The American Eagle.
"Jist look out of the door," said the Clockmaker, "and see what a
beautiful night it is, how calm, how still, how clear it is; bean't
it lovely? I like to look up at them 'ere stars, when I am away from
home; they put me in mind of our national flag, and it is generally
allowed to be the first flag in the univarse now. The British can
whip all the world, and we can whip the British. It's near about the
prettiest sight I know of, is one of our first class Frigates, manned
with our free and enlightened citizens all ready for sea; it's like
the great American Eagle, on its perch, balancing itself for a start
on the broad expanse of blue sky, afeared of nothin' of its kind, and
president of all it surveys. It was a good emblem that we chose,
warn't it?"
There was no evading so direct, and at the same time, so conceited
an appeal as this. "Certainly," said I, "the emblem was well chosen.
I was particularly struck with it on observing the device on your
naval buttons during the last war--an eagle with an anchor in its
claws. That was a natural idea, taken from an ordinary occurrence:
a bird purloining the anchor of a frigate--an article so useful
and necessary for the food of its young. It was well chosen, and
exhibited great taste and judgment in the artist. The emblem is
more appropriate than you are aware of--boasting of what you cannot
perform--grasping at what you cannot attain--an emblem of arrogance
and weakness--of ill-directed ambition and vulgar pretension."
"It's a common phrase," said he with great composure, "among seamen,
to say 'Damn your buttons,' and I guess it's natural for you to say
so of the buttons of our navals; I guess you have a right to that
'ere oath. It's a sore subject, that, I reckon, and I believe I
hadn't ought to have spoken of it to you at all. Brag is a good dog,
but hold fast is a better one."
He was evidently annoyed, and with his usual dexterity gave vent
to his feelings by a sally upon the Bluenoses, who he says are a
cross of English and Yankee, and therefore first cousins to us both.
"Perhaps," said he, "that 'ere Eagle might with more propriety have
been taken off as perched on an anchor, instead of holding it in his
claws, and I think it would have been more nateral; but I suppose it
was some stupid foreign artist that made that 'ere blunder, I never
seed one yet that was equal to our'n. If that Eagle is represented as
trying what he can't do, it's an honourable ambition arter all, but
these Bluenoses won't try what they can do. They put me in mind of a
great big hulk of a horse in a cart, that won't put his shoulder to
the collar at all for all the lambastin' in the world, but turns his
head round and looks at you, as much as to say, 'what an everlastin'
heavy thing an empty cart is, isnt it?' An Owl should be their
emblem, and the motto, 'He sleeps all the days of his life.' The
whole country is like this night; beautiful to look at, but silent
as the grave--still as death, asleep, becalmed.
"If the sea was always calm," said he, "it would pyson the univarse;
no soul could breathe the air, it would be so uncommon bad. Stagnant
water is always unpleasant, but salt water when it gets tainted
beats all natur'; motion keeps it sweet and wholesome, and that our
minister used to say is one of the 'wonders of the great deep.' This
province is stagnant; it ain't deep like still water neither, for
it's shaller enough, gracious knows, but it is motionless, noiseless,
lifeless. If you have ever been to sea, in a calm, you'd know what
a plaguy tiresome thing it is for a man that's in a hurry. An
everlastin' flappin' of the sails, and a creakin' of the boombs, and
an onsteady pitchin' of the ship, and folks lyin' about dozin' away
their time, and the sea a-heavin' a long heavy swell, like the
breathin' of the chist of some great monster asleep. A passenger
wonders the sailors are so plagy easy about it, and he goes a-lookin'
out east, and a-spyin' out west, to see if there's any chance of a
breeze, and says to himself 'Well, if this ain't dull music it's a
pity.' Then how streaked he feels when he sees a steamboat a-clippin'
it by him like mad, and the folks on board pokin' fun at him, and
askin' him if he has any word to send to home. 'Well,' he says, 'if
any soul ever catches me on board a sail vessel again, when I can go
by steam, I'll give him leave to tell me of it, that's a fact.'
