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- Stripes the craven _white_ of the monarchical Bourbons, the beggars? And
is such a man--I put it to your conscience--the sort of man to take
place with the law-makers of a people, the chosen people, the
advance-guard of progress, a friendly people, the Levite of the nations,
to whose custody Jehovah has entrusted the sacred ark of human freedom?
(Cries of “No, No,” and riotous applause.)
‘Thou laughest at this, Major, and, after laughing, pooh-poohest it:
“Bless you, I divine who it was said all that. But how? Why, much as a
blind musician infers who the unseen fiddler is by the twang of his
fiddle. It was Colonel Bunkum--Colonel Josiah Bunkum. And, of course, he
must have declaimed it at some political meeting--yes, I think I
remember reading some report of it--during the canvas, when my insistent
friends ran me for the legislature. Incidentally, I became acquainted
with Colonel Bunkum in Virginia, now more than five-and-twenty years
ago. A sunburnt whiskerando he was, whiskers bristling like a thorn
hedge; valiant, indeed, but of a contorted sort of valour, quite at odds
with the magnanimities and martial amenities. Ay, brave enough, you
understand, but no Chevalier Bayard. Less mature, too, in mind than in
muscle. Rash in opinion, very rash, headlong. Not a man of broad
judicial temper, sir, nor replete with the sapient humour and wise
patriarchal quality of our good old Father Abraham. You shall judge,
sir. Quoting Scripture, ‘My people perish through ignorance,’ and
applying it to the South, and chafing under McClellan’s Fabian tactics,
he was forthwith marching from the Potomac to the Gulf with a
wagon-train of Webster’s Spelling-Books, backed by another train of
heavy artillery. Shot and shell and spelling-books were to be
distributed broadcast and gratis, a sort of Mahommed, sir, of the
Malthusian sort. Strange, how the coolest valour may go along with a hot
brain-pan. Well, well, robust as ever, the colonel is now a
distinguished officer in the Grand Army; and finding that I, a
brother-veteran, refrain from joining it, and knowing naught of those
scruples, patriotic scruples, sir, which sway me; and, unfortunately,
without the intuition that might divine them, why, being more of a hero
than a philosopher, it puzzles him, it irritates him--he can’t help it,
it’s all natural enough--and so, dear me, for something tangible to bite
at very conscientiously, doubtless he snaps at my poor little ribbon
here. The good God enlighten and redeem him!”
‘That is charity, Major, Christian charity with a vengeance. But some of
us ere now have thought that by such charitable construings (or, are
they indolently stoical ones?) of words or actions not charitable, thy
failing to take the trouble to resent them, however absurd they may be,
and vindicate thyself, thou hast--and more than once or twice--been
something of a loser.’
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THE CINCINNATI
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