This chapter is serious, grave, gay and mysterious.--Good advice
to Uncle Sam.--A dream which clears up the mystery of beards and
mustaches, and accounts for some things, but cannot account for
others, until the author dreams again; perhaps not even then!--
Inquiries and doubts, not answered or solved in this chapter.
Should that time ever arrive when the members of our state and
national legislatures practise all the vices which the laws they make
are apparently made to punish and prevent--what influence can their
legislative acts exert on the community? Why enact laws to prevent the
commission of acts, which their own examples encourage and aid, and
even induce? If such legislators are often seen at the card table,
in the race field, or at the nightly debauch, will not men in less
honorable stations continue to follow such blighting examples? Unless
men in the highest, civil, military and naval stations, pay due regard
to the decencies of life, to the strict rules of morality, will persons
in private life and in humble stations do better than their superiors
in office? Because the rich man can afford to live in luxury, will
not his example exert a bad influence on the poor, and on those whose
means do not enable them to live a life of extravagance and wasteful
expenditure? What effect then have high salaries on this or any other
community? Let any observing man look over this district, and then
answer my question. We live in an age of innovation--in an age, when
the passions are let loose, and when the pseudo reformers are busily
engaged in their endeavors to uproot all our old, well-established
forms of government, religion, morals and law. Like the largest oak on
the Alleghanies, which has withstood the fury of the elements during
five centuries, we hope our institutions of all sorts may survive the
furious blasts of demagogues in morals, politics and religion. But
if we wish these institutions to last, we must stand by our colors,
hanging out our banner on the outward wall, and manfully defend our
fortress against all the assaults of innovators--of restless, rash
and wicked men. We must stand to our arms, and dare to meet every
emergency, with blow for blow and gun for gun. Under the care of such
guardians, liberty, religion and law have little to fear for the
result. I thank God, that there are a considerable number of such men
in this district, whom I well know and duly appreciate.
These reflections grew out of my associations, sometimes not voluntary,
but from necessity, where I heard, and was compelled to hear, every
institution in the whole country assailed by several noisy, ignorant
and self-conceited men, conversing together so flippantly as to
resemble the chatterings of so many monkeys, and with less good sense
than is possessed by the animals they so much resembled in their
gestures, noise and frivolity.
During a long session of Congress, as the first session of each
Congress is sometimes called, assembled here from all parts of the
Union, may be seen true and faithful representatives of every party,
sect, faction and even fragments of all these parties and factions.
Democrats, whigs, nullifiers, abolitionists, and all other _crats_,
_isms_ and _ists_. They are all busy, all active, sometimes noisy,
boisterous and persevering. Could each one of them be believed, all the
world will soon come over to their several creeds. Poor fellows! we
suspect that the world will still roll on in its own orbit, around the
sun, and the puny, tiny insects that are now buzzing about here, will
all pass off and be gone far away, before dogdays come.
In this Babel, as it is just now, the people of the district refrain
mostly from entering much into the feelings, interests and views of the
visiters from a distance. The letter writers, the speculators, office
seekers, and the office suckers, the courtiers and the courtezans will
leave the city when Congress rises. While Congress sits, all the crowd
will continue to haunt the public places and the public offices. One
would naturally enough conclude, that in a city, no larger than this,
where some three millions of dollars are annually expended by members
of Congress and by visiters, money would be plenty and the citizens
would be all wealthy; but that is not the case. What becomes of such
a vast sum? Shall I answer my own question? I will answer it, and
confess, that I do not know, and cannot even imagine what becomes of
it. It disappears from our sight, and those who have handled the most
money, appear to be in the greatest distress for the means of paying
their just debts! Perhaps there are exceptions to my general rule,
but the exception proves the general rule to be a correct one. House
rent, being very high, is assigned as the cause of much distress to
renters. Some of these houses were built very cheaply, fourteen years
since, by the joint labors of brick makers, brick layers, joiners and
carpenters, who hired their day laborers at the low price of twelve and
a half cents a day, besides board! So the day laborers used to tell
me, at the time they were thus employed. Their assertions, as to their
compensation, might have been untrue, but circumstances satisfied me at
the time, that they told me the truth. Possibly these day laborers did
not work all day.
In some instances it is possible that quite too many persons follow
some particular calling, to allow it to be profitable to any one of
that calling. Is the competition too great? All the nation, I need
not say, cannot live at the seat of the national government. I should
doubt, too, whether all things being duly considered, this is the
best place in which to rear a family of children, or one consisting
mostly of young people. More or less dissipation and vice will always
surround the seat of this government. Move the capitol where we will,
the turkey-buzzards, perhaps the same birds, will follow it, and build
their nests under the eaves of the treasury building. Their bills will
always be thrust their whole lengths into Uncle Sam’s purse and Uncle
Sam’s pocket.
