Why, bless you! there is Mike de Young, a man—
At least a—well, it doesn’t greatly matter;
He’s famous from the water-front to San
Juan Smith street as less good than you, though fatter.
He’s rich! Among the things he’s proved to own
Are half a million dollars and Frank Stone.
So rich is he that many persons swear
He ought as Senator to be elected.
He’s rich enough to want the earth and air,
Although not rich enough to be respected.
You say that’s nothing to the purpose. True,
I meant to sing about, not him, but you.
You’re hardly worth it, maybe: he who scorns
His opportunities of gain by mounting,
And then dismounting, other person’s corns
Discredits journalism. There’s no accounting
For tastes; no doubt you think yourself as good
As if in mail of black you proudly stood.
I do not think you so—the rich are best.
They’ve leisure, they explain, for moral culture.
(What fowl so meditative on the nest—
So introspective as the glutted vulture?)
“Our Mike” is noble, I’m persuaded—nay,
He’ll tell you so himself ten times a day.
He will slip in: I can’t at all prevent
His reasonless and seasonless intrusion.
I wish that, like Mo. Gunst, the wretch “had went.”
Come, Deacon, let us drink to his confusion.
On second thoughts, I can’t afford, I think—
No more can you—to buy befitting drink.
Ah, well, in all these long, contentious years
’Tis many an ill turn we’ve done each other.
You ne’er could altogether stay your sneers,
Nor I regard you as an elder brother.
You every way invited my dislike,
Excepting by comparison with Mike.
The cause of quarrel (now at end of war
The hatchet we’ll inter and marble-slab it)
Was plain to either adversary, for
’Twas very simple, though sufficient: Habit.
If there was aught behind I know not—that
Explains full twenty years of dog-and-cat.
Now, as you leave the field, let me be frank:
Excepting various errors of the noddle,
Such as made talk of “caving down the bank,”
And lately a bad flow of Sandlot twaddle,
And always a bat’s blindness to my worth,
Your record’s clean and laudable from birth.
Fitch, here’s my hand; my heart is in it, too.
(That organ’s somewhat out of shape, however,
From use in football.) Really, ’twould not do
Our long relation sullenly to sever.
Soon comes the silence. May we then be laid
Where Mike’s tall monument bestows its shade!
Great Joseph D. Redding—illustrious name!—
Considered a fish-horn the trumpet of Fame.
That goddess was angry, and what do you think?
Her trumpet she filled with a gallon of ink,
And all through the Press, with a devilish glee,
She sputtered and spattered the name of J. D.
Well, Towser (I’m thinking your name must be Towser),
You’re a decentish puppy as puppy dogs go,
For you never, I’m sure, could have dined upon trowser,
And your tail’s unimpeachably curled just so.
But, dear me! your name—if ’tis yours—is a “poser”:
Its meaning I cannot get anywise at,
When spoken correctly perhaps it is Toser,
And means one who toses. Max Muller, how’s that?
I ne’er was ingenious at all at divining
A word’s prehistorical, primitive state,
Or finding its root, like a mole, by consigning
Its bloom to the turnip-top’s sorrowful fate.
And, now that I think of it well, I’m no nearer
The riddle’s solution than ever—for how’s
My pretty invented word, “tose,” any clearer
In point of its signification than “towse”?
So, Towser (or Toser), I mean to rename you
In honor of some good and eminent man,
In the light and the heat of whose quickening fame you
May grow to an eminent dog if you can.
In sunshine like his you’ll not long be a croucher:
The Senate shall hear you—for that I will vouch.
Come here, sir. Stand up. I rechristen you Goucher.
But damn you! I’ll shoot you if ever you Gouch!
De Young (in Chicago the story is told)
“Took his life in his hand,” like a warrior bold,
And stood before Buckley—who thought him behind,
For Buckley, the man-eating monster is blind.
“Count fairly the ballots!” so rang the demand
Of the gallant De Young, with his life in his hand.
’Tis done, and the struggle is ended. No more
He havocs the battle-field, gilt with the gore
Of slain reputations. No more he defies
His “lying opponents” with deadlier lies.
His trumpet is hushed and his belt is unbound—
His enemies’ characters cumber the ground.
They bloat on the war-plain with ink all asoak,
The fortunate candidates perching to croak.
No more he will charge, with a daring divine,
His foes with corruption, his friends by the line.
The thunders are stilled of the horrid campaign,
De Young is triumphant, and never again
Will he need, with his life in his hand, to roar:
“Count fair or, by God, I will die on your floor!”
His life has been spared, for his sins to atone,
And the hand that he took it in washed with cologne.
“Yawp, yawp, yawp!
Under the moon and sun.
It’s aye the rabble,
And I to gabble,
And hey! for the tale that is never done.
“Chant, chant, chant!
To woo the reluctant vote.
I would I were dead
And my say were said
And my song were sung to its ultimate note.
“Stab, stab, stab!
Ah! the weapon between my teeth—
I’m sick of the flash of it;
See how the slash of it
Misses the foeman to mangle the sheath!
“Boom, boom, boom!
I’m beating the mammoth drum.
My nethermost tripes
I blow into the pipes—
It’s O for the honors that never come!”
’Twas the dolorous blab
Of a tramping “scab”—
’Twas the eloquent Swift
Of the marvelous gift—
The wild, weird, wonderful gift of gab!
Weep, weep, each loyal partisan,
For Buckley, king of hearts;
A most accomplished man; a man
Of parts—of foreign parts.
Long years he ruled with gentle sway,
Nor grew his glory dim;
And he would be with us to-day
If we were but with him.
Men wondered at his going off
In such a sudden way;
’Twas thought, as he had come to scoff
He would remain to prey.
Since he is gone we’re all agreed
That he is what men call
A crook: his very
