 
 torical and archaeological theories, as I was pass 
 ing, litzc negotia pen-it us mcciim rcrolvens, through 
 one of the obscure suburbs of our New England 
 metropolis, my eye was attracted by these words 
 upon a signboard, CHEAP CASH-STORE. Here was 
 at once the confirmation of my speculations, and 
 the substance of my hopes. Here lingered the frag 
 ment of a happier past, or stretched out the first 
 tremulous organic filament of a more fortunate 
 future. Thus glowed the distant Mexico to the 
 eyes of Sawin, as he looked through the dirty pane 
 of the recruiting-office window, or speculated from 
 the summit of that mirage-Pisgah which the Imps 
 of the bottle are so cunning in raising up. Al 
 ready had my Aluaschar-faucy (even during that 
 first half-believing glance) expended in various use 
 ful directions the funds to be obtained by pledging 
 the manuscript of a proposed volume of discourses.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 167 
 
 Already did a clock ornament the tower of the 
 Jaalam meeting bouse, a gift appropriately, but 
 modestly, commemorated in the parish and town 
 records, both, for now many years, kept by myself, 
 Already had my son Seneca completed his course 
 at the University. Whether for the moment, we 
 may not be considered as actually lording it over 
 those Baratarias with the viceroyalty of which 
 Hope invests us, and whether we are ever so 
 warmly housed as in our Spanish castles, would 
 afford matter of argument. Enough that I found 
 that signboard to be no other than a bait to the 
 trap of a decayed grocer. Nevertheless, I bought 
 a pound of dates (getting short weight by reason 
 of immense flights of harpy flies who pursued and 
 lighted upon their prey even in the very scales), 
 which purchase I made, not only with an eye to 
 the little ones at home, but also as a iigurative re 
 proof of that too frequent habit of my mind, 
 which, forgetting the due order of chronology, will 
 often persuade me that the happy sceptre of Sat 
 urn is stretched over this Astrsea-forsakeu nine 
 teenth century. 
 
 Having glanced at the ledger of Glory under the 
 title Mate in, B., let us extend our investigations, 
 and discover if that instructive volume does not 
 contain some charges more personally interesting 
 to ourselves. I think we should be ruore economi 
 cal of our resources, did we thoroughly appreciate 
 the fact, that, whenever Brother Jonathan seems 
 to be thrusting his hand into his own pocket, he is,
 
 168 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 in fact, picking ours. I confess that the late muck 
 which the country has been running has mater 
 ially changed my views as to the best method of 
 raising revenue. If, by means of direct taxation, 
 the bills for every extraordinary outlay were 
 brought tinder our immediate eye, so that, like 
 thrifty housekeepers, we could see where and how 
 fast the money was going, we should be less likely 
 to commit extravagances. At present, these 
 things are managed in such a hugger-mugger way, 
 that we know not what we pay for; the poor man 
 is charged as much as the rich; and. while we 
 are saving and scrimping at the spigot, the govern 
 ment is drawing off at the bung. If we could 
 know that a part of the money we expend for 
 tea and coffee goes to buy powder and balls, and 
 that it is Mexican blood which makes the clothes 
 on our backs more costly, it would set some of 
 us athinking. During the present fall, I have 
 often pictured to myself a government official en 
 tering my study and handing me the following 
 foill:- 
 
 WASHINGTON, Sept. 30th, 1848. 
 KEV. HOMER WILBUR to TUncle Samuel, DR. 
 To his share of work done in Mexico on part 
 nership account, sundry jobs, as below. 
 " killing, maiming, and wounding about 
 
 5,000 Mexicans, $2.00 
 
 " slaughtering one woman carrying water 
 
 to wounded, 10
 
 The Biglow Papers. 169* 
 
 exti-a work on two different Sabbaths (one 
 bombardment and one assault) whereby 
 the Mexicans were prevented from de 
 filing themselves with the idolatries of 
 high mass, 3.50 
 
 throwing an especially fortunate and 
 Protestant bombshell into the Cathedral 
 at Vera Cruz, whereby several female 
 Papists were slain at the altar, 50 
 
 his proportion of cash paid for conquered 
 territory, 1.75. 
 
 his proportion do for conquering 
 territory, 1.50 
 
 manuring do, with new superior compost 
 called " American Citizen," 50 
 
 extending the area of freedom and Prot 
 estantism, 01 
 
 glory, 01 
 
 $9.87 
 Immediate payment is requested. 
 
 N. B. Thankful for former favors, U. S. re 
 quests a continuance of patronage. Orders ex 
 ecuted with neatness and despatch. Terms as 
 low as those of any other contractor for the same 
 kind and style of work. 
 
 I can fancy the official answering niy look of 
 horror with," Yes, Sir, it looks like a high; 
 charge, Sir; but in these days slaughtering is. 
 slaughtering." Verily, I would that every one
 
 irO The Biglow Papers. 
 
 understood that it was; for it goes about obtain 
 ing money on the false pretence of being glory. 
 For me, I have an imagination which plays me 
 uncomfortable tricks. It happens to me some 
 times to see a slaughterer on his way home from 
 his day s work, and forthwith my imagination puts 
 a cocked-hat upon his head and epaulettes upon 
 his shoulders, and sets him up as a candidate for 
 the Presidency. So, also, on a recent public occa 
 sion, as the place assigned to the " Reverend 
 Clergy " is just behind that of " Officers of the 
 Army and Navy " in processions, it was my for 
 tune to be seated at the dinner-table over against 
 one of these respectable persons. He was arrayed 
 as (out of his own profession) only kings, court- 
 officers, and footmen are in Europe, and Indians 
 in America. Now what does my over-officious im 
 agination but set to work upon him, strip him of 
 his gay livery, and present him to me coatless, 
 his trowsers thrust into the tops of a pair of boots 
 thick with clotted blood, and a basket on his arm 
 out of which lolled a gore-smeared axe, thereby 
 destroying my relish for the temporal mercies 
 upon the board before me? H. W.]
 
 No. IX. 
 A THIRD LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. 
 
 [Urox the folk wing letter slender comment will 
 be needful. In what river Selemnus has Mr. 
 Sawin bathed, that he has become so swiftly 
 oblivious of his former loves? From an ardent 
 and (as befits a soldier) confident wooer of that 
 coy bride, the popular favor, we see him subside 
 of a sudden into the (I trust not jilted) Cincin- 
 natus, returning to his plough with a goodly-sized 
 branch of willow in his hand; figuratively return 
 ing, however, to a figurative plough, and from no 
 profound affection for that honored implement of 
 husbandry, (for which, indeed, Mr. Sawin never 
 displayed any decided predilection,) but in order 
 to be gracefully summoned therefrom to more 
 congenial labors. It would seem that the charac 
 ter of the ancient Dictator had become part of the 
 recognized stock of our modern political comedy, 
 though, as our term of office extends to a quad 
 rennial length, the parallel is not so minutely 
 exact as could be desired. It is sufficiently so, 
 however, for purposes of scenic representation. 
 An humble cottage (if built of logs, the better) 
 forms the Arcadian background of the stage. This 
 rustic paradise is labeled Ashland, Jaalam, North 
 Bend, Marshfield, Kinderhook, or Bfvton Rouge, as
 
 172 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 occasion demands. Before the door stands a some- 
 tiling with one handle (the other painted in proper 
 perspective), which represents, in happy ideal 
 vagueness, the plough. To this the defeated can 
 didate rushes with delirious joy, ^-f-leomed as a 
 father by appropriate groups of happy laborers, or 
 from it the successful one is torn with difficulty, 
 sustained alone by a noble sense of public duty. 
 Only I have observed, that, if the scene be laid at 
 Baton Rouge or Ashland, the laborers are kept 
 carefully in the background, and are heard to 
 shout from behind the scenes in a singular 
 tone resembling ululation, and accompanied 
 by a sound not unlike vigorous clapping. This, 
 however, may be artistically in keeping with the 
 habits of the rustic population of those localities. 
 The precise connection between agricultural pur 
 suits and statesmanship I have not been able, 
 after diligent inquiry, to discover. But, that my 
 Investigations may not be barren of all fruit, I will 
 mention one curious statistical fact, which I con 
 sider thoroughly established, namely, that no real 
 farmer ever attains practically beyond a seat in 
 General Court, however theoretically qualified for 
 more exalted station. 
 
 It is probable that some other prospect has bt?en 
 opened to Mr. Sawin, and that he has not made 
 this great sacrifice without some definite under 
 standing in regard to a seat in the cabinet or a 
 foreign mission. It may be supposed that we of 
 Jaajaiu were not untouched by a feeling of villatic
 
 The Biglow Papers. 173 
 
 pride in beholding our townsman occupying so 
 large a space in the public eye. And to me, deeply 
 revolving the qualifications necessary to a candi 
 date in these frugal times, those of Mr. S. seemed 
 peculiarly adapted to a successful campaign. The 
 loss of a leg, an arm, an eye, and four fingers, re 
 duced him so nearly to the condition of a vox et 
 prccterca niliil, that I could think of nothing but 
 the loss of his head by which his chance could 
 have been bettered. But since he has chosen to 
 balk our suffrages, we must content ourselves 
 with what we can get, remembering lactucas non 
 esse dandas, dum cardui sufficiant.H. W.] 
 
 I SPOSE yon recollect thet I explained my gennle 
 
 views 
 In the last billet thet I writ, way down from 
 
 Yeery Cruze, 
 Jest arter I d a kind o ben spontanously sot 
 
 up 
 
 To run unanimously fer the Presidential cup; 
 course it worn t no wish o mine, t wuz fer- 
 
 flely distressing 
 But poppiler enthusiasm gut so almighty 
 
 pressin 
 Thet, though like sixty all along I fumed an 
 
 fussed an sorrered, 
 There didn t seem no ways to stop their 
 
 briiiinn on me forrerd:
 
 174 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Fact is, they udged the matter so, I couldn t 
 
 help admittin 
 The Father o his Country s shoes no feet but 
 
 mine ould fit in, 
 
 Besides the savin o the soles fer ages to suc 
 ceed, 
 Seein thet with one wannut foot, a pair d be 
 
 more n I need; 
 An , tell ye wut, them shoes 11 want a thund rin 
 
 sight o patching 
 Ef this ere fashion is to last we ve gut into o 
 
 hatchin 
 A pair o second "\Yashintons fer every new 
 
 election, 
 Though, fur ez number one s consarned, I don t 
 
 make no objection. 
 
 I wuz agoin on to say thet wen at fust I saw 
 The masses would stick to t I wuz the Country s 
 
 father- n-law, 
 (They would ha hed it Father, but I told em 
 
 t wouldn t du, 
 Coz thet wuz sutthin of a sort they couldn t 
 
 split in tu, 
 An Washinton hed hed the thing laid fairly to 
 
 his door, 
 
 Nor darsn t say t worn t his n, much ez sixty 
 year afore,)
 
 The Biglow Papers. 175 
 
 But t aint no matter ez to thet; wen I wuz 
 
 nomernated, 
 T worn t natur but wut I should feel con- 
 
 sid able elated, 
 AH wile the hooraw o the thing wuz kind o 
 
 noo an fresh, 
 I thought our ticket would ha caird the country 
 
 with a resh. 
 
