Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

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Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated) Page 181

by Bierce, Ambrose


  From leveling this church again.

  Now in its doom, as so you’ve willed it,

  We acquiesce. But you’ll rebuild it.

  A BULLETIN.

  ”Lothario is very low,”

  So all the doctors tell.

  Nay, nay, not so — he will be, though,

  If ever he get well.

  FROM THE MINUTES.

  When, with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body

  Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples,

  The foot of Herculean Kilgore — statesman of surname suggestive

  Or carnage unspeakable! — lit like a missile prodigious

  Upon the Congressional door with a monstrous and mighty momentum,

  Causing that vain ineffective bar to political freedom

  To fly from its hinges, effacing the nasal excrescence of Dingley,

  That luckless one, decently veiling the ruin with ready bandanna,

  Lamented the loss of his eminence, sadly with sobs as follows:

  ”Ah, why was I ever elected to the halls of legislation,

  So soon to be shown the door with pitiless emphasis? Truly,

  I’ve leaned on a broken Reed, and the same has gone back on me meanly.

  Where now is my prominence, erstwhile in council conspicuous, patent?

  Alas, I did never before understand what I now see clearly,

  To wit, that Democracy tends to level all human distinctions!”

  His fate so untoward and sad the Pine-tree statesman, bewailing,

  Stood in the corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement

  Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him,

  Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking:

  ”O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?”

  WOMAN IN POLITICS.

  What, madam, run for School Director? You?

  And want my vote and influence? Well, well,

  That beats me! Gad! where are we drifting to?

  In all my life I never have heard tell

  Of such sublime presumption, and I smell

  A nigger in the fence! Excuse me, madam;

  We statesmen sometimes speak like the old Adam.

  But now you mention it — well, well, who knows?

  We might, that’s certain, give the sex a show.

  I have a cousin — teacher. I suppose

  If I stand in and you ‘re elected — no?

  You’ll make no bargains? That’s a pretty go!

  But understand that school administration

  Belongs to Politics, not Education.

  We’ll pass the teacher deal; but it were wise

  To understand each other at the start.

  You know my business — books and school supplies;

  You’d hardly, if elected, have the heart

  Some small advantage to deny me — part

  Of all my profits to be yours. What? Stealing?

  Please don’t express yourself with so much feeling.

  You pain me, truly. Now one question more.

  Suppose a fair young man should ask a place

  As teacher — would you (pardon) shut the door

  Of the Department in his handsome face

  Until — I know not how to put the case —

  Would you extort a kiss to pay your favor?

  Good Lord! you laugh? I thought the matter graver.

  Well, well, we can’t do business, I suspect:

  A woman has no head for useful tricks.

  My profitable offers you reject

  And will not promise anything to fix

  The opposition. That’s not politics.

  Good morning. Stay — I’m chaffing you, conceitedly.

  Madam, I mean to vote for you — repeatedly.

  TO AN ASPIRANT.

  What! you a Senator — you, Mike de Young?

  Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?

  Sir, if all Senators were such as you,

  Their hands so crimson and so slender, too, —

  (Shaped to the pocket for commercial work,

  For literary, fitted to the dirk) —

  So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers,

  The toga’s touch would give a man the shivers.

  A BALLAD OF PIKEVILLE.

  Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives,

  And the “Mescalero,” gifted with a hundred thousand lives,

  Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame —

  The assassinating wassail that has given him his name;

  Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen

  To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green,

  While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread

  With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head;

  Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun,

  And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run,

  Lived a colony of settlers — old Missouri was the State

  Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date.

  Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme

  Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream.

  The soil was naught but ashes, by the breezes driven free,

  And an acre and a quarter were required to sprout a pea.

  So agriculture languished, for the land would not produce,

  And for lack of water, whisky was the beverage in use —

  Costly whisky, hauled in wagons many a weary, weary day,

  Mostly needed by the drivers to sustain them on their way.

  Wicked whisky! King of Evils! Why, O, why did God create

  Such a curse and thrust it on us in our inoffensive state?

  Once a parson came among them, and a holy man was he;

  With his ailing stomach whisky wouldn’t anywise agree;

  So he knelt upon the mesa and he prayed with all his chin

  That the Lord would send them water or incline their hearts to gin.

