Rats! rats! rats!
Pen-and-ink rats in their holes on high,
Writing libels for fools to buy;
Squabbling ever--the same old tune--
The hinted lie, or the broad lampoon!
Rats whose virtue can never fail,
Though each one carries his price on his tail;
Some bite like scorpions--some like gnats;
Know ye the names of the Editor Rats?
Rats! rats! rats!
Rats that the belfried churches nurse,
Drearily drawling chapter and verse;
Offering ever for human ills
Only the barren letter that kills;
Gnawing the Ark of the Covenant through,
From velvet cushion to padded pew;
Beating the dust to blind the flats!
Know ye the names of the Reverend Rats?
Rats! rats! rats!
Rats in ermine holding moot,
With law in parcels at prices to suit;
Shaping, inventing to cover the case,
Precedent musty or dictum base,
Gad! how they gibber to suitors below:
"If so be it thus, why then thus be it so!"
_Leges non curant--verhum sat!_
Know ye the name of the Legal Rat?
Rats! rats! rats!
Rats in the ancient Temple of Mind--
Mumbling maggots and munching rind!
Scrubbing and patching, splicing and jointing,
With particles Greek and with Hebrew pointing.
Proving virtue itself a sin,
By a comma left out or a colon left in;
Of guesses and glosses the autocrats:
Know ye the names of the Learned Rats?
Rats! rats! rats!
By beds where the dying pant for life!
How snug they stand with lancet and knife;
While the vampyre tugs at the fluttering heart,
How they jabber jargon of middle-aged art!
Soothing pain when 'tis savage and strong
By naming it something Latin and long!
A grain of this and a scruple of that!--
Know ye the name of the Medical Rat?
Rats! rats! rats!
Rats that run in the month of May
Rats of reform and right are they!
Rats who believe the hottest of speeches
Soonest the shame and sorrow reaches;
Generous rats whose chiefest delight
Is to set the order of Providence right;
Lean, or hairy, or greasy, or fat,
Know ye the name of the Platform Rat?
Rats! rats! rats!
Oh, Truth and Justice, and Common-Sense
When will you drive this rat-tribe hence?
Bait 'em and beat 'em! hurry 'em! skurry 'em!
With satire and scorn and laughter flurry 'em!
In hole and corner and cranny to hide,
The Flunkey Rat, and the Rat of Pride,
Selfishness, Pedantry, Cant, and all that,
Till nobody hears of a single Rat!
"THE CREOWNIN' GLORY OF THE UNITED STATES."--_Knickerbocker Magazine._
My Hearers:--My text ain't in Worcester's Pictorial, nor Webster's
big quarto; but it is in the columns of the Bunkum Flagstaff and
Independent Echo--"_Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n
States'n._" Thar ain't a feller in all this great and glorious
Republic but has studed readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic. Thar ain't a
youngster so big that you couldn't drown him in a spit-box but what
has read Shakspeare's gogerphy, and knows that all the world is a
stage, with two poles instead of one like a common stage; and that
it keeps goin' reound and reound on its own axis, not axin' nothin'
o' nobody; for "_Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n
States'n_." Who was it that, durin' the great and glorious Revolution,
by his eloquence quenched the spirit of Toryism? An American citizen.
Who was it that knocked thunder out of the clouds, and took a streak
o' greased lightnin' for a tail to his kite? An American citizen. Who
was it that invented the powder that will kill a cockroach, if you put
a little on its tail and then tread on it? Who was it that discovered
the Fat Boy, and captured the wild and ferocious _What Is It?_ An
American citizen! Oh, it's a smashin' big thing to be an American
citizen! King David would have been an American citizen, and the Queen
of Sheba would have been naturalized, if it could a bin did; for
"_Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n States'n_." When
you and I shall be no more; when this glorious Union shall have gone
to etarnal smash; when Barnum shall have secured his last curiosity at
a great expense; then will the historian dip his pen in a georgious
bottle of blue-black ink, and write--"_Edication was the Creownin'
Glory of the United'n States'n_."