Black Beetles in Amber

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by Ambrose Bierce


  As folly, fame or famine smartly urges?

  Admonished by the stimulating goad,

  How gaily, lo! the spavined crow-bait prances—

  Its cart before it—eager to unload

  The dead-dog sentiments and swill-tub fancies.

  Gravely the sweating scavenger pulls out

  The tail-board of his curst imagination,

  Shoots all his rascal rubbish, and, no doubt,

  Thanks Fortune for so good a dumping-station.

  To improve your property, the vile cascade

  Your thrift invites—to make a higher level.

  In vain: with tons of garbage overlaid,

  Your baseless bog sinks slowly to the devil.

  "Rubbish may be shot here"—familiar sign!

  I seem to see it in your every column.

  You have your wishes, but if I had mine

  'Twould to your editor mean something solemn.

  A QUESTION OF ELIGIBILITY

  It was a bruised and battered chap

  The victim of some dire mishap,

  Who sat upon a rock and spent

  His breath in this ungay lament:

  "Some wars—I've frequent heard of such—

  Has beat the everlastin' Dutch!

  But never fight was fit by man

  To equal this which has began

  In our (I'm in it, if you please)

  Academy of Sciences.

  For there is various gents belong

  To it which go persistent wrong,

  And loving the debates' delight

  Calls one another names at sight.

  Their disposition, too, accords

  With fighting like they all was lords!

  Sech impulses should be withstood:

  'Tis scientific to be good.

  "'Twas one of them, one night last week,

  Rose up his figure for to speak:

  'Please, Mr. Chair, I'm holding here

  A resolution which, I fear,

  Some ancient fossils that has bust

  Their cases and shook off their dust

  To sit as Members here will find

  Unpleasant, not to say unkind.'

  And then he read it every word,

  And silence fell on all which heard.

  That resolution, wild and strange,

  Proposed a fundamental change,

  Which was that idiots no more

  Could join us as they had before!

  "No sooner was he seated than

  The members rose up, to a man.

  Each chap was primed with a reply

  And tried to snatch the Chairman's eye.

  They stomped and shook their fists in air,

  And, O, what words was uttered there!

  "The Chair was silent, but at last

  He hove up his proportions vast

  And stilled them tumults with a look

  By which the undauntedest was shook.

  He smiled sarcastical and said:

  'If Argus was the Chair, instead

  Of me, he'd lack enough of eyes

  Each orator to recognize!

  And since, denied a hearing, you

  Might maybe undertake to do

  Each other harm before you cease,

  I've took some steps to keep the peace:

  I've ordered out—alas, alas,

  That Science e'er to such a pass

  Should come!—I've ordered out—the gas!'

  "O if a tongue or pen of fire

  Was mine I could not tell entire

  What the ensuin' actions was.

  When swollered up in darkness' jaws

  We fit and fit and fit and fit,

  And everything we felt we hit!

  We gouged, we scratched and we pulled hair,

  And O, what words was uttered there!

  And when at last the day dawn came

  Three hundred Scientists was lame;

  Two hundred others couldn't stand,

  They'd been so careless handled, and

  One thousand at the very least

  Was spread upon the floor deceased!

  'Twere easy to exaggerate,

  But lies is things I mortal hate.

  "Such, friends, is the disaster sad

  Which has befel the Cal. Acad.

  And now the question is of more

  Importance than it was before:

  Shall vacancies among us be

  To idiots threw open free?"

  FLEET STROTHER

  What! you were born, you animated doll,

  Within the shadow of the Capitol?

  'Twas always thought (and Bancroft so assures

  His trusting readers) it was reared in yours.

  CALIFORNIAN SUMMER PICTURES

  THE FOOT-HILL RESORT

  Assembled in the parlor

  Of the place of last resort,

  The smiler and the snarler

  And the guests of every sort—

  The elocution chap

  With rhetoric on tap;

  The mimic and the funny dog;

  The social sponge; the money-hog;

  Vulgarian and dude;

  And the prude;

  The adiposing dame

  With pimply face aflame;

  The kitten-playful virgin—

  Vergin' on to fifty years;

  The solemn-looking sturgeon

  Of a firm of auctioneers;

  The widower flirtatious;

  The widow all too gracious;

  The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.

  One assassin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

  AT ANCHOR

  The soft asphaltum in the sun;

  Betrays a tendency to run;

  Whereas the dog that takes his way

  Across its course concludes to stay.

