["Count Smorltork--the famous foreigner--gathering materials for
his great work on England!... 'Have you been long in England?'
asked Mr. Pickwick. 'Long--very long time--fortnight--more.' 'Do
you stay here long?' 'One week.' 'You will have enough to do,'
said Mr. Pickwick, 'to gather all the materials you want in that
time.' 'Eh, they are gathered,' said the Count."--_Pickwick._]
The Smorltork race have multiplied
Since DICKENS wrote about them.
They prate and rate on every side;
Fools read, and wise men doubt them.
_To_ every land _from_ every land,
Post-haste, the prattlers travel.
They take a week to understand,
A fortnight to unravel,
A month, at most, to write a book
That sums up all creation;
They fathom England in a look.
And France in a sensation.
But most of all they seem to love
To cross the wide Atlantic.
_Then_ Jove and all the gods above
Must roar at Smorltork antic.
SMORLTORK--a Briton or a Frank,
A scribe or a fanatic--
The Yankee race will gauge, grade, rank,
In summary emphatic.
He, like a cockney sparrow, cocks
His eye at all around him,
As Pharisee his sense it shocks,
As Philistine, confounds him.
In seven hours he sums a State,
In seven days the lot of them;
And his next business is--to "slate"
And talk prodigious rot of them.
At a huge, motley continent
He gives a glance quite cursory,
And vows it seethes with discontent,
And is corruption's nursery.
He finds New York a Tammany den,
Chicago just a Hades;
The Yankees not quite gentlemen,
The Yankee girls scarce ladies.
Slave to the sex, the male, he vows,
Is but the female's poodle;
And when not worshipping his spouse,
He bows the knee to "Boodle."
The labouring East, the lawless West,
He scans in a "split second,"
And in "two jiffs" of scampering quest
The Stars and Stripes are "reckoned."
They're "gathered" in his shallow brain,
Like pea-nuts in a pannikin.
Bah! SMORLTORK is a vapid, vain,
Vituperative mannikin.
"Potry, poltic, science, art,
_All_ tings"--from pigs to pictures--
He bans in criticisms "smart,"
And sciolistic strictures.
Of courtesy the open shame,
Of feelings coarse affronter.
He's only fit to play the game
Of Mrs. LEO HUNTER.
For when to other lands he strays,
The fool insults their banners,
Because _he_ doesn't like their ways,
Nor understand their manners.
Peripatetic _Podsnap_, he
Makes _Punch's_ nerves feel tinglish,
Who naught of good abroad can see
Because it is not "English."
Ah, Brother JONATHAN, old friend,
The Smorltork chitter-chatter
Some day, like Tammany, will end,
Meanwhile it doesn't matter.
The SMORLTORKS are a shallow set,
Cantankerous and cranky;
But _Punch_ takes not from them, "you bet,"
His notions of things Yankee!
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