  Scarcely was the prayer concluded ere an earthquake shook the land,

  And with copious effusion springs burst out on every hand!

  Merrily the waters gurgled, and the shock which gave them birth

  Fitly was by some declared a temperance movement of the earth.

  Astounded by the miracle, the people met that night

  To celebrate it properly by some religious rite;

  And ‘tis truthfully recorded that before the moon had sunk

  Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk.

  A half a standard gallon (says history) per head

  Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed.

  O, the glory of that country! O, the happy, happy folk.

  By the might of prayer delivered from Nature’s broken yoke!

  Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye,

  And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky!

  Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass,

  Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass.

  Pikeville (that’s the name they’ve given, in their wild, romantic way,

  To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say,

  Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop,

  To the head of population — and consumes it, every drop!

  A BUILDER.

  I saw the devil — he was working free:

  A customs-house he builded by the sea.

  ”Why do you this?” The devil raised his head;

  ”Churches and courts I’ve built enough,” he said.

  AN AUGURY.

  Upon my desk a single spray,

  With starry blossoms fraught.

  I write in many an idle way,

 
Thinking one serious thought.

  “O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear,

  And with a fine Greek grace.”

  Be still, O heart, that turns to share

  The sunshine of a face.

  “Have ye no messages — no brief,

  Still sign: ‘Despair’, or ‘Hope’?”

  A sudden stir of stem and leaf —

  A breath of heliotrope!

  LUSUS POLITICUS.

  Come in, old gentleman. How do you do?

  Delighted, I’m sure, that you’ve called.

  I’m a sociable sort of a chap and you

  Are a pleasant-appearing person, too,

  With a head agreeably bald.

  That’s right — sit down in the scuttle of coal

  And put up your feet in a chair.

  It is better to have them there:

  And I’ve always said that a hat of lead,

  Such as I see you wear,

  Was a better hat than a hat of glass.

  And your boots of brass

  Are a natural kind of boots, I swear.

  ”May you blow your nose on a paper of pins?”

  Why, certainly, man, why not?

  I rather expected you’d do it before,

  When I saw you poking it in at the door.

  It’s dev’lish hot —

  The weather, I mean. “You are twins”?

  Why, that was evident at the start,

  From the way that you paint your head

  In stripes of purple and red,

  With dots of yellow.

  That proves you a fellow

  With a love of legitimate art.

  ”You’ve bitten a snake and are feeling bad”?

  That’s very sad,

  But Longfellow’s words I beg to recall:

  Your lot is the common lot of all.

  ”Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze”?

  That, I fancy, is just as you please.

  Some think that way and others hold

  The opposite view;

  I never quite knew,

  For the matter o’ that,

  When everything’s been said —

  May I offer this mat

  If you will stand on your head?

  I suppose I look to be upside down

  From your present point of view.

  It’s a giddy old world, from king to clown,

  And a topsy-turvy, too.

  But, worthy and now uninverted old man,

  You’re built, at least, on a normal plan

  If ever a truth I spoke.

  Smoke?

  Your air and conversation

  Are a liberal education,

  And your clothes, including the metal hat

  And the brazen boots — what’s that?

  ”You never could stomach a Democrat

  Since General Jackson ran?

  You’re another sort, but you predict

  That your party’ll get consummately licked?”

  Good God! what a queer old man!

  BEREAVEMENT.

  A Countess (so they tell the tale)

  Who dwelt of old in Arno’s vale,

  Where ladies, even of high degree,

  Know more of love than of A.B.C,

  Came once with a prodigious bribe

  Unto the learned village scribe,

  That most discreet and honest man

  Who wrote for all the lover clan,

  Nor e’er a secret had betrayed —

  Save when inadequately paid.

  ”Write me,” she sobbed—”I pray thee do —

  A book about the Prince di Giu —

  A book of poetry in praise

  Of all his works and all his ways;

  The godlike grace of his address,

  His more than woman’s tenderness,

  His courage stern and lack of guile,

  The loves that wantoned in his smile.

  So great he was, so rich and kind,

  I’ll not within a fortnight find

  His equal as a lover. O,

  My God! I shall be drowned in woe!”

  “What! Prince di Giu has died!” exclaimed

  The honest man for letters famed,

  The while he pocketed her gold;

  ”Of what’? — if I may be so bold.”