  THE IN-COMING CLIMATE

  Now o' nights the ocean breeze

  Makes the patient flinch,

  For that zephyr bears a sneeze

  In every cubic inch.

  Lo! the lively population

  Chorusing in sternutation

  A catarrhal acclamation!

  A LONG-FELT WANT

  Dimly apparent, through the gloom

  Of Market-street's opaque simoom,

  A queue of people, parti-sexed,

  Awaiting the command of "Next!"

  A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:

  "Teeth dusted nice—five cents a shine."

  TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

  Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;

  A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;

  A wagon moving in a "cloud by day."

  Two city sportsmen with a dove between,

  Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—

  A solitary dove, the only dove

  In twenty counties, and it sick, or else

  It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,

  With thunder simultaneous and loud;

  Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!

  And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—

  The worthy local coroner is he,

  Renowned all thereabout, and popular

  With many a remain. All tenderly

  Compiling in a game-bag the débris,

  He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.

  The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,

  Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,

  To die of age in some far foreign land.

  SLANDER

  FITCH:

  "All vices you've exhausted, friend;

  So all the papers say."

  PICKERING:

  "Ah, what vile calumnies are penned!—

  'Tis just the other way."

  JAMES L. FLOOD

  As oft it happens in the youth of day

  That mists obscure the sun's imperfect ray,

  Who, as he's mounting to the dome's extreme,

 
Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam,

  So you the vapors that begirt your birth

  Consumed, and manifested all your worth.

  But still one early vice obstructs the light

  And sullies all the visible and bright

  Display of mind and character. You write.

  FOUR CANDIDATES FOR SENATOR

  To flatter your way to the goad of your hope,

  O plausible Mr. Perkins,

  You'll need ten tons of the softest soap

  And butter a thousand firkins.

  The soap you could put to a better use

  In washing your hands of ambition

  Ere the butter's used for cooking your goose

  To a beautiful brown condition.

  * * * * *

  "The Railroad can't run Stanford." That is so—

  The tail can't curl the pig; but then, you know,

  Inside the vegetable-garden's pale

  The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail.

  * * * * *

  When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say:

  "Right—left!" It is fair to infer

  The right will get left, nor polar the day

  When he makes that thing to occur.

  Not so, not so, 'tis a joke, that cry—

  Foolish and dull and small:

  He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply

  He's a drill-Sargent, that is all.

  * * * * *

  Gods! what a sight! Astride McClure's broad back

  Estee jogs round the Senatorial track,

  The crowd all undecided, as they pass,

  Whether to cheer the man or cheer the ass.

  They stop: the man to lower his feet is seen

  And the tired beast, withdrawing from between,

  Mounts, as they start again, the biped's neck,

  And scarce the crowd can say which one's on deck.

  A GROWLER

  Judge Shafter, you're an aged man, I know,

  And learned too, I doubt not, in the law;

  And a head white with many a winter's snow

  (I wish, however that your heart would thaw)

  Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw

  That's always wagging with a word malign,

  Nagging and scolding every one in sight

  As harshly as a jaybird in a pine,

  And with as little sense of wrong and right

  As animates that irritable creature,

  Is not a very venerable feature.

  You damn all witnesses, all jurors too

  (And swear at the attorneys, I suppose,

  But that's commendable) "till all is blue";

  And what it's all about, the good Lord knows,

  Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows

  Your wrath for that—as dogs the louder howl

  With only moonshine to incite their rage,

  And bears with more ferocious menace growl,

  Even when their food is flung into the cage.

  Reform, your Honor, and forbear to curse us.

  Lest all men, hearing you, cry: "Ecce ursus!"

  AD MOODIUM

  Tut! Moody, do not try to show

  To gentlemen and ladies

  That if they have not "Faith," they'll go

  Headlong to Hades.

  Faith is belief; and how can I

  Have that by being willing?

  This dime I cannot, though I try,

  Believe a shilling.

  Perhaps you can. If so, pray do—

  Believe you own it, also.

  But what seems evidence to you

  I may not call so.

  Heaven knows I'd like the Faith to think

  This little vessel's contents

  Are liquid gold. I see 'tis ink

  For writing nonsense.

  Minds prone to Faith, however, may

  Come now and then to sorrow:

  They put their trust in truth to-day,

  In lies to-morrow.

  No doubt the happiness is great

  To think as one would wish to;

  But not to swallow every bait,

  As certain fish do.

  To think a snake a cord, I hope,

  Would bolden and delight me;

  But some day I might think a rope

  Would chase and bite me.

  "Curst Reason! Faith forever blest!"