 Sence I ve come hum, though, an looked round, 
 
 I think I seem to find 
 Strong argimunts ez thick ez fleas to make me 
 
 change my mind; 
 It s clear to any one whose brain ain t fur gone 
 
 in a phthisis, 
 Thet hail Columby s happy land is goin thru 
 
 a crisis, 
 An t wouldn t noways du to hev the people s 
 
 mind distracted 
 By bein all to once by sev ral pop lar names 
 
 attackted; 
 T would save holl haycartloads o fuss an 
 
 three four months o jaw, 
 Ef some illustrous paytriot should back out an 
 
 withdraw; 
 So, ez I aint a crooked stick, jest like like ole 
 
 (I swow,
 
 17G The Biglow Papers. 
 
 I dunno ez I know his name) I 11 go back to 
 
 my plough. 
 Now, t aint no more n is proper n right in 
 
 sech a sitooation 
 To hint the course you think 11 be the savin* 
 
 o the nation; 
 To funk right out o p lit cal strife aint thought 
 
 to be the thing, 
 Without you deacon off the toon you want your 
 
 folks should sing; 
 So I edvise the noomrous friends thet s in one 
 
 boat with me 
 To jest up killock, jam right down their helium 
 
 hard a lee, 
 Haul the sheets taut, an , laying out upon the 
 
 Suthun tack, 
 Make fer the safest port they can, wich, / think, 
 
 is Ole Zack. 
 Next thing you ll want to know, I spose, wut 
 
 argimunts I seem 
 To see thet makes me think this ere 11 be the 
 
 strongest team; 
 
 Fust place, I ve ben consid ble round in bar 
 rooms an saloons 
 Agethrin public sentiment, mongst Demmer- 
 
 crats and Coons,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 177 
 
 An t aint ve y offen thet I meet a chap but 
 
 wut goes in 
 Fer Rough an Ready, fair an square, hufs, 
 
 taller, horns, an skin; 
 I don t deny but wut, fer one, ez fur ez I could 
 
 see, 
 
 I didn t like at fust the Pheladelphy nomernee; 
 I could ha pinted to a man thet wuz, I guess, a 
 
 Peg 
 Higher than him, a sojer, tu, an with a 
 
 wooden leg; 
 But every day with more an more o Taylor 
 
 zeal I m burnin , 
 Scein \vich way the tide thet sets to office is 
 
 aturnin ; 
 Wy, into Bellers s we notched the votes down 
 
 on three sticks, 
 T wuz Birdofredum one, Cass aught, an Taylor 
 
 twenty-six, 
 An , bein the on y canderdate thet wuz upon 
 
 the ground, 
 They said t \vuz no more n right thet I should 
 
 I/ay the drinks all round; 
 Ei I d expected sech a trick, I wouldn t ha cut 
 
 my foot 
 By goin an votin fer myself like a consumed 
 
 coot;
 
 178 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 It didn t make no diff rence, though; I wish I 
 
 may be cust, 
 Ef Bellers wuzn t slim enough to say he 
 
 wouldn t trust! 
 
 Another pint that influences the minds o sober 
 
 jedges 
 Is thet the Gin ral hezn t gut tied hand an 
 
 foot with pledges; 
 He hezn t told ye wut he is, an so there aint 
 
 no knowin 
 But wut he may turn out to be the best there is 
 
 agoin ; 
 This at the on y spot thet pinched, the shoe 
 
 directly eases, 
 Coz every one is free to xpect percisely wut he 
 
 pleases: 
 I want free-trade; you don t; the Gin ral isn t 
 
 bound to neither; 
 I vote my way; you, yourn; an both air sooted 
 
 to a T there. 
 Ole Rough an Ready, tu, s a Wig, but without 
 
 bein ultry 
 (He s like a holsome hayinday, thet s warm, but 
 
 isn t sultry); 
 He s jest wut I should call myself, a kin o 
 
 scratch, ez t ware,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 179 
 
 Thct aint exacly all a wig nor wholly your own 
 
 hair; 
 I ve ben a Wig three weeks myself, jest o this 
 
 mod rate sort, 
 
 An don t find them an Demmercrats so differ 
 ent ez I thought; 
 They both act pooty much alike, an push an 
 
 scrouge an cus; 
 They re like two pickpockets in league for 
 
 Uncle Samwell s pus; 
 Each takes a side, an then they squeeze the old 
 
 man in between em, 
 Turn all his pockets wrong side out an quick 
 
 ez lightnin clean em; 
 To nary one on em I d trust a secon -handed 
 
 rail 
 No furder off an I could sling a bullock by the 
 
 tail. 
 "Webster sot matters right in thet air Mashfiel 
 
 speech o his n; 
 " Taylor," sez he, " aint nary ways the one thet 
 
 I d a chizzen, 
 Nor he aint nttin fer the place, an like ez not 
 
 he aint 
 No more n a tough ole bullethead, an no gret 
 
 of a saint;
 
 180 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 But then," sez he, " obsarve my pint, he s jest 
 
 ez good to vote fer 
 Ez though the greasin on him worn t a thing to 
 
 hire Choate fer; 
 
 Aint it ez easy done to drop a ballot in a box 
 Fer one ez t is fer t other,, fer the bulldog ez 
 
 the fox?" 
 It takes a mind like Dannel s, fact, ez big ez all 
 
 ou doors, 
 To find out thet it looks like rain arter it fairly 
 
 pours; 
 I gree with him, it aint so dreffle troublesome 
 
 to vote 
 Fer Taylor arter all, it s jest to go an change 
 
 your coat; 
 Wen he s once greased, you ll swaller him an 
 
 never know on t, scurce, 
 Unless he scratches, goin down, with them air 
 
 Gin ral s spurs. 
 I ve ben a votin Demmercrat, ez reg lar ez a 
 
 clock, 
 But don t find goin Taylor gives my narves no 
 
 gret f a shock; 
 Truth is, the cutest leadin Wigs, ever sence fust 
 
 they found 
 Wich side the bread gut buttered on, hev kep 
 
 a edgin round;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 181 
 
 They kin o slipt the planks frum out th ole 
 platform one by one 
 
 An made it gradooally noo, fore folks know d 
 wut wuz done, 
 
 Till, fur z I know, there aint an inch thet I 
 could lay my han on, 
 
 But I, or any Demmercrat, feels comf table to 
 stan on., 
 
 Air ole Wig doctrines act lly look, their occ - 
 pants bein gone, 
 
 Lonesome ez staddles on a mash without no hay 
 ricks on. 
 
 I spose it s time now I shall give my thoughts 
 
 upon the plan, 
 Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o settin up 
 
 cle Van. 
 I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I m clean 
 
 disgusted, 
 He aint the man thet I can say is fittin to be 
 
 trusted; 
 He aint half antislav ry nough, nor I aint sure, 
 
 ez some be, 
 He d go in fer -abolishin the Deestrick o 
 
 Columby; 
 An , now I come to recollect, it kin o makes 
 
 me sick z
 
 182 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 A horse, to think o wut he wuz in eighteen 
 
 thirty-six. 
 An then, another thing; I guess, though 
 
 mebby I am wrong, 
 This BufFlo plaster aint agoin to dror almighty 
 
 strong; 
 Some folks, I know, hev gut th idee thet 
 
 No thun dough ll rise, 
 Though, fore I see it riz an baked, I wouldn t 
 
 trust my eyes; 
 Twill take more emptins, a long chalk, than 
 
 this noo party s gut, 
 To give sech heavy cakes ez them a start, I tell 
 
 ye wut. 
 But even ef they caird the day, there wouldn t 
 
 be no endurin 
 To stand upon a platform with sech critters ez 
 
 Van Buren; 
 An his son John, tu, I can t think how thet air 
 
 chap should dare 
 To speak ez he doos; wy, they say he used to 
 
 cuss an swear! 
 I spose he never read the hymn thet tells how 
 
 down the stairs 
 A feller with long legs wuz throwed thet 
 
 wouldn t say his prayers.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 183 
 
 This brings me to another pint: the leaders o 
 
 the party 
 Aint jest sech men ez I can act along with free 
 
 an hearty; 
 
 They aint not quite respectable, an wen a fel 
 ler s morrils 
 Don t toe the straightest kin o mark, wy, him 
 
 an me jest quarrils. 
 I went to a free soil meetin once, an wut d ye 
 
 think I see? 
 A feller wuz^aspoutin there thet act lly come to 
 
 me, 
 About two year ago last spring, ez nigh ez I can 
 
 jedge, 
 An axed me ef I didn t want to sign the Tem- 
 
 prunce pledge! 
 He s one o them thet goes about an sez you 
 
 hedn t ough to 
 Drink nothin , mornin , noon, or night, stronger 
 
 an Taunton water. 
 There s one rule I ve ben guided by, in settlin 
 
 how to vote, oilers, 
 I take the side thet isn t took by them con- 
 
 sarned teetotallers. 
 
 Ez fer the niggers, I ve ben South, an thet hez 
 changed my mind;
 
 184 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 A lazier, more ungrateful set you couldn t 
 
 nowers find. 
 You know I mentioned in my last thet I should 
 
 buy a nigger, 
 Ef I could make a purchase at a pooty moderate 
 
 figger; 
 So, ez there s nothin in the world I m fonder of 
 
 an gunnin , 
 
 I closed a bargin finally to take a feller runnin . 
 I shou dered queen s-arm an stumped out, an 
 
