element is concerned, has not been refined by the war; and even at the
White House it is scarcely possible to collect an assemblage of persons
sufficiently genteel by education to speak familiarly of European
noblemen of their acquaintance. At the last dinner given by the
Secretary of State, there were actually three Western persons of much
cheek-bones, who dissented from the very proper idea that Earl Russel's
Carlton-house sherry is superior to anything we have in this country;
and my disgust intensified to hopeless scorn, when an Eastern chap in a
nankeen vest was brazen enough to confess that he could not tell how
many pieces the Emperor of the French had in the wash on the last week
of Lent. At other social gatherings in Washington I have noticed the
same evidences of growing vulgarity; and I greatly fear, my boy,--I
greatly fear that a knowledge of Europe will yet be more prevalent
amongst Europeans than Americans. O my country, my native land! has it
indeed come to this at last? In thy loftiest social circles shall we no
more behold that beautiful flesh-colored being in lavender gloves and
dress-coat whose etherealized individuality broke rapturously forth in
the thrilling words, "When I was in Paris last summer"? Are we no more
to palpitate with ecstasy at the tones of that voice which was wont to
trill forth in liquid music from a curl-crested fountain of white
shoulders, saying: "Don't you remember, Mr. Thompsion, how the Guke of
Leeds larfed that day, at the Reception, when I told him that we
American ladies thought it was vulgar to say 'garters' out loud?" Alas!
my boy, our aristocracy is fading away like an abused exotic, and it is
not oftener than once in a season that the frequenter of our Republican
Court witnesses one incident to make him recognize the polished people
he once knew. About two months ago, at an evening party given by Mrs.
Senator ----, I did witness a social incident, showing that there is
still hope for the Republic. An interesting young mother, of not more
than sixty-two summers, attired in a babywaist and graduated flounces,
was standing near one of the doors of the music-room conversing with me
upon the moral character of her dearest female friend, when her gushing
daughter, a nymph not more than six pianos old, came pressing to her
side, and whispered behind her fan,--
"Mamma _cheri_, may I donse with young Waddle?"
The maternal girl smiled grimly at the fragile suppliant, and asked:
"How much is his celery, _ma petite_?"
"Nine hundred, mamma, in the Third Auditor's."
"Then tell him, _mon ange_, that you are engaged for the next set, and
wait until the thousand-dollar clerks come in. You know, _ma petite_,
what the Count Pistachio said to you at Avignon about giving
encouragement to anything less than four figures."
I could not avoid overhearing this conversation, my boy, for it was not
held in whispers, and I thought to myself, as I eyed the fashionable
pair, "The Republic still lives."
It is, however, with the foreign embassies at Washington, that the
genuine aristocratic spirit still holds its normal own; and when I
lately received an invitation from a certain convivial diplomatist of
the Set to be one of a select party of distinguished gentlemen at his
residence on a certain evening, I felt that there was still an
available balm in Gilead. Arriving in the rooms shortly before ten
o'clock, I found seven middle-aged gentlemen in cambric ruffles and
scratch-wigs assembled around the wine-table, all pledging the health
of the Venerable Gammon, who had come up from Mugville expressly to be
present. There was the French Marquis Non Puebla, on a visit to this
country to search for traces of one of the lost gravies of Apicius;
Milord Gurgle, who had been deputed to convey to New York a pair of
Southdown sheep, presented by the Zoological Gardens to Central Park;
the Honorable Peter Pidger, who had once been to Europe to negotiate
the sale of some railroad stock; the Ambassador in person; and three
other respectable persons with no names, whose sole duty it was to
indorse the Ambassador whenever he said anything about "dat
signeeficant commencement of dees war at Bool Run." But the greatest of
them all, my boy, was the Venerable Gammon, who smiled fatly as they
drank his health, and emptied his own crystal with a soft benignity
which seemed to consecrate that brand of liquor forever.
"My friends," says the Venerable Gammon, waving an unctuous hand around
the board in a manner to confer blessings on the very nutcrackers,--"my
friends, I accept the honor for my country, and not for myself. Your
countries bask in the sunshine of a powerful peace, while mine grows
weak in despotic war. But do not spit upon us, my friends; do not crush
us. We will do whatever you want us to do. War," says the Venerable
Gammon, beaming thoughtfully at the nearest wine-cooler,--"war may be
called the temporary weakness of a young country like ours; and if we
learn not to value peace more than war as we grow older, it will only
be because we do not learn to value war less than peace as we advance
to riper years."