  You're crying all the season.

  Well, who decides that Faith is best?

  Why, Mr. Reason.

  He's right or wrong; he answers you

  According to your folly,

  And says what you have taught him to,

  Like any polly.

  AN EPITAPH

  Hangman's hands laid in this tomb an

  Imp of Satan's getting, whom an

  Ancient legend says that woman

  Never bore—he owed his birth

  To Sin herself. From Hell to Earth

  She brought the brat in secret state

  And laid him at the Golden gate,

  And they named him Henry Vrooman.

  While with mortals here he stayed,

  His father frequently he played.

  Raised his birth-place and in other

  Playful ways begot his mother.

  A SPADE

  [The spade that was used to turn the first sod in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad is to be exhibited at the New Orleans Exposition.

  Press Telegram

  Precursor of our woes, historic spade,

  What dismal records burn upon thy blade!

  On thee I see the maculating stains

  Of passengers' commingled blood and brains.

  In this red rust a widow's curse appears,

  And here an orphan tarnished thee with tears.

  Upon thy handle sanguinary bands

  Reveal the clutching of thine owner's hands

  When first he wielded thee with vigor brave

  To cut a sod and dig a people's grave—

  (For they who are debauched are dead and ought,

  In God's name, to be hid from sight and thought.)

  Within thee, as within a magic glass,

  I seem to see a foul procession pass—

  Judges with ermine dragging in the mud

  And spotted here and there with guiltless blood;

  Gold-greedy legislators jingling bribes;

  Kept editors and sycophantic scribes;

  Liars in swarms and plunderers in tribes;

  They fade away before the night's advance,

  And fancy figures thee a devil's lance

  Gleaming portentous through the misty shade,

  While ghosts of murdered virtues shriek about my blade!

  THE VAN NESSIAD

  From end to end, thine avenue, Van Ness,

  Rang with the cries of battle and distress!

  Brave lungs were thundering with dreadful sound

  And perspiration smoked along the ground!

  Sing, heavenly muse, to ears of mortal clay,

  The meaning, cause and finish of the fray.

  Great Porter Ashe (invoking first the gods,

  Who signed their favor with assenting nods

  That snapped off half their heads—their necks grown dry

  Since last the nectar cup went circling by)

  Resolved to build a stable on his lot,

  His neighbors fiercely swearing he should not.

  Said he: "I build that stable!" "No, you don't,"

  Said they. "I can!" "You can't!" "I will!" "You won't!"

  "By heaven!" he swore; "not only will I build,

  But purchase donkeys till the place is filled!"

  "Needless expense," they sneered in tones of ice—

  "The owner's self, if lodged there, would suffice."

  For three long months the awful war they waged:

  With women, women, men with men engaged,

  While roaring babes and sh
rilling poodles raged!

  Jove, from Olympus, where he still maintains

  His ancient session (with rheumatic pains

  Touched by his long exposure) marked the strife,

  Interminable but by loss of life;

  For malediction soon exhausts the breath—

  If not, old age itself is certain death.

  Lo! he holds high in heaven the fatal beam;

  A golden pan depends from each, extreme;

  This feels of Porter's fate the downward stress,

  That bears the destiny of all Van Ness.

  Alas! the rusted scales, their life all gone,

  Deliver judgment neither pro nor con:

  The dooms hang level and the war goes on.

  With a divine, contemptuous disesteem

  Jove dropped the pans and kicked, himself, the beam:

  Then, to decide the strife, with ready wit,

  The nickel that he did not care for it

  Twirled absently, remarking: "See it spin:

  Head, Porter loses; tail, the others win."

  The conscious nickel, charged with doom, spun round,

  Portentously and made a ringing sound,

  Then, staggering beneath its load of fate,

  Sank rattling, died at last and lay in state.

  Jove scanned the disk and then, as is his wont,

  Raised his considering orbs, exclaiming: "Front!"

  With leisurely alacrity approached

  The herald god, to whom his mind he broached:

  "In San Francisco two belligerent Powers,

  Such as contended round great Ilion's towers,

  Fight for a stable, though in either class

  There's not a horse, and but a single ass.

  Achilles Ashe, with formidable jaw

  Assails a Trojan band with fierce hee-haw,

  Firing the night with brilliant curses. They

  With dark vituperation gloom the day.

  Fate, against which nor gods nor men compete,

  Decrees their victory and his defeat.

  With haste, good Mercury, betake thee hence

  And salivate him till he has no sense!"

 

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