 Aven I come t th swamp, 
 T worn t very long afore I gut upon the nest 
 
 o Pomp; 
 I come acrost a kin o hut, an , playin round the 
 
 door, 
 Some little woolly-headed cubs, cz many z six 
 
 or more. 
 At fust I thought o firm , but think twice is 
 
 safest oilers; 
 There aint, thinks I, not one on em but s wuth 
 
 his twenty dollars, 
 Or would be, ef I hed em back into a Christian 
 
 land, 
 How temptin all on em would look upon an 
 
 auction-stand! 
 (Not but wut I hate Slavery in th abstract, 
 
 stem to starn,
 
 The Biglow Papers. 18o 
 
 I leave it ware our fathers did, a privit State 
 
 consarn.) 
 Soon z they see me, they yelled an run, but 
 
 Pomp wuz out ahoein 
 A leetle patch o corn he hed, or else there aint 
 
 no knowin 
 He wouldn t ha took a pop at me; but I hed gut 
 
 the start, 
 An wen he looked, I vow he groaned ez though 
 
 he d broke his heart; 
 He done it like a wite man, tu, ez nat ral ez a 
 
 pictur, 
 The imp dunt, pis nous hypocrite! wus an a 
 
 boy constrictur. 
 " You can t gum we, I tell ye now., an so you 
 
 needn t try, 
 I xpect my eye-teeth every mail, so jest shet 
 
 up," scz I. 
 " Don t go to actin ugly now, or else I ll jest let 
 
 strip, 
 You d best draw kindly, seein z how I ve gut 
 
 ye on the hip; 
 Besides, you darned ole fool, it aint no gret of a 
 
 disaster 
 To be benev lently druv back to a contented 
 
 master,
 
 186 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Ware you lied Christian priv ledges you don t 
 
 seem quite aware of, 
 Or you d ha never run away from bein well 
 
 took care of; 
 Ez fer kin treatment, wy, he wuz so fond on ye, 
 
 he said 
 He d give a fifty spot right out, to git ye, live 
 
 or dead; 
 Wite folks aint sot hy half ez much; member 
 
 I run away, 
 Wen I wuz bound to Cap n Jakes, to Mattys- 
 
 qumscot bay; 
 Don know him, likely? Spose not; wal, the 
 
 mean ole codger went 
 An offered wut reward, think? Wal, it 
 
 worn t no less n a cent." 
 Wal, I jest gut em into line, an druv em on 
 
 afore me, 
 The pis nous brutes, I d no idee o the ill-will 
 
 they bore me; 
 We walked till som ers about noon, an then it 
 
 grew so hot 
 I thought it best to camp awile, so I chose out a 
 
 spot 
 Jest under a magnoly tree, an there right down 
 
 I sot;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 187 
 
 Then I unstrapped my wooden leg, coz it begun 
 
 to chafe, 
 An laid it down jest by my side, supposin all 
 
 wuz safe; 
 I made my darkies all set down around me in 
 
 a ring, 
 An sot an kin o ciphered up how much the 
 
 lot would bring; 
 But, wile I drinked the peaceful cup of a pure 
 
 heart an mind, 
 (Mixed with some wiskey, now an then,) Pomp 
 
 he snaked up behind, 
 An , creepin grad lly close tu, ez quiet ez a 
 
 mink, 
 Jest grabbed my leg, and then pulled foot, 
 
 quicker an you could wink, 
 An , come to look, they each on em hed gut be- 
 
 hin a tree, 
 An Pomp poked out the leg a piece, jest so ez 
 
 I could see, 
 An yelled to me to throw away my pistils an 
 
 my gun, 
 Or else thet they d cair off the leg an fairly cut 
 
 the run. 
 I vow I didn t b lieve there wuz a decent alii- 
 
 gatur
 
 188 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Thet lied a heart so destitoot o common human 
 
 natur; 
 However, ez there worn t no help, I finally give 
 
 in 
 An heft my arms away to git my leg safe back 
 
 agin. 
 Pomp gethered all the weapins up, an then he 
 
 come an grinned, 
 He showed his ivory some, I guess, an sez, 
 
 " You re fairly pinned; 
 Jest huckle on your leg agin, an git right up an 
 
 come, 
 Twun t du fer fammerly men like me to be so 
 
 long from hum." 
 At fust I put my foot right down an swore I 
 
 wouldn t budge. 
 " Jest ez you choose," sez he, quite cool, " either 
 
 be shot or trudge." 
 So this black-hearted monster took an act lly 
 
 druv me back 
 Along the very feetmarks o my happy rnornin 
 
 track, 
 An kep me pris ner bout six months, an 
 
 worked me, tu, like sin, 
 Till I hed gut his corn an his Carliny taters 
 
 in;
 
 The Biglow Papers. 189 
 
 He made me larn him readin , tu, (although the 
 
 crittur saw 
 How much it hut my morril sense to act agin 
 
 the law,) 
 So st he could read a Bible he d gut; an axed 
 
 ef I could pint 
 The Xorth Star out; but there I pu his nose 
 
 some out o jint, 
 Fer I weeled roun about sou west, an , lookin 
 
 up a bit, 
 Picked out a middlin shiny one an tole him 
 
 thet wuz it. 
 Fin lly, he took me to the door, an , givin me 
 
 a kick, 
 Sez, " Ef you know wut s best f er ye, be off, 
 
 now, double-quick; 
 The winter-time s a comin on, an , though I 
 
 gut ye cheap, 
 You re so darned lazy, I don t think you re 
 
 hardly wuth your keep; 
 Besides, the childrin s growin up, an you aint 
 
 jest the model 
 
 I d like to hev em immertate, an so you d bet 
 ter toddle!" 
 
 Now is there any thin on airth ll ever prove to 
 me
 
 1UO The Biglow Papers. 
 
 Thet renegader slaves like him air fit fer boin 
 
 free? 
 D you think they ll suck me in to jine the 
 
 Buff lo chaps, an them 
 Rank infidels thet go agin the Scriptur l cus o 
 
 Shem? 
 Not by a jugfull! sooner n thet, I d go thru 
 
 fire an water; 
 Wen I hev once made up my mind, a niett nhus 
 
 aint setter; 
 No, not though all the crows thet flies to pick 
 
 my bones wuz cawin 
 I guess we re in a Christian land, 
 Yourn, 
 
 BIBDOFBEDUM SAWIN. 
 
 [HERE, patient reader, we take leave of each 
 other, I trust with some mutual satisfaction. I 
 say patient, for I love not the kind which skirns 
 dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows 
 over a pool before rain. By such no pearls shall 
 be gathered. But if no pearls there be (as, indeed, 
 the world is not without example of books where- 
 frorn the longest-wJnded diver shall bring up no 
 more than his proper handful of mud), yet let us 
 hope that an oyster or two may reward adequate 
 perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is 
 patience itself a gem Avorth diving deeply for.
 
 The Biglow Papers. 191 
 
 It may seem to some that too much space has 
 been usurped by my own private lucubrations, and 
 some may be fain to bring against me that old 
 jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the 
 meeting-house save only the sexton, who, remain 
 ing for yet a little space, from a sense of official 
 duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the 
 keys, humbly requested our preacher to lock the 
 doors, when he should have wholly relieved him 
 self of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in 
 the self-act of preaching, nor do I deem a dis 
 course to be wholly thrown away even upon a 
 sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily 
 believe that the Gospel of Saint John, which 
 Jacques Cartier ordered to be read in the Latin 
 tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first 
 meeting with them, fell altogether upon stony 
 ground. For the earnestness of the preacher is a 
 sermon appreciable by the dullest intellects and 
 most alien ears. In this wise did Episcopius con 
 vert many to his opinions, who yet understood not 
 the language in which he discoursed. The chief 
 thing is, that the messenger believe that he has 
 an authentic message to deliver. For counterfeit 
 messengers that mode of treatment which Father 
 John de Piano Carpini relates to have prevailed 
 among the Tartars would seem effectual, and, per- 
 kaps, deserved enough. For my own part, I may 
 lay claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom 
 as would have led me to go into banishment with 
 those clergymen whom Alphonso the Sixth of 
 Portugal drove out of his kingdom for refusing
 
 192 The Biglow Papers. 
 
 to shorten their pulpit eloquence. It is possible, 
 that, having been invited into my brother Biglow s 
 desk, I may have been too little scrupulous in 
 using it for the venting of my own peculiar doc 
 trines to a congregation drawn together in the 
 expectation and with the desire of hearing him. 
 I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of 
 mental organization which impels me, like the 
 railroad engine with its train of cars, to run back 
 ward for a short distance in order to obtain a 
 fairer start. I may compare myself to one fishing 
 from the rocks when the sea runs high, who, mis 
 interpreting the suction of the undertow for the 
 biting of some larger fish, jerks suddenly, and 
 finds that he has caught bottom, hauling in upon 
 the end of his line a trail of various algtr, among 
 which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find 
 somewhat to repay the disappointment of the 
 angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavored to 
 adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, 
 daily degenerating more and more from the high 
 standard of our pristine New England. To the 
 catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also 
 that of listening to two-hour sermons. Surely we 
 have been abridged into a race of pigmies. For, 
 truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting 
 to us in print, the endless spinal column of 
 divisions and subdivisions can be likeued to 
 nothing so exactly as to the vertebrce of the 
 saurians, whence the theorist may conjecture a 
 race of Anakim proportionate to the withstanding
 
 The Biglow Papers. 193 
 
 of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather 
 than Nephelim, because there seem reasons for 
 supposing that the race of those whose heads 
 (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in 
 clouds (which that name imports) will never be 
 come extinct. The attempt to vanquish the in 
 numerable heads of one of those aforementioned 
 discourses may supply us with a plausible inter 
 pretation of the second labor of Hercules, and his 
 successful experiment with fire affords us a useful 
 precedent. 
 
 But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in 
 this regard, I cannot refuse to succumb to its 
 influence. Looking out through my study-window, 
 I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering 
 his Baldwins, of which, to judge by the number of 
 barrels lying about under the trees, his crop is 
 more abundant than my own, by which sight I 
 am admonished to turn to those orchards of the 
 mind wherein my labors may be more prospered, 
 and apply myself diligently to the preparation of 
 my next Sabbath s discourse. H. W.] 
 
 13
 
 GLOSSARY. 
 
 A. 
 
 Act lly, actually. 
 Air, are. 
 Airth, earth. 
 Airy, area. 
 Aree, area. 
 Arter, after. 
 Ax, ask. 
 
 B. 
 
 Beller, bellow. 
 
 Bellowses, lungs. 
 
 Ben, been. 
 
 Bile, boil. 
 
 Bimeby, by and by. 
 
 Blurt out, to speak bluntly. 
 
 Bust, burst. 
 
 Buster, a roisting blade; 
 
 used also as a general 
 
 superlative. 
 
 C. 
 
 Caird, carried. 
 Cairn, carrying. 
 Caleb, a turncoat. 
 Cal late, calculate. 
 Cass, a person with two lives. 
 Close, clothes. 
 
 Cockerel, a young cock. 
 
 Cocktail, a kind of drink; 
 also, an ornament pecu 
 liar to soldiers . 
 
 Convention, a place where 
 people are imposed on ; a 
 juggler s show. 
 
 Coons, a cant term for a 
 now defunct party ; de 
 rived, perhaps, from the 
 fact of their being com 
 monly up a tree. 
 
 Comwallis, a sort of muster 
 in masquerade; supposed 
 to have had its origin 
 Epon after the Revolu 
 tion, and to commemo 
 rate the surrender of 
 Lord Corn wallis. It took 
 the place of the old Guy 
 Fawkes procession. 
 
 Crooked stick, a perverse, 
 froward person. 
 
 Cunnle, a colonel. 
 
 Cus, a curse; also, a pitiful 
 fellow. 
 
 D. 
 
 Darsn t, used indiscrimi 
 nately, either in singu 
 lar or plural number, 
 for dare not, dar<s not, 
 and dared not. 
 
 (195)
 
 196 
 
 Glossary. 
 
