You say,--"We 'd ha' scared 'em by growin' in peace, A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these"? Who is it dares say thet "our naytional eagle Wun't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal, Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter this slaughter, 'll bring back a bill ten times longer 'n she ough' to"? Wut 's your name? Come, I see ye, you up-country feller, You 've put me out severil times with your beller; Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder, Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder; He 's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is, He put all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses; Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it, Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it; Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes, Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it 's the corner Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner! In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages, An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions The holl of our civilized, free institutions; He writes fer thet rather unsafe print, the Courier, An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier; I 'll be ----, thet is, I mean I 'll be blest, Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; I shan't talk with _him_, my religion 's too fervent.-- Good mornin', my friends, I 'm your most humble servant.
[Into the question, whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall not here enter at large. The two faculties of speech and of speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses, Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven by (milk-and-) water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (_simulacra_, semblances) of speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens. Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments with hooks and eyes?