[We have now a tolerably fair chance of estimating how the balance-sheet
stands between our returned volunteer and glory. Supposing the entries
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 account with_ (BLANK) GLORY. _Dr._
By loss of one leg 20 To one 675th three cheers
" do. one arm 15 in Faneuil Hall 30
" do. four fingers 5 " do. do. on occasion
" do. one eye 10 of presentation of
" the breaking of six ribs 6 sword to Colonel Wright 25
" having served under " one suit of grey clothes
Colonel Cushing one (ingeniously unbecoming) 15
month 44 " musical entertainments
(drum and fife six
months) 5
" one dinner after return 1
" chance of pension 1
" privilege of drawing
longbow during rest of
natural life 23
---- ----
E. E. 100 100
It would appear that Mr. Sawin found the actual feast curiously the
reverse of the bill of fare advertised in Faneuil Hall and other places.
His primary object seems to have been the making of his fortune.
_Quaerenda pecunia primum, virtus post nummos._ He hoisted sail for
Eldorado, and shipwrecked on Point Tribulation. _Quid non mortalia
pectora cogis, auri sacra fames?_ The speculation has sometimes crossed
my mind, in that dreary interval of drought which intervenes between
quarterly 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 tasteless and innutritious. 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 Athenian'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 _sylva_ 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 the birch-tree, in the smaller
branches of which has been implanted so miraculous a virtue for
communicating the Latin and Greek languages, and which may well
therefore be classed among the trees producing necessaries of
life,--_venerabile donum fatalis virgae_. 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 _every_
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 favourable exposures it may be conjectured that a
specimen or two survived to a great age, as in the garden of the
Hesperides; and, indeed, what else could that tree in the Sixth AEneid
have been, with a branch whereof the Trojan hero procured admission to a
territory, for the entering of which money is a surer passport 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 article was that
AEolus who supplied Ulysses with 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 Nornas who traded in
favourable breezes? All which will appear the more clearly when we
consider, that, even to this day, _raising the wind_ 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 adventure of my own. For, shortly after I had
first broached to myself the before-stated natural-historical and
archaeological theories, as I was passing, _haec negotia penitus mecum
revolvens_, through one of the obscure suburbs of our New England
metropolis, my eye was attracted by these words upon a sign-board,--CHEAP
CASH-STORE. Here was at once the confirmation of my speculations, and
the substance of my hopes. Here lingered the fragment 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. Already had my Alnaschar-fancy
(even during that first half-believing glance) expended in various
useful directions the funds to be obtained by pledging the manuscript of
a proposed volume of discourses. Already did a clock ornament the tower
of the Jaalam meeting-house--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 sign-board 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 figurative reproof
of that too-frequent habit of my mind, which, forgetting the due order
of chronology, will often persuade me that the happy sceptre of Saturn
is stretched over this Astraea-forsaken nineteenth century.
Having glanced at the ledger of Glory under the title _Sawin, 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 more economical 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, in fact, picking ours. I
confess that the late _muck_ which the country has been running, has
materially 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 under 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 government 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 ball, 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 entering my study, and handing me the following
bill:--
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 1848.