 Deacon off, to give the 
 cue to; derived from a 
 custom, once unive~sal, 
 but now extinct, in our 
 New England Congre 
 gational churches. An 
 important part of the 
 office of deacon was to 
 read aloud the hymns 
 given out by the minis 
 ter, one line at a time, 
 the congregation sing 
 ing each line as soon as 
 read. 
 
 Demmercrat, leadin , one 
 in favor of extending sla 
 very ; a free-trade lecturer 
 maintained in the custom 
 house. 
 
 Desput, desperate. 
 
 Doos, does. 
 
 Doughface, a contented lick 
 spittle; a common variety 
 of Northern politician. 
 
 Dror, draw. 
 
 Du, do. 
 
 Dunno, dno, do not or does 
 not know. 
 
 Dut, dirt. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eend, end. 
 
 Ef, if. 
 
 Emptins, yeast. 
 
 Env y, envoy. 
 
 Everylasting, an inten 
 sive, without reference 
 to duration. 
 
 Ev y, every. 
 Ez, as. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fer, for. 
 
 Ferfle, f erf u\, fearful; also 
 an intensive. 
 
 Fin , find. 
 
 Fish-skin, used in New 
 England to clarify 
 coffee. 
 
 Fix, a difficulty, a nonplus. 
 
 Foller, folly, to follow. 
 
 Forrerd, forward. 
 
 Frum, from. 
 
 Fur, far. 
 
 Furdier, farther. 
 
 Furrer, furrow. Meta 
 phorically, to draw a 
 straight furrow is to live 
 uprightly or decorously. 
 
 Fust, first. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gin, gave. 
 
 Git, get. 
 
 Gret, great. 
 
 Grit, spirit, energy, pluck. 
 
 Grout, to sulk. 
 
 Grouty, crabbed, surly. 
 
 Gum, to impose on. 
 
 Gump, a foolish fellow, a 
 
 dullard. 
 Gut, got.
 
 Glossary. 
 
 197 
 
 H. 
 
 Heel, had. 
 
 Heern, heard. 
 
 Helium, helm. 
 
 Hendy, handy. 
 
 Het, heated. 
 
 Hev, have. 
 
 Hez, has. 
 
 Holl, whole. 
 
 Holt, hold. 
 
 Huf, hoof. 
 
 Hull, whole. 
 
 Hum, home. 
 
 Humbug, General Taylor s 
 
 anti-slavery. 
 Hut, hurt . 
 
 I. 
 
 Idno, J do not know. 
 
 In my, enemy. 
 
 Insines, ensigns; used to 
 designate both the 
 officer who carries the 
 standard, and the stand 
 ard itself. 
 
 Inter, intu, into. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jedge, judge. 
 Jest, just. 
 Jine, join. 
 Jint, joint. 
 
 Junk, a fragment of any 
 solid substance. 
 
 K. 
 
 Keer, care. 
 Kep, kept. 
 
 Killock, a small anchor. 
 Kin r , kin o , kinder, kind, 
 kind of. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lawth, loath. 
 
 Let daylight into, to shoot. 
 
 Let on, to hint, to confess, 
 
 to own. 
 
 Lick, to beat, to overcome. 
 Lights, the bowels. 
 Lily-pads, leaves of the 
 
 water-lily. 
 Long - sweetening, molas- 
 
 M. 
 
 Maeh, marsh. 
 
 Mean, stingy, ill-natured. 
 
 Min , mind. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nimepunce, ninepence, 
 
 twelve and a half cents. 
 Nowers, nowhere. 
 
 0. 
 
 Offen, often. 
 
 Ole, old. 
 
 Oilers, olluz, ahvays.
 
 Glossary. 
 
 On, of; used before it or 
 them, or at the end of a 
 sentence, as on t, on 
 em, nut ez ever I heerd 
 on. 
 
 On y, only. 
 
 Ossifer, officer (seldom 
 heard ). 
 
 P. 
 
 Peaked, pointed. 
 
 Peek, to peep. 
 
 Pickerel, the pike, a fish. 
 
 Pint, point. 
 
 Pocket full of rocks, plenty 
 
 of money. 
 Pooty, pretty. 
 Pop ler, conceited, popular. 
 Pus, purse. 
 Put out, troubled, vexed. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quarter, a quarter-dollar. 
 Queen s arm, a musket. 
 
 Pv. 
 
 Resh, rush. 
 
 Revelee, the reveille. 
 
 Rile, to trouble. 
 
 Riled, angry; disturbed, 
 
 as the sediment in any 
 
 liquid. 
 Riz, risen. 
 Row, a long row to hoe, 
 
 a difficult task. 
 Rugged, robust. 
 
 Sarse, abuse, impertinence. 
 
 Sartin, certain. 
 
 Saxon, sacristan, sexton. 
 
 Scaliest, u orst. 
 
 Scringe, cringe. 
 
 Scrouge, to crowd. 
 
 Sech, such. 
 
 Set by, valued. 
 
 Shakes, great, of consider 
 able consequence. 
 
 Shappoes, chapeaux, 
 cocked-hats. 
 
 Sheer, share. 
 
 Shet, shut. 
 
 Shut, shirt. 
 
 Skeered, scared. 
 
 Skeeter, mosquito. 
 
 Skooting, running, or mov 
 ing su iftly. 
 
 Slarterin , slaughtering. 
 
 Slim, contemptible. 
 
 Snaked, crawled like a 
 snake ; but to snake any- 
 one out is to track him 
 to his hiding-place ; to 
 snake a thing out is to 
 snatch it out. 
 
 Softies, sofas. 
 
 Sogerin , soldiering; a bar 
 barous amusement com 
 mon among men in the 
 savage state. 
 
 Som ers, somewhere. 
 
 So st, so os that. 
 
 Sot, set, obstinate, resolute. 
 
 Spiles, spoils ; objects of 
 political ambition.
 
 Glossary. 
 
 Spry, active. 
 
 Staddles, stout stakes driven 
 into the salt marshes, on 
 which the hayricks are 
 set, and thus raised out 
 of the reach of high 
 tides. 
 
 Streaked, uncomfortable, 
 discomfited. 
 
 Suckle, circle. 
 
 Sutthin , something. 
 
 Suttir, certain. 
 
 plishments consult Cot 
 ton Mather. 
 
 Tu, to, too; commonly has 
 this sound when used 
 emphatically, or at the 
 end of a sentence. At 
 other times it has the 
 sound of t in tough, as 
 Ware ye goin tu ? Goin* 
 ta Boston. 
 
 T. 
 
 Take on, to sorrow. 
 
 Talents, talons. 
 
 Taters, potatoes. 
 
 Tell, till. 
 
 Tetch, touch. 
 
 Tetch tu, to be able; used 
 always after a negative 
 in this sense. 
 
 Tollable, tolerable. 
 
 Toot, used derisively for 
 playing on any wind in 
 strument. 
 
 Thru, through. 
 
 Thundering, a euphemism 
 common in New Eng 
 land, for the profane 
 English expression dev 
 ilish. Perhaps derived 
 from the belief, common 
 formerly, that thunder 
 was caused by the 
 Prince of the Air, for 
 some of whose accom- 
 
 Ugly, ill-tempered, intrac 
 table. 
 
 Uncle Sam, United States; 
 the largest boaster of 
 liberty and owner of 
 slaves. 
 
 Unrizzest, applied to 
 dough or bread ; heavy, 
 most unrisen, or most in 
 capable of rising. 
 
 V. 
 
 V spot, a five-dollar bill. 
 Vally, value. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wake snakes, to get into 
 trouble. 
 
 Wai, well; spoken with 
 great deliberation, and 
 sometimes with the a 
 very much flattened,
 
 200 
 
 Glossary. 
 
 sometimes (but more 
 seldom) very much 
 broadened. 
 
 Wannut, walnut (hickory). 
 
 Ware, where. 
 
 Ware, were. 
 
 Whopper, a?i uncommonly 
 large lie; as, that Gen 
 eral Taylor is in favor 
 of the Wilmot Proviso. 
 
 Wi, Whig; a party now 
 dissolved. 
 
 Wunt, will not. 
 
 Wus, worse. 
 
 Wut, wJiat. 
 
 Wuth, worth; as, Anti- 
 slavery perfessions fore 
 lection aint wuth a Bung- 
 town copper. 
 
 Wuz, was, sometimes ivere. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yaller, yellow. 
 Yeller, yellow. 
 Yellers, a disease of peach- 
 trees. 
 
 Zach, Ole, a second Wash 
 ington, an antislavery 
 slaveholder, a humane 
 buyer and seller of men 
 and women, a Christian 
 hero generally.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 A. B. , information wanted 
 concerning, 135. 
 
 Adam, eldest son of, re 
 spected, 53. 
 
 yEneas goes to hell, 165. 
 
 ^Eolus, a seller of money, 
 as is supposed by some, 
 165. 
 
 .jEschylus,asayingof, 104, 
 note. 
 
 Alligator, a decent one 
 conjectured to be, in 
 some sort, humane, 187. 
 
 Alphonso the Sixth of 
 Portugal, tyrannical act 
 of, 191. 
 
 Ambrose, Saint, excellent 
 (but rationalistic) senti 
 ment of, 83. 
 
 "American Citizen," new 
 compost so called, 169. 
 
 American Eagle, a source 
 of inspiration, 95 hith 
 erto wrongly classed, 
 104 long bill of, 104. 
 
 Amog, cited, 82. 
 
 Anakim, that they for 
 merly existed, shown, 
 193. 
 
 Angelf, providentially 
 speak French, 68 con 
 
 jectured to be skilled in 
 all tongues, ib. 
 
 Anglo -Saxondom, its idea, 
 what, 66. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon mask, 66. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon race, 61. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon verse, by 
 whom carried to per 
 fection, 55. 
 
 Anton ius, a speech of, 89 
 by whom best re 
 ported, ib. 
 
 Apocalypse, beast in, mag 
 netic to theologians, 
 143. 
 
 Apollo, confessed mortal 
 by his own oracle, 143. 
 
 Apollyon, his tragedies 
 popular, 131. 
 
 Appian, an Alexandrian, 
 not equal to Shakspeare 
 as an orator, 89. 
 
 Ararat, ignorance of for 
 eign tongues is an, 107. 
 
 Arcadian background, 171. 
 
 Aristophanes, 81. 
 
 Arms, profession of, once 
 esteemed especially that 
 of gentlemen, 54. 
 
 Arnold, 91. 
 
 Ashland, 171. 
 
 Astor, Jacob, a rich man, 
 153. 
 
 (201)
 
 202 
 
 Index 
 
 Astrjea, nineteenth cen 
 tury forsaken by, 167. 
 
 Athenians, ancient, an in 
 stitution of, 91. 
 
 Atherton, Senator, envies 
 the loon, 116. 
 
 Austin, St., profane wish 
 of, 93, note. 
 
 Aye-Aye, the, an African 
 animal, America sup 
 posed to be settled by, 
 71. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babel, probably the first 
 
 Congress, 106 a gab- 
 
 ble-inill, ib. 
 Baby, a low priced one, 
 
 162. 
 Bagowind, Hon. Mr., 
 
 whether to be damned, 
 
 120. 
 
