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 slender and so crimson 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!
Among the notables one day that came
To see the President was one whose name
Was known from Puerto Rico to Luzon,
Although it wasn’t Smith nor even John.
Renowned in field and council too, for he
Had tilled the soil and been a school trustee.
Occasionally, just to pass the time,
He worked at patriotism and scowled at crime;
Went up and down the land denouncing those
Who loved him little as the country’s foes;
Predicted famine when they scorned his story,
And for the ensuing harvest claimed the glory.
His name indeed was famous, but because
My memory’s weak I know not what it was.
The President he came that day to see
Was as illustrious in his way as he.
His name a household word—that is to say
Men damned him roundly to begin the day,
Deplored him in the fireside’s rosy light
And grunted disesteem throughout the night.
Not all men—some, the sons of pious mothers,
Prayed for him daily as upon him others.
Sleek, snug, self-righteous, cunning as a rat,
A fish in fervor and in faith a cat,
Obscure by nature, he had ne’er been great
If Fortune had not kicked him into state.
His name? Go ask Posterity, not me—
From words opprobrious my page is free.
So they were married—no I mean they met;
For aught I know they are in session yet,
There in the White House, for each swore the place
Belonged to him by God’s abounding grace.
But, O, may He take measures to prevent
If both at once they would be President.
Old Nick from his place of last resort
Came up and looked the world over.
He saw how the grass of the good was short
And the wicked lived in clover.
And he gravely said: “This is all, all wrong,
And never by me intended.
If to me the power ever belong
I shall have this thing amended.”
He looked so solemn and good and wise
As he made this observation
That the men who heard him believed their eyes
Instead of his reputation.
So they bruited the matter about, and each
Reported the words as nearly
As memory served—with additional speech
To bring out the meaning clearly.
The consequence was that none understood,
And the wildest rumors started
Of something intended to help the good
And injure the evil-hearted.
Then Robert Morrow was seen to smile
With a bright and lively joyance.
“A man,” said he, “that is free from guile
Will now be free from annoyance.
“The Featherstones doubtless will now increase
And multiply like the rabbits,
While jailers, deputy sheriffs, police,
And writers will form good habits.
“The widows more easily robbed will be,
And no juror will ever heed ’em,
But open his purse to my eloquent plea
For security, gain, or freedom.”
When Benson heard of the luck of the good
(He was eating his dinner) he muttered:
“It cannot help me, for ’tis understood
My bread is already buttered.
“My plats of surveys are all false, they say,
But that cannot greatly matter
To me, for I’ll tell the jurors that they
May lick, if they please, my platter.”
Someone (’tis hardly new) has oddly said
The color of a trumpet’s blare is red;
And Joseph Emmett thinks the crimson shame
On woman’s cheek a trumpet-note of fame.
The more the red storm rises round her nose—
The more her eyes averted seek her toes,
He fancies all the louder he can hear
The tube resounding in his spacious ear,
And, all his varied talents to exert,
Deepens his dullness to display his dirt.
And when the gallery’s indecent crowd,
And gentlemen below, with hisses loud,
In hot contention (these his art to crown,
And those his naked nastiness to drown)
Make such a din that cheeks erewhile aflame
Grow white and in their fear forget their shame,
With impudence imperial, sublime,
Unmoved, the patient actor bides his time,
Till storm and counter-storm are both allayed,
Like donkeys, each by t’other one outbrayed.
When all the place is silent as a mouse
One slow, suggestive gesture clears the house!
To him in whom the love of Nature has
Imperfectly supplanted the desire
And dread necessity of food, your shore,
Fair Oakland, is a terror. Over all
Your sunny level, from Tamaletown
To where the Pestuary’s fragrant slime,
With dead dogs studded, bears its azure fleet,
Broods the still menace of starvation. Bones
Of men and women bleach along the ways
And pampered vultures sleep upon the trees.
It is a land of death, and Famine there
Holds sovereignty; though some there be her sway
Who challenge, and intrenched in larders live,
Drawing their sustentation from abroad.
But woe to him, the stranger! He shall die
As die the early righteous in the bud
And promise of their prime. He, venturesome
To penetrate the wilds rectangular
Of grass-grown ways luxuriant of blooms,
Frequented of the bee and of the blithe,
Bold squirrel, strays with heedless feet afar
From human habitation and is lost
In mid-Broadway. There hunger seizes him,
And (careless man! deeming God’s providence
Extends so far) he has not wherewithal
To bate its urgency. Then, lo! appears
A restaurant—mealery—a place
Where poison battles famine, and the two,
Like fish-hawks warring in the upper sky
For that which one has taken from the deep,
Manage between them to dispatch the prey.
He enters and leaves hope behind. There ends
His history. Anon his bones, clean-picked
By buzzards (with the bones himself had picked,
Incautious) line the highway. O, my friends,
Of all felonious and deadlywise
Devices of the Enemy of Souls,
Planted along the ways of life to snare
Man’s mortal and immortal part alike,
The Oakland restaurant is chief. It lives
That man may die. It flourishes that life
May wither. Its foundation stones repose
On human hearts and hopes. I’ve seen in it
Crabs stewed in milk and salad offered up
With dressing so unholily compound
That it included flour and sugar! Yea,
I’ve eaten dog there!—dog, as I’m a man,
Dog seethed in sewage of the town! No more—
Thy hand, Dyspepsia, assumes the pen
And scrawls a tortured “Finis” on the
