Black Beetles in Amber
Page 14
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!"