  Fresh storms of tears the lady shed:

  ”I stabbed him fifty times,” she said.

  AN INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF NAPOLEON, AT WEST POINT.

  A famous conqueror, in battle brave,

  Who robbed the cradle to supply the grave.

  His reign laid quantities of human dust:

  He fell upon the just and the unjust.

  A PICKBRAIN.

  What! imitate me, friend? Suppose that you

  With agony and difficulty do

  What I do easily — what then? You’ve got

  A style I heartily wish I had not.

  If I from lack of sense and you from choice

  Grieve the judicious and the unwise rejoice,

  No equal censure our deserts will suit —

  We both are fools, but you’re an ape to boot!

  CONVALESCENT.

  ”By good men’s prayers see Grant restored!”

  Shouts Talmage, pious creature!

  Yes, God, by supplication bored

  From every droning preacher,

  Exclaimed: “So be it, tiresome crew —

  But I’ve a crow to pick with you.”

  THE NAVAL CONSTRUCTOR.

  He looked upon the ships as they

  All idly lay at anchor,

  Their sides with gorgeous workmen gay —

  The riveter and planker —

  Republicans and Democrats,

  Statesmen and politicians.

  He saw the swarm of prudent rats

  Swimming for land positions.

  He marked each “belted cruiser” fine,

  Her poddy life-belts floating

  In tether where the hungry brine

  Impinged upon her coating.

  He noted with a proud regard,

  As any of his class would,

  The poplar mast and poplar yard

  Above the hull of bass-wood.

  He saw the Eastlake frigate tall,

  With quaintly carven gable,

  Hip-roof and dormer-window — all

  With ivy formidable.

  In short, he saw our country’s hope

  In best of all conditions —

  Equipped, to the last spar and rope,

  By working politicians.

  He boarded then the noblest ship

  And from the harbor glided.

  ”Adieu, adieu!” fell from his lip.

  Verdict: “He suicided.”

  1881.

  DETECTED.

  In Congress once great Mowther shone,

  Debating weighty matters;

  Now into an asylum thrown,

  He vacuously chatters.

  If in that legislative hall

  His wisdom still he ‘d vented,

  It never had been known at all

  That Mowther was demented.

  BIMETALISM.

  Ben Bulger was a silver man,

  Though not a mine had he:

  He thought it were a noble plan

  To make the coinage free.

  “There hain’t for years been sech a time,”

  Said Ben to his bull pup,

  ”For biz — the country’s broke and I’m

  The hardest kind of up.

  “The paper says that that’s because

  The silver coins is sea’ce,

  And that the chaps which makes the laws

  Puts gold ones in their place.

  “They says them nations always be

  Most prosperatin’ where

  The wolume of the currency

  Ain’t so disgustin’ rare.”

  His dog, which hadn’t breakfasted,

  Dissented
from his view,

  And wished that he could swell, instead,

  The volume of cold stew.

  “Nobody’d put me up,” said Ben,

  ”With patriot galoots

  Which benefits their feller men

  By playin’ warious roots;

  “But havin’ all the tools about,

  I’m goin’ to commence

  A-turnin’ silver dollars out

  Wuth eighty-seven cents.

  “The feller takin’ ‘em can’t whine:

  (No more, likewise, can I):

  They’re better than the genooine,

  Which mostly satisfy.

  “It’s only makin’ coinage free,

  And mebby might augment

  The wolume of the currency

  A noomerous per cent.”

  I don’t quite see his error nor

  Malevolence prepense,

  But fifteen years they gave him for

  That technical offense.

  THE RICH TESTATOR.

  He lay on his bed and solemnly “signed,”

  Gasping — perhaps ‘twas a jest he meant:

  ”This of a sound and disposing mind

  Is the last ill-will and contestament.”

  TWO METHODS.

  To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed

  The Priest delivers masses for the dead,

  And even from estrays outside the fold

  Death for the masses he would not withhold.

  The Parson, loth alike to free or kill,

  Forsakes the souls already on the grill,

  And, God’s prerogative of mercy shamming,

  Spares living sinners for a harder damning.

  FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE

  Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks

  Are played by sentimental cranks!

 

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