"That's partly the case here. They are becalmed, and they see us
going ahead on them, till we are e'enamost clean out of sight; yet
they hain't got a steamboat, and they hain't got a railroad; indeed,
I doubt if one half on 'em ever seed or heerd tell of one or t'other
of them. I never seed any folks like 'em except the Indians, and they
won't even so much as look--they havn't the least morsel of curiosity
in the world; from which one of our Unitarian preachers (they are
dreadful hands at DOUBTIN' them. I don't DOUBT but some day or
another, they will DOUBT whether everything ain't a DOUBT), in a very
learned work, doubts whether they were ever descended from Eve at
all. Old marm Eve's children, he says, are all lost, it is said, in
consequence of TOO MUCH curiosity, while these copper coloured folks
are lost from havin' TOO LITTLE little. How can they be the same?
Thinks I, that may be logic, old Dubersome, but it ain't sense,
don't extremes meet? Now these Bluenoses have no motion in 'em, no
enterprise, no spirit, and if any critter shows any symptoms of
activity, they say he is a man of no judgment, he's speculative, he's
a schemer, in short he's mad. They vegitate like a lettuce plant in
sarse garden, they grow tall and, spindlin', run to seed right off,
grow as bitter as gaul and die."
"A gal once came to our minister to hire as a house-help; says she,
'Minister, I suppose you don't want a young lady to do chamber
business and breed worms do you? For I've half a mind to take a spell
of livin' out.' She meant," said the Clockmaker, "house work and
rearing silk-worms. 'My pretty maiden,' says he, a-pattin' her on the
cheek (for I've often observed old men always talk kinder pleasant
to young women), 'my pretty maiden where was you brought up?' 'Why,'
says she, 'I guess I warn't brought up at all, I growed up.' 'Under
what platform,' says he (for he was very particular that all his
house-helps should go to his meetin'), 'under what Church platform?'
'Church platform!' says she, with a toss of her head, like a young
colt that's got a check of the curb, 'I guess I warn't raised under a
platform at all, but in as good a house as your'n, grand as you be.'
'You said well,' said the old minister, quite shocked, 'when you said
you growed up, dear, for you have grown up in great ignorance.' 'Then
I guess you had better get a lady that knows more than me,' says she,
'that's flat. I reckon I am every bit and grain as good as you be. If
I don't understand a bum-byx (silk-worm), both feedin', breedin', and
rearin', then I want to know who does, that's all; church platform
indeed!' says she; 'I guess you were raised under a glass frame in
March, and transplanted on Independence day, warn't you?' And off
she sot, lookin' as scorney as a London lady, and leavin' the poor
minister standin' starin' like a stuck pig. 'Well, well,' says he,
a-liftin' up both hands, and turnin' up the whites of his eyes like a
duck in thunder, 'if that don't bang the bush! It fearly beats sheep
shearin' arter the blackberry bushes have got the wool. It does, I
vow; them are the tares them Unitarians sow in our grain fields at
night; I guess they'll ruinate the crops yet, and make the grounds
so everlastin' foul; we'll have to pare the sod and burn it, to kill
the roots. Our fathers sowed the right seed here in the wilderness,
and watered it with their tears, and watched over it with fastin' and
prayer, and now it's fairly run out, that's a fact, I snore. It's got
choked up with all sorts of trash in, natur', I declare. Dear, dear,
I vow I never seed the beat o' that in all my born days.'
"Now the Bluenoses are like that 'ere gal; they have grown up,
and grown up in ignorance of many things they hadn't ought not to
know; and it's as hard to teach grown-up folks as it is to break a
six-year-old horse; and they do rile one's temper so--they act so
ugly that it tempts one sometimes to break their confounded necks;
it's near about as much trouble as it's worth."
"What remedy is there for all this supineness," said I; "how can
these people be awakened out of their ignorant slothfulness, into
active exertion?"
"The remedy," said Mr. Slick, "is at hand--it is already workin' its
own cure. They must recede before our free and enlightened citizens
like the Indians; our folks will buy them out, and they must give
place to a more intelligent and ac-TIVE people. They must go to the
lands of Labrador, or be located back of Canada; they can hold on
there a few years, until the wave of civilization reaches them,
and then they must move again, as the savages do. It is decreed; I
hear the bugle of destiny a-soundin' of their retreat, as plain as
anything. Congress will give them a concession of land, if they
petition, away to Alleghany's backside territory, and grant them
relief for a few years; for we are out of debt, and don't know what
to do with our surplus revenue. The only way to shame them, that I
know, would be to sarve them as Uncle Enoch sarved a neighbour of his
in Varginny.