 Baldwin apples, 193. 
 Baratarias, real or im- 
 
 asinary, which most 
 
 pleasant, 167. 
 Barnum, a great natural 
 
 curiosity recommended 
 
 to, 101. 
 Barrels, an inference from 
 
 seeing, 193. 
 Baton Rouge,171 strange 
 
 peculiarities of laborers 
 
 at, 172. 
 
 Baxter, R. , a saying of, 83 . 
 Bay, Mattysqumscot, 186. 
 Bay State, singular effect 
 
 produced on military 
 
 officers by leaving it, 
 67. 
 
 Beast in Apocalypse, a 
 loadstone for whom, 
 143. 
 
 Beelzebub, his rigadoon, 
 117. 
 
 Behmen, his letters not 
 letters, 136. 
 
 Bellers, a saloon-keeper, 
 177 inhumanly refuses 
 credit to a presidential 
 candidate, 178. 
 
 Biglow, Ezekiel, his letter 
 to Hon. J. T. Bucking 
 ham, 1 never heard of 
 any one named Mun- 
 dishes, 46 nearly four 
 score years old, ib. hie 
 aunt Keziah, a notable 
 saying of, ib. 
 
 Biglow, Hosea, excited 
 by composition, 46 a 
 poem by, 47, 125 his 
 opinion" of war, 48 
 wanted at home by 
 Nancy, 51 recom 
 mends a forcible enlist 
 ment of warlike editors, 
 ib. would not wonder, 
 if generally agreed with, 
 53 versifies letter of 
 Mr. Sawin, 55 a letter 
 from, 57, 112 his opin 
 ion of Mr. Sawin, 57 
 does not deny fun at 
 Cprnwallis, 58, note 
 his idea of militia glory, 
 62, note a pun of, 63.
 
 Index. 
 
 203 
 
 note is uncertain in re 
 gard to people of Bos 
 ton, ib. had never 
 heard of Mr. John P. 
 Robinson, 73 all qnid 
 sufflaminandus, 74 his 
 poems attributed to a 
 Mr. Lowell, 80 is un 
 skilled in Latin, 81 
 his poetry maligned by 
 some, ib. his disinter 
 estedness, ib. his deep 
 share in commonweal, 
 82 his claim to the 
 presidency, ib. his 
 mowing, ib. resents 
 being called Whig, 83 
 opposed to tariff, ib. 
 obstinate, 84 infected 
 with peculiar notions, 
 ib. reports a speech, 89 
 emulates historians of 
 antiquity, 90 his char 
 acter sketched from a 
 hostile point of view, 105 
 a request of his com 
 plied with, 122 ap 
 pointed at a public 
 meeting in Jaalam, 137 
 confesses ignorance, 
 in one minute particu 
 lar, of propriety, ib. 
 his opinion of cocked 
 hats, ib. letter to, ib. 
 called "Dear Sir," by 
 a general, ib. probably 
 receives same compli 
 ment from two hun 
 dred and nine, ib. 
 
 picks his apples, 193 
 his crop of Baldwins 
 conjecturally lare, ib. 
 Billings, Dea. "Cephas, 58. 
 Birch, virtue of, in instil 
 ling certain of the dead 
 languages, 164. 
 Bird of our country sings 
 
 hosanna, 61. 
 Blind, to get it, 161. 
 Blitz pulls ribbons from 
 
 his mouth, 61. 
 Bluenose potatoes, smell 
 
 of, eagerly desired, 62. 
 Bobtail obtains a cardi 
 nal s hat, 72. 
 Bolles, Mr. Secondary, 
 author of prize peace 
 essay, 60 presents 
 sword to Lieutenant- 
 Colonel, ib. a fluent 
 orator, ib. found to be 
 in error, 62. 
 Bonaparte, N., a usurper, 
 
 143. 
 Boot-tree?, productive, 
 
 where, 164. 
 
 Boston, people of, sup 
 posed educated, 63, note. 
 Brahmin?, navel-contem 
 plating, 133. 
 Bread-trees, 164. 
 Brigadier-Generals in mi 
 litia, devotion of, 87. 
 Brown, Mr., engages in 
 an unequal contest, 121. 
 Browne, Sir T., a pious 
 and wise sentiment of,
 
 204 
 
 Index. 
 
 cited and commended, 
 56. 
 
 Buckingham, Hon. J. T., 
 editor of the Boston 
 Courier, letters to, 45, 
 55, 80, 112 not afraid, 
 57. 
 
 Buffalo, a plan hatched 
 there, 181 plaster, a 
 prophecy in regard to, 
 182. 
 
 Buncombe, in the other 
 world supposed, 90. 
 
 Bung, the eternal, thought 
 to be loose, 51. 
 
 Bungtown Fencibles, din 
 ner of, 72. 
 
 Butter in Irish bogs, 164. 
 
 C. 
 
 C., General, commended 
 for parts, 75 for ubi 
 quity, ib. for consis 
 tency, 76 for fidelity, 
 ib. is in favor of war, 
 ib. his curious valua 
 tion of principle, ib. 
 
 Cpesar, tribute to, 127 
 his veni, rid;, rid, cen 
 sured for undue pro 
 lixity, 146. 
 
 Cainites, sect of, supposed 
 still extant, 53. 
 
 Caleb, a monopoly of his 
 denied, 59 curious no 
 tions of, as to meaning 
 of "shelter," 65 his 
 definition of Anglo- 
 
 Saxon, ib. charges 
 Mexicans ( not with 
 bayonets, but) with im 
 proprieties, ib. 
 
 Calhoun, Hon. J. C., his 
 cow-bell curfew, light 
 of the nineteenth cen 
 tury to be extinguished 
 at sound of, 1 1 cannot 
 let go apron-string of 
 the Past, 111 his unsuc 
 cessful tilt at Spirit of 
 the Age, ib. the Sir 
 Kay of modern chiv 
 alry, 112 his anchor 
 made of a crooked pin, 
 ib. mentioned, 113- 
 118. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, use 
 discovered for, 70. 
 
 Canary Islands, 164. 
 
 Candidate, presidential, 
 letter from, 137 smells 
 a rat, 138 against a 
 bank, 139 takes a re 
 volving position, ib. 
 opinion of pledges, ib. 
 is a periwig, 140 
 fronts south by north, 
 141 qualifications of, 
 lessening, 145 wooden 
 leg (and head) useful 
 to, 160. 
 
 Cape Cod clergymen, 
 what, 70 Sabbath- 
 breakers, perhaps, re 
 proved by, 16. 
 
 Carpini, Father John de
 
 Index. 
 
 205 
 
 Piano, among the Tar 
 tars, 191. 
 
 Cartier, Jacques, com 
 mendable zeal of, 191. 
 
 Cass, General, 114 clear 
 ness of his merit, 116 
 limited popularity at 
 "Bellers s," 177. 
 
 Castles, Spanish, comfort 
 able accommodations 
 in, 167. 
 
 Cato, letters of, so called, 
 suspended naso adunco. 
 135. 
 
 C. D., friends of, can hear 
 of him, 135. 
 
 Chalk egg, we are proud 
 of incubation of, 134. 
 
 Chappelow on Job, a copy 
 of, lost, 123. 
 
 Cherubusco, news of, its 
 effects on English roy 
 alty, 103. 
 
 Chesterfield no letter- 
 writer, 135. 
 
 Chief Magistrate, dancing 
 esteemed sinful by, 70. 
 
 Children naturally speak 
 Hebrew, 55. 
 
 China-tree, 164. 
 
 Chinese, whether they in 
 vented gunpowder be 
 fore the Christian era 
 not considered, 71. 
 
 Choate hired, 180. 
 
 Christ shuffled into Apoc 
 rypha, 72 conjectured 
 to disapprove of slaugh 
 ter and pillage, 76 
 
 condemns a certain 
 piece of barbarism, 120. 
 
 Christianity, profession 
 of, plebeian, whether, 
 54. 
 
 Christian soldiers, per 
 haps inconsistent, 
 whether, 88. 
 
 Cicero, an opinion of, dis 
 puted, 144. 
 
 Cilley, Ensign, author of 
 nefarious sentiment, 72. 
 
 Cimex lectularius, 63. 
 
 Cincinnatus, a stock char 
 acter in modern com 
 edy, 171. 
 
 Civilization, progress of, 
 an alias, 1 24 rides upon 
 a powder-cart, 139. 
 
 Clergymen, their ill hus 
 bandry, 122 their 
 place in processions, 170 
 some, cruelly ban 
 ished for the soundness 
 of their lungs, 191. 
 
 Cocked -hat, advantages 
 of being knocked into, 
 137. 
 
 College of Cardinals, a 
 strange one, 72. 
 
 Colman, Dr. Benjamin, 
 anecdote of, 88. 
 
 Colored folks, curious 
 national diversion of 
 kicking, 64. 
 
 Colquitt, a remark of, 117 
 acquainted with some 
 principles of aerosta 
 tion, ib.
 
 Index. 
 
 Columbia, District of, its 
 peculiar climatic efforts, 
 94 not certain that 
 Martin is for abolishing 
 it, 181. 
 
 Columbus, a Paul Pry of 
 genius, 1153. 
 
 Columby, 175. 
 
 Complete Letter -Writer, 
 fatal gift of, 142. 
 
 Compostella, St. James of, 
 seen, 68. 
 
 Congress, singular conse 
 quence of getting into, 
 94. 
 
 Congressional debates, 
 found instructive, 107. 
 
 Constituents, useful for 
 what, 99. 
 
 Constitution trampled on, 
 113 to stand upon, 
 what, 138. 
 
 Convention, what, 94, 95. 
 
 Convention, Springfield, 
 94. 
 
 Coon, old, pleasure in 
 skinning, 115. 
 
 Coppers, caste in picking 
 up of, 156. 
 
 Copres, a monk, his ex 
 cellent method of argu 
 ing, 108. 
 
 Cornwallis, a, 58 ac 
 knowledged entertain 
 ing, ib. , note. 
 
 Cotton Mather, sum 
 moned as witness, 
 
 Country lawyers, sent 
 providentially, 78. 
 
 Country, our, its bound 
 aries more exactly de 
 fined, 79 right or 
 wrong, nonsense about 
 exposed, ib. 
 
 Courier, The Boston, an 
 unsafe print, 106. 
 
 Court, General, farmers 
 sometimes attain seats 
 in, 172. 
 
 Cowper, \V., his letters 
 commended, 136. 
 
 Creed, a safe kind of, 161. 
 
 Crusade, first American, 
 69. 
 
 Cuneiform script recom 
 mended, 145. 
 
 Curiosity distinguishes 
 man from brutes, 133. 
 
 D. 
 
 Davis, Mr. , of Mississippi, 
 a remark of his, 115. 
 
 Day and Martin, proverbi 
 ally " on hand," 46. 
 
 Death, rings down cur 
 tain, 131. 
 