Then all the respectable middle-aged gentlemen nudged each other to
notice _that_; and the Honorable Peter Pidger observed, in an
undertone, to Milord Gurgle, that if the Government was only guided by
such wisdom as that, the country might yet hope for favor from Europe.
"Ah!" says the Ambassador, reflectively, "I cannot help to recollect
dat signeeficant commencement of dees war at Bool Run."
Whereupon the three middle-aged gentlemen with no names nodded
meaningly to each other, and murmured, in pitying chorus:
"Ah, yes indeed."
As I rode home to my hotel that night, my boy, and reflected upon the
polished observations I had listened to, it seemed to me that Europe
must indeed be superior to a weak young country like ours, and that
Secretary Seward was but showing a proper respect for the dignity of
monarchies in yielding gracefully to them whatever they asked, and
establishing in American history its first creation of knighthood,
under the title of Sir Render. The Sword of '76 would have refused the
accolade; but that of '63 is of a milder temper.
On Wednesday, as I strolled lazily along the shore of Awlkuyet River,
listlessly tossing pebbles into the placid stream, and paying no
attention to any visible object save the severed branches of trees and
broken fragments of artillery-wheels which occasionally barred my
progress, a Mackerel picket suddenly touched me on the shoulder, and
says he, in a whisper,--
"You mustn't be chucking stones into that air water, or you'll wake up
the Captain which is asleep."
I glanced askance at him from under my vizor, and says I, "What
Captain, my trooper?"
"Why," says he, "the Captain of the Blockade, over yonder."
I looked in the direction indicated by his finger, my boy, and beheld
the sloop-of-war Morpheus at anchor near a small inlet leading to the
river from the up-country.
"Why, my Union champion," says I, wonderingly, "I should like to know
at what time the Captain makes it a practice to retire?"
"Ah!" says the Mackerel picket, leaning upon his musket, and looking
dreamily over the water, "he's all the time retiring--he's been put
upon the 'Retired' list."
Here was a man, my boy, an American, like you or me, brought up in a
country where education is free to all, and yet he had no clearer idea
of the functions of our Naval Retiring Board than such as happened to
be suggested to his instinct by what he could see of the national
blockade service!
Yours, amazedly,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER XCVII.
INTRODUCING THE GREAT MORAL EXHIBITION OF THE "EFFIGYNIA," GLANCING
AT A FOURTH NEW MACKEREL GENERAL, AND SHOWING HOW THE PRESIDENT'S
DRAFT ON ACCOMAC WAS PROTESTED AT SIGHT.
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10th, 1863.
As I wax numerous in exciting years, my boy, and observe more and more
of the long-headed and strategic manner in which our wealthy but
distracted country prosecutes the Restoration of the Union, the
stronger grows my belief that, inasmuch as the way of the transgressor
is hard, the way of the well-doer is inexpressibly "soft." Each day of
the present national crisis brings fresh evidence of the exceedingly
soft character of the policy by which our upright government would turn
to nought the wrathful devices of its enemies, and further demonstrates
the vast difference existing between everything upright and anything
downright. We discomfit the well-known Southern Confederacy, at every
turn, my boy,--we discomfit it at every turn; but, the trouble is, we
keep turning all the time, like a Thomas cat after his tail, constantly
believing that we are approaching the end, but never quite reaching it.
Fearing lest I should become metaphysical if I pursued this train of
thought any farther,--thereby encroaching upon the bottomless province
of the Awful and Unfathomable German mind, which rejoices gloomily in
the solemn investigation of all that verges upon muddled
abstraction;--fearing lest I should become thus erudite, profound, and
snuffily unintelligible, my boy, I repress my morbid inclination to
take a funereal canter into abstruse speculation on the elephants of
thought, and digress from theory to fact.
This city, which is destined to become in time another Waterloo in the
sense of offering everything drinkable in lieu of water, presents but
very little except bar-rooms in the way of entertainment just now.
Hence, my boy, we can properly appreciate the "Effigynia," as it is
classically called, which a thoughtful yellow-vested chap of much
breastpin, from Pequog, has just opened on Pennsylvania Avenue.