ADDRESS TO UNCLE SAM.
“Unfortunate old uncle! you have a great many lazy, idle, worthless
pets, whom you do wrong, very wrong, to support in idleness, sloth
and dissipation. Are you sure, Sir, that you are acting the part of a
prudent, discreet and excellent old gentleman, so long as you indulge
such pets in practices so repugnant to your better nature, in your
earlier years and better days? I do not expect you to turn them out to
grass, as Nebuchadnezzar was turned out in days of yore; but certainly,
the prairies of Illinois would afford them a better pasture, than this
sterile district does. Alas! SELDEN’S REFECTORY is preferred by them,
to all the prairies of the West, blooming with tall grasses and the
most brilliant and beautiful flowers, and a mint julep to any other
vegetable. Of all the fowls of the air, some of them prefer the wing of
an ox, whereas others prefer the oyster to every other bird of passage!
Pray, Sir, be wise in time, put all your sons into some honest calling,
whereby they may get an honest living and pay their honest debts, by
their industry, economy and enterprise. Do this forthwith, or you will
become a bankrupt in fame, fortune and resources and be compelled to
take the benefit of the act for the relief of insolvent debtors. You
own a great many large houses here, which cost you a great deal of
money, but are there no mortgages on them which may be foreclosed?
That being done, shall we not soon afterwards see all your household
furniture, your carpets, your tables, chairs, beds and bedding exposed
to a public sale, on some market morning, opposite the market-house, on
the avenue?--Good bye, Sir.”
P.S.--A large lot furniture and a great lottery wheel, from the War
office, were offered for sale at auction the other day on the avenue.
Among the mysteries of this mysterious city, take the following: Soon
after my return from New York, I went all alone into the monumental
square, east of the capitol, to discover what a certain low ill-looking
shanty contained. On entering the building, I saw a statue of _Jupiter
Tonans_, easing himself, without a shirt on his back, holding a
thunderbolt in his right hand! Every wrinkle and every feature of his
face, and his Roman dress, without a shirt, and coated with dust,
proved to me at a glance of the eye, in a moment, that some Italian had
either stolen and brought off the original statue, or he had exactly
copied it; and that some one had placed it here, for the purpose of
setting up the worship of Jupiter here at the seat of the national
government! And this in a christian country, in this nineteenth
century! Until I saw this statue here standing, I did suppose that
christianity, in her onward march, from the banks of the Jordan to our
farthest West, had overthrown the pagan religion, and had erected the
cross wherever Jupiter Tonans and his kindred gods had once stood.
After examining the statue of this heathen deity, I looked, and behold
it stood on a granite rock, inscribed: “WASHINGTON!” That Washington
was well represented by a block of granite, I was not prepared either
to affirm or deny, but that any one could with any sort of propriety
introduce into this square, the worship of Rome’s old pagan gods, I do
deny, and will maintain my denial on substantial grounds of correct
taste. The old story of Jupiter Tonans, if my memory serves me, after
having read it forty-four years ago, for the last time, I believe
is this. Some Roman emperor, perhaps Augustus, was being carried
along in a litter, when one of his bearers was instantly killed by
lightning. The emperor, from a sense of gratitude to “The Thunderer,”
for sparing his own life, promised to erect, and finally did erect a
temple, dedicated to “the thundering Jupiter” and placed his statue
in it, in the very act of darting his deadly bolt. Who would have
thought that that statue would have been transported here, and erected
for the adoration of the pagans in this christian country? Paganism
in Washington, in the nineteenth century! Why not forthwith get up
lectures and send around beggars to crave money in order to stop its
further progress?
To say that Congress ought not to encourage ingenious foreign artists
at all, would be contrary to our feelings and to all our history, but
our own artists should have a preference, all other things being equal.