 Delphi, oracle of, sur 
 passed, 104, note alluded 
 to, 143. 
 
 Destiny, her account, 102. 
 
 Devil, the, unskilled in 
 certain Indian tongues, 
 68. 
 
 Dey of Tripoli, 110. 
 
 Diaz, Bernal, has a vision,
 
 Index. 
 
 207 
 
 68 his relationship to 
 the Scarlet Woman, ib. 
 
 Didymus, a somewhat 
 voluminous gram 
 marian, 143. 
 
 Dighton rock character 
 might be usefully em 
 ployed in some emer 
 gencies, 145. 
 
 Dimitry Bruisgins, fresh 
 supply of, 132. 
 
 Diosrenes, his zeal for pro 
 pagating certain variety 
 of olive, 164. 
 
 Dioscuri, imps of the pit, 
 69. 
 
 District Attorney, con 
 temptible conduct of 
 one, 110. 
 
 Ditch water on brain, a 
 too common ailing, 108. 
 
 Doctor, the, a proverbial 
 saying of, 67. 
 
 Doughface, yeast -proof, 
 128. 
 
 Drayton, a martyr, 110 
 north star, culpable for 
 aiding, whether, 118. 
 
 E. 
 
 Earth, Dame, a peep at 
 her housekeeping, 111. 
 
 Eating words, habit of, 
 convenient in time of 
 famine, 101. 
 
 Eavesdroppers, 133. 
 
 Editor, his position, 122 
 
 commanding pulpit 
 of, 123 large congre 
 gation of, il>. name de 
 rived from what, 124 
 fondness for mutton, ib. 
 a pious one, his creed, 
 ib. a showman, 129 
 in danger of sudden ar 
 rest, without bail, 131. 
 
 Editors, certain ones who 
 crow like cockerels, 51. 
 
 Egyptian darkness, phial 
 of, use for, 145. 
 
 Eldorado, Mr. Sawin seta 
 pail for, 164. 
 
 Eli/abeth, Queen, mis 
 take of her ambassador, 
 90. 
 
 Empedocles, 133. 
 
 Employment, regular, a 
 good thing, 155. 
 
 Epaul ets, perhaps no 
 badge of saintship, 76. 
 
 Episcopius, his marvelous 
 oratory, 191. 
 
 Eric, king of Sweden, hia 
 cap, 166. 
 
 Evangelists, iron ones, 70. 
 
 Eyelids, a divine shield 
 against authors, 108. 
 
 Ezekiel, text taken from, 
 122. 
 
 F. 
 
 Factory -girls, ex pected 
 rebellion of, 116. 
 
 Family-trees, fruit of je 
 june, 164.
 
 208 
 
 Index. 
 
 Faneuil Hall, a place 
 where persons tap them 
 selves for a species of 
 hydrocephalus, 109 a 
 bill of fare menda 
 ciously advertised in, 
 163. 
 
 Father of country, his 
 shoes, 174. 
 
 Female Papists, cut off in 
 midst of idolatry, 169. 
 
 Fire, we all like "to play 
 with it, 111. 
 
 Fish, emblematic, but dis 
 regarded, where, 108. 
 
 Flam, President, untrust 
 worthy, 96. 
 
 Fly-leaves, providential 
 increase of, 108. 
 
 Foote, Mr., his taste for 
 field-sports, 114. 
 
 Fourier, a squinting to 
 ward, 106. 
 
 Fourth of Julys, boiling, 
 91. 
 
 France, a strange dance 
 begun in, 117. 
 
 Fuller, Dr. Thomas, a wise 
 saying of, 75. 
 
 Funnel, Old, hurraing in, 
 60. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gawain, Sir, his amuse 
 ments, 112. 
 
 Gay, S . H. , Esquire, editor 
 of National Antislavery 
 Standard, letter to, 133. 
 
 Getting up early, 48, 65. 
 
 Ghosts, some, presumed 
 fidgety ( but see Stil- 
 ling s Pneumatology, ) 
 135. 
 
 Giants formerly stupid, 
 112. 
 
 Gift of tongues, distress 
 ing case of, 107. 
 
 Globe Theatre, cheap 
 season-ticket to, 131. 
 
 Glory, a perquisite of offi 
 cers, 157 her account 
 with B. Sawin, Esq., 
 163. 
 
 Goatsnose, the celebrated, 
 interview with, 145. 
 
 Gray s letters are letters, 
 136. 
 
 Great horn spoon, sworn 
 by, 114. 
 
 Greeks, ancient, whether 
 they questioned candi 
 dates, 144. 
 
 Green Man, sign of, 83. 
 
 H. 
 
 Ham, sandwich, an ortho 
 dox (but peculiar) one, 
 119. 
 
 Hamlets, machine for 
 making, 149. 
 
 Hammon, 104, note, 143. 
 
 Hannegan, Mr., some 
 thing said by, 115. 
 
 Harrison, General, how 
 preserved, 142.
 
 Index. 
 
 209 
 
 Hat-trees, in full bearing, 
 164. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir John, stout, 
 something he saw, 164. 
 
 Henry the Fourth of Eng 
 land, a Parliament of, 
 how named, 90. 
 
 Hercules, his second labor 
 probably what, 193. 
 
 Herodotus, story from, 56. 
 
 Hesperides, an inference 
 from, 165. 
 
 Holden, Mr. Shearjashub, 
 Preceptor of Jaalam 
 Academy, 143 his 
 knowledge of Greek 
 limited, ib. a heresy of 
 his, ib. leaves a fund 
 to propagate it, 144. 
 
 Hollis, Ezra, goes to a 
 Cornwallis, 58. 
 
 Hollow, why men provi 
 dentially so constructed, 
 92. 
 
 Homer, a phrase of, cited, 
 123. 
 
 Homers, democratic ones, 
 plums left for, 97. 
 
 Howell, James, Esq., 
 story told by, 90 let 
 ters of, commended, 
 136. 
 
 Human rights out of order 
 on the floor of Congress, 
 113. 
 
 Humbug, ascription of 
 praise to, 129 general 
 believed in, ib. 
 
 Husbandry, instance of 
 bad, 74. 
 
 I. 
 
 Icarius, Penelope s father, 
 79. 
 
 Infants, prattlings of, 
 curious observation 
 concerning, 55. 
 
 Information wanted (uni 
 versally, but especially 
 at page), 135. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jaalam Centre, Anglo- 
 Saxons unjustly sus 
 pected by the young 
 ladies there, 66 " In 
 dependent Blunder 
 buss," strange conduct 
 of editor of, 122 public 
 meeting at, 137. 
 
 Jaalam Point, lighthouse 
 on, charge of prospec- 
 tively offered to Mr. H. 
 Biglow, 141 meeting 
 house ornamented with 
 imaginary clock, 167. 
 
 Jakes, Captain, 186 re 
 proved for avarice, ib. 
 
 James the Fourth of Scots, 
 experiment by, 56. 
 
 Jarr-igan, Mr., his opinion 
 o. the completeness of 
 Northern education, 
 116.
 
 210 
 
 Index. 
 
 Jerome, Saint, his list of 
 eacred writers, 136. 
 
 Job, Book of, 53 Chap- 
 pelow on, 123. 
 
 Johnson, Mr., communi 
 cates some intelligence, 
 117. 
 
 Jonah, the inevitable des 
 tiny of, 119 probably 
 studied internal econ 
 omy of the cetacea, 135. 
 
 Jortin, Dr., cited, 88, 103, 
 note. 
 
 Judea, every thing not 
 known there, 77. 
 
 Juvenal, a saying of, 102, 
 note. 
 
 Kay, Sir, the, of modern 
 chivalry, who, 112. 
 
 Key, brazen one, 110. 
 
 Keziah, Aunt, profound 
 observation of, 46. 
 
 Kinderhook, 171. 
 
 Kingdom Come, march 
 to, easy, 150. 
 
 Konigsmark, Count, 54. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, his episto 
 lary excellence, 136. 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, episco- 
 pizes Satan, 53. 
 
 Latin tongue, curious in 
 formation concerning, 
 81. 
 
 Launcelot, Sir, a trusser 
 
 of giants formerly, per 
 haps would find less 
 Bport therein row, 112. 
 
 Letters classed, 135 their 
 shape, 136 of candi 
 dates, 141 often fatal, 
 142. 
 
 Lewis Philip, a scourger 
 of young native Ameri 
 cans, 103-commiserated 
 (though not deserving 
 it), 104, note. 
 
 Liberator, a newspaper, 
 condemned by implica 
 tion, 84. 
 
 Liberty unwholesome for 
 men of certain com 
 plexions, 125. 
 
 Lignum vitje, a gift of 
 this valuable wood pro 
 posed, 67. 
 
 Longinua recommends 
 swearing, 57, note (Fu- 
 eeli did same thine). 
 
 Long sweetening recom 
 mended, 152. 
 
 Lost arts, one sorrowfully 
 added to list of, 192. 
 
 Louis the Eleventh of 
 France, some odd trees 
 of his, 164. 
 
 Lowell, Mr. J. R., un 
 accountable silence of, 
 80. 
 
 Luther, Martin, his first 
 appearance as Europa, 
 68. 
 
 Lyttelton, Lord, his let 
 ters an imposition, 135.
 
 Index. 
 
 211 
 
 M. 
 
 Macrobii, their diplo 
 macy, 145. 
 
 Mahomet, got nearer 
 Sinai than some, 124. 
 
 Mahound, his filthy gob 
 bets, 68. 
 
 Mangum, Mr., speaks to 
 the point, 114. 
 
 Manichaean, excellently 
 confuted, 108. 
 
 Man-trees, grew where, 
 164. 
 
 Mares -nests, finders of, 
 benevolent, 134. 
 
 Marshfield, 171, 179. 
 
 Martin, Mr. Sawinused to 
 vote for him, 181. 
 
 Mason and Dixon s line, 
 slaves north of, 114. 
 
 Mass, the, its duty defined, 
 114. 
 
 Massachusetts on her 
 knees, 52 something 
 mentioned in connec 
 tion with, worthy the 
 attention of tailors, 94 
 citizen of, baked, boiled, 
 and roasted (nefan- 
 dum!), 158. 
 
 Masses, the, used as but 
 ter by some, 97. 
 
 M. C., an invertebrate 
 animal, 101. 
 
 Mechanics Fair, reflec 
 tions suggested at, 
 148. 
 
 Mentor, letters of, dreary, 
 135. 
 
 Mephistopheles at a non 
 plus, 119. 
 
 Mexican blood, its effect 
 in raising price of cloth, 
 168. 
 
 Mexican polka, 70. 
 
 Mexicans charged with 
 various breaches of 
 etiquette, 65 kind feel 
 ings beaten into them, 
 128. 
 
 Mexico, no glory in over 
 coming, 95. 
 
 Military glory spoken dis 
 respectfully of, 62, note 
 militia treated still 
 worse, ib. 
 
 Milk-trees, growing still, 
 164. 
 