According to advertisement, "this chaste and plastic exhibition
consists of wax effigies of the five successive Generals of the
Mackerel Brigade, with the peculiar personalities of each one, and the
superiority of each over the other, unmistakably stamped on the forms
and features of each!" Being a moral man, my boy, and much addicted to
entertainments which differ from the prevailing drama of the day in
obviating the necessity for steadily blushing, I repaired to the
Effigynia the other evening and was much edified by the spectacle
presented. Five mirrors standing at different angles with a wax figure
of the first General of the Mackerel Brigade, were made each to reflect
said figure; and I could not help feeling, my boy, that the likenesses
were correct. I saw before me the counterfeit presentments of the five
soldiers who had successively arisen to the highest Mackerel Command,
and I found myself wondering how many more mirrors the exhibition would
need before the war came to a head--containing brains.
It was on Tuesday morning that I ascended majestically to the slanting
roof of my Gothic steed, the sagacious Pegasus, and moved perceptibly
across Long Bridge once more, toward the camp of the Mackerel Brigade.
It is worthy of note, my boy, that the architectural animal in question
has greatly improved of late upon a diet of condemned straw hats, and
now trots an hour in sixty minutes with the greatest ease of manner. An
occasional cough but adds to the melancholy interest of his funereal
cast of countenance; and as his head grows more and more vivid in its
resemblance to an infant's coffin, his whole effect deepens in its
churchliness and sepulchral solemnity.
As I neared the national head-quarters, the Mackerel Surgeon-General
saluted me, and I observed that he kept his glance dreamily fixed upon
the Gothic Pegasus.
"As I gaze upon that bony fabric," says he, biting a piece of calamus
in soft professional abstraction,--"as I gaze upon that fleet skeleton
you bestride, I cannot help thinking that Rule Britannia is frequently
right in speaking of a horse as an 'oss; though she may use a
superfluous 's' in the word. You see," says the surgeon, pausing to
take a gray powder, and to try his lancet on his left thumb-nail,--"you
see, the classical term '_os_' signifies bone; and as bone is the
prevailing aspect of your present charger, he might be termed an
'_'os_' without violence to the lingual proprieties."
I have always suspected this surgeon, my boy, of being an accursed
secessionist in disguise, and now I feel confident that he would not
hesitate, if opportunity offered, to carry his fiendish affection for
the well-known Southern Confederacy to the extent of actually differing
with me upon some point in conversation. In such times as these, my
boy, there can be no middle ground for a man; he must either be heart
and soul with his country's murderous foes, or ready to agree entirely
with me in anything I may say or think. God save the Republic!
Upon arriving at a locality, which I refrain from naming, lest I should
thereby betray my beloved country or make a mistake in spelling, I
found the venerable and spectacled veterans of the thrice-valorous
Mackerel Brigade just returned from a spirited pursuit of certain
regiments of disreputable Confederacies who were stealing farms on the
outskirts of Paris. These Confederacies had even penetrated into
storied Accomac, and removed everything they found upon the farms there
except the mortgages. Hence the demand upon the aged and unconquerable
Mackerel Brigade for an immediate walk in that direction, and there
they had gone by the most circuitous and profoundly strategical route
afforded by the county maps. General John Smith, the latest edition of
Mackerel Commander, gave leadership of his advance guard to Captain
Villiam Brown, and immediately five-and-twenty inflamed reporters
frantically telegraphed to as many excellent and reliable morning
journals, that all the thieving Confederacies were about to be bagged,
and that all the revolting details would be given in our next issue. It
was toward evening, my boy, when Captain Villiam Brown, mounted upon
his geometrical steed, Euclid, came riding up to the advanced
head-quarters of the new general to report results.
"Well, young man," says the General, with Spartan equanimity, "have we
bagged the enemies of human freedom?"
Villiam looked up from the demijohn under the table, upon which he had
been earnestly gazing, and says he, "No, sire; but the very next thing
to bagging them has occurred."
"Relate the tale," says the General, with dignity.
"Why," says Villiam, "instead of our bagging them, they have been
sacking us."
It is a remarkable and beautiful peculiarity of our flexible language,
my boy, that its semi-syno-nymical effects permit the transmission of
trying intelligence in terms of soothing similarity to those which
might have been employed had the news been more felicitous. Thus are we
let down easily from pride to humiliation, and spared much intervening
agony of soul.
