I talked about the Heathen Chinee; I told him it seemed jest about as impossible to git a stun to keep company with a turnip, and make it its bride as to git a Chinee to fall in love with our institutions and foller ’em; and after a man had tried to git water and oil to mix in a friendly and sociable way—after he has sot and stirred ’em, and sweat over ’em for weeks and weeks, I don’t know as he would be to blame to empty the basin out for good; but then when I’d think again, I’d know it was cruel and awful to turn anybody out doors, (as it were) especially a heathen. And I knew I never could have the heart to do it, never in the world. So says I, “I cannot advise the Nation what to do. It must try to git along in this thing, without my tellin’ it what to do; it must think it over and do the very best it can.”
But on the warlike fightin’ question, I come out strong; I knew jest what advice to give the Nation, and I give it freely without money, and without price.
Says I, “I should think the Nations would all be perfectly ashamed of themselves to git together to show off their civilization and progress, when they hold on to that most barbarious of all barbarism, that ever come from Barbery. The most cruel and awful and the most simple too; why,” says I, “you’d whip a lot of school childern that would go to settlin’ their quarrels with their jack knives; you’d make ’em leave it out to their teacher, or the trustees, or somebody; you’d spank ’em till their nose bled if they didn’t, and,” says I, “childern ort to grow wiser as they grow older instead of foolisher; it haint a mite handsomer in grown folks than it is in childern.”
Says I, “Think how those bloody warfares are powerful for all sorts of evils and crimes; how they turn human beins into wild beasts of prey; think how humanity, and mercy, and purity and all goodness are trod down under the feet of the great armys; and how the more ghastly army of pestilence, and disease, and crime, and want, foller on after them—a phantom host shadderin’ the land for years, mightier for evil than the army they foller. Why Ulysses, I couldn’t begin to tell all the horrers and evils of war, not if I should stand here and talk to you till the year 1900; for it can’t be told not by mortal tongue. It is a language writ in broken hearts, and despair, and want, and agony, and madness, and crime, and death, and it takes them to read it.”