 Mills for manufacturing 
 gabble, how driven, 106. 
 
 Milton, an unconscious 
 plagiary, 92, note a 
 Latin verse of, cited, 124. 
 
 Missions, a profitable 
 kind of, 126. 
 
 Monarch, a pagan, proba 
 bly not favored in phil 
 osophical experiments, 
 oo. 
 
 Money-trees desirable, 164 
 that they once existed 
 shown to be variously 
 probable, 165. 
 
 Montaigne, a communi 
 cative old Gascon, 134. 
 
 Monterey, battle of, its
 
 212 
 
 Index. 
 
 singular chromatic ef 
 fect on a species of two- 
 headed eagle, 103. 
 
 Moses held up vainly as 
 an example, 123 con 
 strued by Joe Smith, 
 124. 
 
 Myths, how to interpret 
 readily, 144. 
 
 N. 
 
 Naboths, Popish ones, 
 how distinguished, 
 71. 
 
 Nation, rights of, propor 
 tionate to size, 66. 
 
 National pudding, its 
 effect on the organs of 
 speech, a curious phys 
 iological fact, 71. 
 
 Nephelim, not yet ex 
 tinct, 193. 
 
 New England overpower- 
 ingly honored, 99 
 wants no more speakers, 
 ib. done brown by 
 whom, 100 her experi 
 ence in beans beyond 
 Cicero s, 144. 
 
 Newspaper, the, wonder 
 ful, 129 a strolling 
 theatre, ib. thoughts 
 suggested by tearing 
 wrapper of, 131 a 
 vacant sheet, ib.a 
 sheet in which a vision 
 was let down, 132 
 wrapper to a bar of 
 
 soap, ib. - a cheap im 
 promptu platter, ib. 
 
 New York, Letters fro.i, 
 commended, 136. 
 
 Next life, what, 122. 
 
 Niggers, 49 area of abus 
 ing, extended, 9(5 Mr. 
 
 Pawin e opinions of, 184. 
 
 Ninepence a day low for 
 murder, 58. 
 
 No, a monosyllable, 71 
 hard to utter, ib. 
 
 Noah, inclosed letter in 
 bottle, probably, 135. 
 
 Nornas, Lapland, what, 
 166. 
 
 North, has no business, 
 113 bristling, crowded 
 off roost, 141. 
 
 North Bend, geese inhu 
 manly treated at, 142 
 mentioned, 171. 
 
 North star, a proposition 
 to indict, 118. 
 
 0. 
 
 Off, ox, 139. 
 
 Office, miraculous trans 
 formation in character 
 of, 67 Anglo-Saxon, 
 come very near being 
 anathematized, ib. 
 
 O Phace. Increase D., 
 Esq., speech of, 89. 
 
 Oracle of Fools, still re 
 spectfully consulted, 
 90.
 
 Index. 
 
 213 
 
 Orion, becomes common 
 place, 132. 
 
 Orrery, Lord, his letters 
 (lord !), 136. 
 
 Ostracism, curious spe 
 cies of, 91. 
 
 P. 
 
 Palestine, 68. 
 
 Palfrey, Hon. J. G., 91, 
 
 100, 102 (a worthy rep 
 resentative of Massa 
 chusetts). 
 Pantagruel recommends a 
 
 popular oracle, 90. 
 Panurge, his interview 
 
 with Goatsnose, 145. 
 Papists, female, elain 
 
 by zealous Protestant 
 
 bombshell, 169. 
 Paralipomenon, a man 
 
 suspected of being, 142. 
 Paris, liberal principles 
 
 safe as far away as, 
 
 125. 
 Parli amentum Indoctorum 
 
 pitting in permanence, 
 
 90. 
 Past, the, a good nurse, 
 
 111. 
 Patience, sister, quoted, 
 
 61. 
 Paynims, their throats 
 
 propagandistically cut, 
 
 68. 
 Penelope, her wise choice, 
 
 79. 
 
 People, soft enough, 126 
 
 want correct ideas, 
 
 161. 
 
 Pepin, King, 136. 
 Periwig, 140. 
 Persius, a pithy saying of, 
 
 98 note. 
 Pescara, Marquis, saying 
 
 of, 54. 
 Peter, Saint, a letter of 
 
 (postmortem), 136. 
 Pharisees, opprobriously 
 
 referred to, 125. 
 Philippe, Louis, in pea- 
 jacket, 130. 
 Phlegyas quoted, 120. 
 Phrygian language, 
 
 whether Adam spoke it, 
 
 56. 
 
 Pilgrims, the, 95. 
 Pillows, constitutional, 
 
 101. 
 Pinto, Mr., pome letters 
 
 of his commended, 136. 
 Pisgah, an impromptu 
 
 one, 166. 
 
 Platform, party, a con 
 venient one, 161. 
 Plato, supped with, 134 
 
 his man, 142. 
 Pleiades, the, not enough 
 
 esteemed, 132. 
 Pliny, his letters not 
 
 admired, 135. 
 Plotinus, a story of, 111. 
 Plymouth Rock, Old, a 
 
 Convention wrecked 
 
 on, 95. 
 Point Tribulation, Mr.
 
 214 
 
 Index. 
 
 Sawin wrecked on, 164. 
 
 Poles, exile, whether crop 
 of beans depends on, 
 64, note. 
 
 Polk, President, synony 
 mous with our coun 
 try, 77 censured, 96 
 in danger of being 
 crushed, 97. 
 
 Polka, Mexican, 70. 
 
 Pomp, a runaway slave, 
 his nest, 184 hypocrit 
 ically groans like white 
 man, 185 blind to 
 Christian privileges, 
 186 his society valued 
 at fifty dollars, ib. his 
 treachery, 187 takes 
 Mr. Sawin prisoner, 
 188 cruelty makes him 
 work, ib. puts himself 
 illegally under his tui 
 tion, 189 dismisses 
 him with contumelious 
 epithets, ib. 
 
 Pontifical bull, a tamed 
 one, 68. 
 
 Pope, his verse excellent, 
 55. 
 
 Pork, refractory in boil 
 ing, 67. 
 
 Portugal, Alphonso the 
 vSixth of, a monster, 
 191. 
 
 Post, Boston, 80 shaken 
 visibly, 82 bad guide- 
 post, 83 too swift, 82 
 edited by a colonel, ib. 
 
 who is presumed of 
 ficially in Mexico, w. 
 referred to, 105. 
 
 Pot-hooks, death in, 146. 
 
 Preacher, an ornamental 
 symbol, 123 a breeder 
 of dogmas, ib. earnest 
 ness of, important, 191. 
 
 Present, considered as 
 an annalist, 123 not 
 long wonderful, 132. 
 
 President, elaveholding 
 natural to, 128 must 
 be a Southern resident, 
 161 must own a nig 
 ger, 162. 
 
 Principle, exposure spoils 
 it, 92. 
 
 Principles, bad, when less 
 harmful, 73. 
 
 Prophecy, a notable one, 
 103. 
 
 Proviso, bitterly spoken 
 of, 139. 
 
 Prudence, sister, her idio 
 syncratic teapot, 154. 
 
 Psammeticus, an experi 
 ment of, 56. 
 
 Public opinion a blind 
 and drunken guide, 71. 
 nudges Mr. Wilbur s 
 elbow, 72 ticklers of, 
 96. 
 
 Pythagoras a bean hater, 
 "why, 144. 
 
 Pythagoreans, fish rever 
 enced by, why, 108.
 
 Index. 
 
 215 
 
 Q. 
 Quixote, Don, 112. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rag, one of sacred college, 
 72. 
 
 Rantoul, Mr., talks 
 loudly, 60 pious rea 
 sons for not enlisting, 
 ib. 
 
 Recruiting sergeant, Devil 
 supposed the first, 53. 
 
 Representatives chamber 
 108. 
 
 Rhinothism, society for 
 promoting, 133. 
 
 Rhyme, whether natural 
 not considered, 55. 
 
 Rib, an infrangible one, 
 152. 
 
 Richard the First of Eng 
 land, his Christian fer 
 vor, 68. 
 
 Riches conjectured to 
 have legs as well as 
 wings, 118. 
 
 Robinson, Mr. John P., 
 his opinions fully stat 
 ed, 75-78. 
 
 Rocks, pocket full of, 
 154. 
 
 Rough and Ready, 177 
 a wig, 178 a kind of 
 scratch, ib. fc 
 
 Russian eagle turns Prus 
 sian blue, 103. 
 
 Sabbath, breach of, 70, 
 
 Sabellianism, one accused 
 of, 142. 
 
 Saltilo, unfavorable view 
 of, 62. 
 
 Salt-river, in Mexican, 
 what, 62. 
 
 Samuel, Uncle, riotous, 
 102 yet has qualities 
 demanding reverence, 
 
 125 a good provider 
 for his family, 126 an 
 exorbitant bill of, 168. 
 
 Sansculottes, draw their 
 wine before drink 
 ing, 117. 
 
 Santa Anna, his expen 
 sive leg, 159. 
 
 Satan, never wants attor 
 neys, 68 an expert 
 talker by signs, ib. a 
 successful fisherman 
 with little or no bait, 
 69 cunning fetch of, 
 73 dislikes ridicule, 
 81 ought not to have 
 credit of ancient ora- 
 clee, 104, note. 
 
 Satirist, incident to cer 
 tain dangers, 73. 
 
 Savages, Canadian, chance 
 of redemption offered 
 to, 191. 
 
 Sawin, B. , Esquire, his 
 letter not written in 
 verse, 55 a native of 
 Jaalam, 56 not regular
 
 216 
 
 Index. 
 
 attendant on Rev. Mr. 
 Wilburs preaching, ib. 
 a fool, 57 his state 
 ments trustworthy, ib. 
 his ornithological 
 tastes, ib. letter from 
 *5S, 147,171 his curious 
 discovery in regard to 
 bayonets, 59, 60 dis 
 plays proper family 
 pride , 61 m o d e s 1 1 y 
 confesses himself less 
 wise than the Queen of 
 Sheba, 64 the old 
 Adam in, peeps out, 
 66 a miles emeritus, 147 
 is made text for a 
 eermon, ib. loses a 
 leg, 149 an eye, 150 
 left hand, 151 four 
 fingers of right hand, 
 ib. has six or more 
 ribs broken, ib. a rib 
 of his infrangible, 152< 
 allows a certain amount 
 of preterite greenness 
 in himself, 152, 153 
 his share of spoil limit 
 ed, 153 his opinion of 
 Mexican climate, 154 
 acquires property of a 
 certain sort, 155 his 
 experience of glory, 
 156, 157 stands sentry , 
 and puns thereupon, 
 157 undergoes martyr 
 dom in some of its most 
 painful forms, 158 en 
 ters the candidating 
 
 business, ib. modestly 
 states the (avail) abili 
 ties which qualify him 
 for high political sta 
 tion, 159-162 has no 
 principles, 159 a 
 peaceman, ib. un 
 pledged, 160 has no 
 objections to owning 
 peculiar property, but 
 would not like to mo 
 nopolize the truth, 162 
 his account with 
 glory, 163 a selfish 
 motive hinted in, ib. 
 sails for Eldorado, 164 
 shipwrecked on a meta 
 phorical promontory, 
 ib. parallel between, 
 and Rev. Mr. Wilbur 
 (not Plutarchian), 166 
 conjectured to have 
 bathed in river Selem- 
 nus, 171 loves plough 
 wisely, but not too 
 well, ib. a foreign mis 
 sion probably expected 
 by, 172 unanimously 
 nominated for presi 
 dency, 173 his coun 
 try s father-in-law, 174 
 nobly emulates Cin- 
 cinnatus, 176 is not a 
 crooked stick, 175 
 advises his adherents, 
 176 views of. on pres 
 ent state of politics, 
 1 76-1 83 popular en 
 thusiasm for, at Bel-
 
 Index. 
 