So the Mackerel Brigade turned their gleaming old spectacles once more
in the direction of our National Capital, and are again a
characteristic of the landscape enclosing Washington. Further
consummate strategy is postponed for a time on account of the weather,
which has become villanously hot through the fanatical machinations of
the insidious Black Republicans. Thus are Greeley, Beecher, Wendell
Phillips, and their deluded followers weakening the military arm of the
government and endeavoring to obtain fat contracts for worthless fans!
Methinks I hear you ask, "Has the new general of the Mackerel Brigade
made a failure, after all the credit the public have given him for
superiority over his predecessors?"
Far be it from me to judge hastily, but I may be permitted to say, my
boy,--I may be permitted to say, that men in the military line have
this point in common with men in a mercantile business; by obtaining
too much on credit at the start, they are very apt to make bad
failures, leaving nothing but their lie-abilities for the consolation
of those who trusted them.
Upon reaching the Mackerel camp, and exchanging festive salutations
with Captain Bob Shorty, who was trying to purchase the dressed skin of
a handsome copperhead snake from Corporal Veller, of the California
Reserve, to use as a sword-belt,--after exchanging salutations, I
repaired to the tent of the chaplain, to witness the marriage of one of
the younger Mackerels to a pretty Shenandoah belle. As the happy pair
stood before the drum to be made wife and man, I noticed that the
bride's rosy cheeks paled like a sunset under the twilight, until the
languishing stars of her eyes shone only upon snow.
And now, my boy, let me say a few words respecting the recent attempted
draft of Abe L. bodied men in thrice-famous Accomac, and the
freedom-loving spirit in which it was met by the Sovereign People. With
a prescient view to being amply prepared for an overwhelming assault
upon combined Europe, which is shortly to be made by Secretary Seward
and the muscular United States of America, our Uncle Abe ordered a
draft of Accomackians to be made at once. Hereupon the Accomac "Morning
Dog," an excellent daily journal, indulged in a high-minded editorial
on the fiendish proclivities of the Governor of Accomac, and the
general wildness of all the Accomackians to be drafted if he would let
them. With great promptness, that admirable palladium of human freedom,
the "Evening Cat," avowed that it spit upon the gubernatorial
scurrility of its growling contemporary; that it deprecated mob
violence and trusted that no mob would resist the draft; but could not
help believing that the Sovereign People might possibly arise in their
majesty and occasion a speedy funeral in the family of the
editor-in-chief of the venomous and intolerable "Morning Dog."
It was at 10 o'clock A.M., my boy, when the drafting commenced in
Accomac, and in half an hour thereafter the Sovereign People,
consisting of several gentlemen from Ireland, were asserting the
dignity of a free community in a manner worthy of the sacred cause of
Emigration. It is a touching fact, my boy,--a touching and aesthetical
fact, that the American people are ever so able to find foreign
champions to protect their freedom from governmental infringement that
they seldom have occasion to do any fighting for it themselves.
The Sovereign People of Accomac, being fully aroused and slightly
inebriated, proceeded to vindicate the majesty of our excellent
national Democratic Organization by relieving a bloated aristocracy of
their watches and loose change, ransacking sundry private residences on
account of the great draft of their chimneys, and performing other
awe-inspiring acts of rude majesty, equally well calculated to evince a
freeborn people's distaste for despotism. Furthermore, the Sovereign
People fearlessly attacked a large and aristocratic Hospital, beating
many of the patients to death; for, by some corrupt chicanery, these
patients were barefacedly exempted from the Conscription which bore so
heavily upon the down-trodden and healthy poor man. The "Evening Cat,"
in a special edition, was genial enough to express a hope that "the
outraged people now muttering ominously in the air," would not burst
upon the office and editor of the "Morning Dog" with _too_ much just
fury; whereupon the incensed Sovereign People said that, be jabers,
they'd come mighty near forgetting that entirely; and forthwith
proceeded to stone the office of the "Dog" until the hasty discharge of
an ink-stand from one of the upper windows thereof induced them to make
a hasty change of base.
Without indulging in farther details, suffice it to say that the
Sovereign People finally desisted from their struggle for liberty upon
being satisfied that no more watches, purses, nor sick despots were to
be got at conveniently, and the "Evening Cat" came out in a spirited
article in favor of an immediate war with France.