"There was a lady that had a plantation near hand to his'n, and
there was only a small river atwixt the two houses, so that folks
could hear each other talk across it. Well, she was a dreadful
cross-grained woman, a real catamount, as savage as a she bear that
has cubs, an old farrow critter, as ugly as sin, and one that both
hooked and kicked too--a most particular onmarciful she-devil, that's
a fact. She used to have some of her niggers tied up every day,
and flogged uncommon severe, and their screams and screeches were
horrid--no soul could stand it; nothin' was heerd all day, but 'Oh
Lord Missus! Oh Lord Missus!' Enoch was fairly sick of the sound, for
he was a tender-hearted man, and says he to her one day, 'Now do marm
find out some other place to give your cattle the cowskin, for it
worries me to hear 'em take on so dreadful bad; I can't stand it, I
vow; they are flesh and blood as well as we be, though the meat is
a different colour.' But it was no good; she jist up and told him
to mind his own business, and she guessed she'd mind her'n. He was
determined to shame her out of it; so one mornin' after breakfast he
goes into the cane field, and says he to Lavender, one of the black
overseers, 'Muster up the whole gang of slaves, every soul, and bring
'em down to the whippin' post, the whole stock of them, bulls, cows
and calves.' Well, away goes Lavender, and drives up all the niggers.
'Now you catch it,' says he, 'you lazy villains; I tole you so
many a time--I tole you Massa he lose all patience wid you, you
good-for-nothin' rascals. I grad, upon my soul, I werry grad; you
mind now what old Lavender say anoder time.' The black overseers are
always the most cruel," said the Clockmaker; "they have no sort of
feeling for their own people.
"Well, when they were gathered there according to orders, they
looked streaked enough you may depend, thinkin' they were going to
get it all round, and the wenches they fell to a-cryin', wringin'
their hands, and boo-hooing like mad. Lavender was there with his
cowskin, grinnin' like a chessy cat, and crackin' it about, ready
for business. 'Pick me out,' says Enoch, 'four that have the loudest
voices.' 'Hard matter dat,' says Lavender, 'hard matter dat, Massa,
dey all talk loud, dey all lub talk more better nor work--de idle
villians; better gib 'em all a little tickle, jist to teach 'em larf
on t'other side of de mouth; dat side bran' new, they never use it
yet.' 'Do as I order you, sir,' said Uncle, 'or I'll have you triced
up, you cruel old rascal you.' When they were picked out and sot by
themselves, they hanged their heads, and looked like sheep goin' to
the shambles. 'Now, says Uncle Enoch, my pickininnies, do you sing
out as loud as Niagara, at the very tip eend of your voice--
'"Don't kill a nigger, pray,
Let him lib anoder day.
Oh Lord Missus--oh Lord Missus!
'"My back be very sore,
No stand it any more,
Oh Lord Missus--oh Lord Missus!"
And all the rest of you join chorus, as loud as you can bawl, "Oh
Lord Missus."' The black rascals understood the joke real well.
They larfed ready to split their sides; they fairly lay down on the
ground, and rolled over and over with lafter. Well, when they came
to the chorus 'Oh Lord Missus,' if they didn't let go, it's a pity.
They made the river ring agin--they were heerd clean out to sea. All
the folks ran out of the Lady's House, to see what on airth was the
matter on Uncle Enoch's plantation--they thought there was actilly a
rebellion there; but when they listened awhile, and heerd it over
and over again, they took the hint, and returned a-larfin' in their
sleeves. Says they, 'Master Enoch Slick, he upsides with Missus this
hitch anyhow.' Uncle never heerd anything more of 'Oh Lord Missus'
arter that Yes, they ought to be shamed out of it, those Bluenoses.
When reason fails to convince, there is nothin' left but ridicule.
If they have no ambition, apply to their feelings, slap a blister on
their pride, and it will do the business. It's like a-puttin' ginger
under a horse's tail; it makes him carry up real handSUM, I tell
you. When I was a boy, I was always late to school: well father's
preachin' I didn't mind much, but I never could bear to hear mother
say, 'Why Sam, are you actilly up for all day? Well, I hope your
airly risin' won't hurt you, I declare. What on airth is a-goin' to
happen now?' Well, wonders will never cease. It raised my dander; at
last says I, 'Now, mother, don't say that 'ere any more for gracious
sake, for it makes me feel ugly, and I'll get up as airly as any on
you,' and so I did, and I soon found what's worth knowin' in this
life--An airly start makes easy stages."