 217 
 
 lers s, and its disagree 
 able consequences, 177 
 inhuman treatment 
 of, by Sellers, 178 his 
 opinion of the two par 
 ties, 179 agrees with 
 Mr. Webster, 180 his 
 antislavery zeal, 181 
 his proper self-respect, 
 ib. his unaffected 
 piety, 183 his not in 
 temperate temperance, 
 ib. a thrilling adven 
 ture of, 184-190 his 
 prudence and economy, 
 184 bound to Captain 
 Jakes, but regains his 
 freedom, 186 is taken 
 prisoner, 187, 188 
 ignominiously treated, 
 188, 189 his conse 
 quent resolution, 190. 
 
 Sayres, a martyr, 110. 
 
 Scaliger, saying of, 75. 
 
 Scarabseus piiularius, 160. 
 
 Scott, General, his claims 
 to the presidency, 82, 
 86. 
 
 Scythians, their diplo 
 macy commended, 145. 
 
 Seamen, colored, sold, 52. 
 
 Selernnu?, a sort of Le 
 thean river, 171. 
 
 Senate, debate in, made 
 readable, 110. 
 
 Seneca, saying of, 73 
 another, 104 overrated 
 by a saint ( but see Lord 
 Bolingbroke s opinion 
 
 of, in a letter to Dean 
 Swift), 136 his letters 
 not commended, ib. 
 a son of Eev. Mr. Wil 
 bur, 167. 
 
 Serbonian, bog of litera 
 ture, 108. 
 
 Sextons, demand for, 61 
 heroic official devo 
 tion of one, 191. 
 
 Shaking fever, considered 
 as an employer, 155. 
 
 Shakspeare, a good re 
 porter, 89. 
 
 Sham, President, honest, 
 96. 
 
 Sheba, Queen of, 64. 
 
 Sheep, none of Rev. 
 Mr. Wilbur s turned 
 wolves, 56. 
 
 Shem, Scriptural curse of, 
 190. 
 
 Show, natural to love it, 
 62, note. 
 
 Silver spoon born in De 
 mocracy s mouth, what, 
 _98. 
 
 Sinai, suffers outrages, 124. 
 
 Sin, wilderness of, mod 
 ern, what, 124. 
 
 Skin, hole in, strange 
 taste of some for, 156. 
 
 Slaughter, whether God 
 strengthen us for, 69. 
 
 Slaughterers and soldiers 
 compared, 170. 
 
 Slaughtering nowadays is 
 slaughtering, 170. 
 
 Slavery, of no color, 50
 
 218 
 
 Index. 
 
 corner stone of liberty, 
 105 also keystone, 11-i 
 last crumb of Eden, 
 118 a Jonah, 119 an 
 institution, 140 a pri 
 vate State concern, 185. 
 
 Smith, Joe, used as a 
 translation, 124. 
 
 Smith, John, an interest 
 ing character, 133. 
 
 Smith, Mr., fears enter 
 tained for, 121 dined 
 with, 134. 
 
 Smith, N. B., his mag 
 nanimity, 130. 
 
 Soandso, Mr., the great, 
 defines his position, 
 130. 
 
 Sol, the fisherman, 63 
 soundness of respirator 
 organs hypothetically 
 attributed to, ib. 
 
 Solon, a saying of, 72. 
 
 South Carolina, futile at 
 tempt to anchor, 112. 
 
 Spanish, to walk, what, 
 65. 
 
 Speech-making, an abuse 
 of gift of speech, 106. 
 
 Star, north, subject to in 
 dictment, whether, 118. 
 
 Store, cheap cash, a 
 wicked fraud, 166. 
 
 Strong, Governor Caleb, a 
 patriot, 78. 
 
 Swearing, commended as 
 a figure of speech, 57, 
 note. 
 
 Swift, Dean, threadbare 
 saying of, 82. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tag, elevated to the Car- 
 
 dinalate, 72. 
 Taxes, direct, advantages 
 
 of, 168. 
 Taylor zeal, its origin, 
 
 177 General, greased 
 
 by Mr. Choate, 180. 
 Thanks, get lodged, 156. 
 Thirty-nine articles might 
 
 be made serviceable, 
 
 70. 
 Thor, a foolish attempt 
 
 of, 112. 
 Thumb, General Thomas, 
 
 a valuable member of 
 
 society, 101. 
 
 Thunder, supposed in 
 easy circumstances, 
 152. 
 
 Thynne, Mr., murdered, 
 54. 
 
 Time, an innocent person 
 age to swear by, 57 a 
 scene-shifter, 130. 
 
 Toms, Peeping, 133. 
 
 Trees, various kinds of 
 extraordinary ones, 
 164, 165. 
 
 Trowbridge, William, 
 mariner, adventure of, 
 70. 
 
 Truth and falsehood start 
 from same point, 74 
 truth invulnerable to 
 satire, ib. compared to 
 a river, 89 of fiction 
 sometimes truer than
 
 Index. 
 
 219 
 
 fact, ib. told plainly 
 passim. 
 
 Tuileries, exciting scene 
 at, 103. 
 
 Tully, a saying of, 92, 
 note. 
 
 Tweedledee, gospel ac 
 cording to, 124. 
 
 Tweedledum, great prin 
 ciples of, 124. 
 
 U. 
 
 Ulysses, husband of 
 Penelope, 79 borrows 
 money, 165. (For full 
 particulars of, see 
 Homer and Dante. ) 
 
 University, triennial cata 
 logue of, 85. 
 
 V. 
 
 Van Buren fails of gaining 
 Mr. Sawin s confidence, 
 181 his son John re 
 proved, 182. 
 
 Van, Old, plan to set up, 
 181. 
 
 Venetians, invented 
 something once, 166. 
 
 Vices, cardinal, sacred 
 conclave of, 72. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, her 
 natural terror, 103. 
 
 Vratz, Captain, a Pomer 
 anian, singular views 
 of, 54. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, classed, 
 134 his letters praised, 
 136. 
 
 Waltham Plain, Cornwal- 
 lis at, 58. 
 
 Walton, punctilious in his 
 intercourse with fishes, 
 71. 
 
 War, abstract, horrid, 
 138 its hoppers, grist 
 of, what, 156. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, a story 
 of, 87. 
 
 Washington, charge 
 brought against, 174. 
 
 Washington, city of, cli 
 matic influence of, on 
 coats, 94 mentioned, 
 110 grand jury of, 118. 
 
 Washingtons, two 
 hatched at a time by 
 improved machine, 
 174. 
 
 Water, Taunton, prover 
 bially weak, 183. 
 
 Water-trees, 164. 
 
 Webster, some sentiments 
 of, commended by Mr. 
 Sawin, 180. 
 
 Westcott, Mr., his hor 
 ror, 118. 
 
 Whig party, has a large 
 throat, 83 but query as 
 to swallowing spurs, 180. 
 
 White-house, 140. 
 
 Wife-trees, 164.
 
 220 
 
 Index. 
 
 Wilbur, Rev. Homer, A. 
 M., consulted, 46 hia 
 instructions to his flock, 
 96 a proposition of hia 
 Protestant bombshells, 
 71 his elbow nudged, 
 72 hia notions of 
 satire, 73 some opin 
 ions of his quoted with 
 apparent approval by 
 Mr. Biglow, 77 geo 
 graphical speculations 
 of, 78 a justice of the 
 peace, ib. a letter of, 
 80 a Latin pun of, 81 
 runs against a post 
 without injury, 82 
 does not seek notoriety 
 (whatever some malig- 
 nants may affirm), 84 
 fits youths for college, 
 85 a chaplain during 
 late war with England, 
 87 a shrewd observa 
 tion of, 88 some curi 
 ous speculations of, 106- 
 109 his martello-tow- 
 er, 107 forgets he is not 
 in pulpit, 123, 147-149 
 extracts from sermon 
 of, 122, 129 interested 
 in John Smith, 133 
 his views concerning 
 present state of letters, 
 133-136 a stratagem 
 of, 142 ventures two 
 hundred and fourth in 
 terpretation of Beast in 
 Apocalypse, 143 chris 
 
 tens Hon. B. Sawin, 
 then an infant, 147 an 
 addition to our sylva, 
 proposed by, 164 curi 
 ous and instructive ad 
 venture of, 166-167 
 his account with an un 
 natural uncle, 168 his 
 uncomfortable imagina 
 tion, 170 speculations 
 concerning Cincin- 
 natus, 171, 172 con 
 fesses digressive ten 
 dency of mind, 191 
 goes to work on ser 
 mon (not without fear 
 that his readers wiH 
 dub him with a re 
 proachful epithet like 
 that with which Isaac 
 Allerton, a Mayflower 
 man, revenges himself 
 on a delinquent debtor 
 of his, calling him in 
 his will, and thus hold 
 ing him up to posterity, 
 as "John Peterson, TUB 
 BORS"), 193. 
 
 Wilbur, Mrs., an invari 
 able rule of, 86 her 
 profile, 86. 
 
 Wildbore, a vernacular 
 one, how to escape, 107. 
 
 Wind, the, a good Samar 
 itan, 148. 
 
 Wooden leg, remarkable 
 forsobrietv, 150 never 
 eats pudding, 152.
 
 Index. 
 
 Wright, Colonel, provi- Z. 
 
 dentially rescued, 63. 
 Wrong, abstract, sale to ^ack, Old, 173. 
 
 oppose, 97.
 
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 ... 31 Childe Harold s Pilgrimage. Byron. 
 ... 32 Chimes, The. Dickens. 
 ... 33 Christie s Old Organ. Walton. 
 ... 34 Christmas Carol, A. Dickens. 
 ... 35 Confessions of an Opium Eater. De 
 
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 ... 37 Cricket on the Hearth. Dickens. 
 ... 38 Crown of Wild Olive, The. Ruskin. 
 ... 39 Comedy of Errors. Shakespeare. 
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 ... 42 Courtship of Miles Standish. Longfellow. 
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 ...232 Window in Thrums. Barrie. 
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 i All s Well that Ends Well. 
 
 *. Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
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