How grateful should it be to our national pride, my boy, that even the
stranger that is within our gates feels inspired by the very atmosphere
with a jealous, a fighting love for perfect freedom,--especially if
said gates be those of a State prison.
Yours, exuberantly,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER XCVIII.
RECOUNTING A CHASTE "RECONSTRUCTION" ANECDOTE OF THE SIXTH WARD,
AND DIVULGING CAPTAIN VILLIAM BROWN'S INGENIOUS ALPHABETICAL
EXPERIMENT WITH COMPANY THREE.
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 25th, 1863.
It is a high-moral idea of poets, congressmen, and the writers for our
improving weekly journals of exciting romance, my boy, that it is a
noble and majestic thing to feel warmly for one's country; but when the
thermometer stands at 90 in the shade, and we join with our
fellow-beings in shedding tears from the tops of our foreheads, I find
my disinterested patriotism fully equal to the self-abnegation of the
remark, that I had rather be cool than be President. Our brethren are
already in the field; why stand we here idle? Is ice so dear, or peace
so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid
it, Almighty Dollars! I know not what other gentlemen would have; but
as for me, give me liberty, or give me a fan. Thus, my boy, after the
manner of the departed Patrick Henry, did I expose myself to the
conservative Kentucky chap, as we stood panting together in the
vestibule of the Treasury Buildings the other day; and says he:
"The loyal State of Kentucky, of which I am a part, has no objections
to warm weather in the summer-time; provided it is not indorsed by the
fanatical Black Republicans. Warm weather," says the conservative
Kentucky chap, thoughtfully, "is of much service to the old rye crop of
Kentucky; but Kentucky would forego even her old rye, rather than see
retarded the movements of that army whose constitutional duty it is to
restore the Union--not reconstruct it."
The regular list of dead idiots for this year being not quite full yet,
my boy, there are still persons living who can perceive no very immense
difference between Restoring the Union and Reconstructing the Union;
which reminds me of a chaste little incident that once occurred in the
Sixth Ward.
A highly-respectable liquor-selling chap, of enlarged stomach and
overwhelming shirt-collar, having just been elected Alderman, through
the influence of his excellent moral character, and about two thousand
dollars judiciously invested in Irishmen, gave a fashionable party to
celebrate this triumph of the purity of elections, and invited about
two-thirds of the Fire Department to bring their wives and sweethearts.
Promptly at nine o'clock, two Hose Companies, of unblemished
reputations for noise, four Engine Associations noted for saving one
pine table from the devouring element to every two Brussels carpets
they ruined with water, three Hook-and-Ladder Societies greatly
distinguished for climbing into the third-story windows of the building
two doors from the burning domicil, and an equivalent number of the
cotton-hearted women of America, were on hand in the aldermanic
drawing-rooms. The new public dignitary received them all with that
exquisite blandness of demeanor which is so becoming to great men who
have just made a rush from obscurity: and says he,--
"Make yourselves at home now, boys, only don't spit on the carpet. If
there's a fire while the swarry is goin' on, I'll let the old woman
listen for the district and announce it from the airy. We'll keep the
winders up, and when the hall-bell rings, you fellers as has to leave,
can just slip down onto the front stoop without breaking up the entire
swarry."
Here the large-hearted aldermanic chap was called hastily downstairs to
attend the bar, several army officers having just arrived in the ward,
and the "swarry" commenced as merrily as a fire in a carpenter's shop.
It set in for a heavy dance at about eleven o'clock, and then were seen
as many elaborate verses in the poetry of motion, as any pair of eyes
could wish to enjoy. "Fifty's" foreman, who danced with a very pretty
dotted muslin, produced a very striking and picturesque effect by
rolling his inexpressibles up over his boots, and giving a life-like
imitation of the working of an engine with his heels and toes;
whereupon the assistant foreman of "Thirty's Truck" suddenly threw off
his dress-coat and appeared in full red shirt, simultaneously striking
into a fine, artistic shuffle, intended to imitate the hauling-in and
reeling-up of the wet hose after a conflagration. These and other
graceful novelties were greatly admired by the ladies, each of whom
said so many spicy and spiteful things about the other's bare arms and
forward manners, that a stranger might have taken them all for the very
cream of Fifth Avenue or any other Best Society.