And I do not say, that our artists may not with great propriety go to
Europe and there study the best labors of the best artists. But let our
Americans carry with them American hearts, and return to us untinged
with European feelings, and not be imbued either with the ideas of
paganism. Washington clad in a Roman dress, instead of his American
uniform! Daniel Boone dressed in a toga, instead of his Western hunting
shirt! An American Indian in a toga, fighting a battle in a personal
contest, instead of his being clad in his simple breech clout! Why such
sights are presented to us here, is a mystery--a mystery of Washington
city which I cannot unfold to the reader. So of the pedestal of a bust
of Mr. Jefferson, resting on the heads of infants, whose mouths are
wide open, rendered so apparently by the pressure on the top of their
skulls. Whose absurd taste produced these abortions? To mingle paganism
with the ideas of christianity in our statues and in our architecture,
is in bad taste, especially in this age. Within about three hundred
years after the death of the Founder of our religion, against the
superstition of Jews and pagans, against the ridicule of their wits and
the reasonings of their sages, against the craft of their politicians,
the power of their kings and the prowess of their armies, against
the axe, the cross and the stake, christianity ascended the imperial
throne, and waved her broad banner in triumph over the palace of the
Cæsars. Her march and conquests extended to every part of the then
civilized world. The idols and all the gods of paganism fell down
prostrate, before the onward march of christianity, and who will now,
set up these idols _here_, for the worship of Americans? Away then with
these gods and goddesses--away with Mercury and his rod, with Minerva
and Venus and Cupid, they are blemishes, not beauties, they are pagan
and not christian, barbarous and not civilized signs of the times. We
want a Congress sufficiently christian to overthrow these idol gods,
and all idol worship in the capitol. The ancient Greeks and Romans have
long since gone down to their graves, and even their gods have perished
from off the face of the earth. Why dig them up and bring them here to
imbue the minds of our youth with pagan ideas?
With a view to learn the mystery of wearing unnatural beards, some
filled with vermin, and some with ginger bread! some resembling those
of Saracens, Turks and Russians, I visited Lipscomb’s near Gadsby’s,
on the avenue, and M’Cubbin’s on Eighth street, and there gravely sat
often for a long time, studying beards and mustaches, but in vain.
At last I came home to my lodgings at MRS. TILLEY’S on Tenth street,
nearly opposite Peter Force’s large library, and falling asleep in my
easy armchair, a form stood before me in my dream, with mild aspect a
sympathising look, she thus addressed me: “Let not thy thoughts about
beards and mustaches trouble thee, because I am sent to reveal to thee
the sublime mysteries of beards and mustaches. All men are created with
certain propensities, and He who made them, has marked them, so that
their propensities may be known as soon as the eye sees them. Euruchs
have little or no beards, but a man whose disposition is Saracenic,
Turkish, Tartarean, Gothic, barbarous or christian, has given him a
beard in accordance with his natural disposition, But if he is like, in
all respects, a goat, in smell and sensuality, a goat’s beard is given
him and he wears it, leading about some frail female, dressed in silk
velvet, while his wife with six small children, and one at the breast
is left to starve at home. Such a man will never buy or read thy book,
otherwise he will buy it. In compassion to thee, I further inform thee,
that as to beards full of vermin, that circumstance is owing to the
poverty of their owners, whose purses do not contain money enough to
pay for a comb! Those beards which contain ginger bread, it is owing
to a fact which is as well known to me, as it is to this whole city,
that many of the bearded race are so poor, that I have seen twelve of
them contribute a cent a piece, to purchase a large roll of ginger
bread; they would then tie a cord around its centre and suspend it to
the ceiling over their heads in the middle of the room, and seating
themselves flat on the floor, in a circle, and in that position each
one of them would catch a bite, as the ginger bread was whirled around
from mouth to mouth. And although every mouth was wide open like an
anaconda’s when swallowing a rabbit, yet, sometimes the roll struck
the beard and got entangled in it, until the mouth was filled with the
delicious morsel. The beard itself retained the roll, until some of the
beard stuck to the roll. The fragments of tobacco in the beard, are to
be accounted for in the same way.” I awoke, refreshed in body and in
mind, having had revealed to me one of the greatest mysteries of this
city. My mind is now at ease about that mystery, because I know every
man I see on the avenue, by the beard he wears, whether he is civilized
or savage, rich or poor. If he is able to get shaved without running in
debt for shaving, he is shaved clean and smooth. Has he a beard like
a goat’s; his beard proves him to be one that will stand on the left
hand. And so of all the other signs, they are all revealed to me, and
I, without fee, tell the reader all about it.
There are other mysteries in this city of mysteries, which I cannot
find out, although I have slept in my easy armed chair and on my
pillow time and again.
What the Senate will do about the Texan treaty? whether they will
discuss its merits public or privately? whether they will stay here,
until they have gone through their long docket of nominations, now
before them? Whether the House will continue to sit until they complete
their business not yet finally acted on? or whether they will go home
soon, and the people thereby lose all the benefit of what has been
begun, I cannot divine in this chapter.