GAY, ESQ., EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD
[Curiosity may be said to be the quality which preeminently
distinguishes and segregates man from the lower animals. As we trace the
scale of animated nature downward, we find this faculty (as it may truly
he called) of the mind diminished in the savage, and wellnigh extinct
in the brute. The first object which civilized man proposes to himself I
take to be the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his neighbors.
_Nihil humanum a me alienum puto;_ I am curious about even John Smith.
The desire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, indeed, of the
same magnet) is that of communicating the unintelligence we have
carefully picked up.
Men in general may be divided into the inquisitive and the
communicative. To the first class belong Peeping Toms, eaves-droppers,
navel-contemplating Brahmins, metaphysicians, travellers, Empedocleses,
spies, the various societies for promoting Rhinothism, Columbuses,
Yankees, discoverers, and men of science, who present themselves to the
mind as so many marks of interrogation wandering up and down the world,
or sitting in studies and laboratories. The second class I should again
subdivide into four. In the first subdivision I would rank those who
have an itch to tell us about themselves,--as keepers of diaries,
insignificant persons generally, Montaignes, Horace Walpoles,
autobiographers, poets. The second includes those who are anxious to
impart information concerning other people,--as historians, barbers, and
such. To the third belong those who labor to give us intelligence about
nothing at all,--as novelists, political orators, the large majority of
authors, preachers, lecturers, and the like. In the fourth come those
who are communicative from motives of public benevolence,--as finders of
mares'-nests and bringers of ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls
without feathers embraces all these subdivisions in himself to a greater
or less degree, for none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a
chalk one, but straightway the whole barnyard shall know it by our
cackle or our cluck. _Omnibus hoc vitium est_. There are different
grades in all these classes. One will turn his telescope toward a
back-yard, another toward Uranus; one will tell you that he dined with
Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may
be considered as belonging to the first grand division, inasmuch as they
all seem equally desirous of discovering the mote in their neighbor's eye.
To one or another of these species every human being may safely be
referred. I think it beyond a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some
inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed
up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be
wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human.
I conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually
peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which,
sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts
fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no
means of conveying back to this world the scraps of news they have
picked up in that. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every
question, the great law of _give and take_ runs through all nature, and
if we see a hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read
in every face I meet a standing advertisement of information wanted in
regard to A.B., or that the friends of C.D. can hear something to his
disadvantage by application to such a one.
It was to gratify the two great passions of asking and answering that
epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this
usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds.
First, there are those which are not letters at all--as letters-patent,
letters dismissory, letters enclosing bills, letters of administration,
Pliny's letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords
Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St.
Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), letters from abroad,
from sons in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and letters
generally, which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are real
letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howell, Lamb, D.Y., the
first letters from children (printed in staggering capitals), Letters
from New York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for the sake
of the writer or the thing written. I have read also letters from Europe
by a gentleman named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which I
hope to see collected for the benefit of the curious. There are,
besides, letters addressed to posterity,--as epitaphs, for example,
written for their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately
become possessed of the names of several great conquerors and kings of
kings, hitherto unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable to
the student of the entirely dark ages. The letter of our Saviour to King
Abgarus, that which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the year of grace
755, that of the Virgin to the magistrates of Messina, that of the
Sanhedrim of Toledo to Annas and Caiaphas, A.D. 35, that of Galeazzo
Sforza's spirit to his brother Lodovico, that of St. Gregory
Thaumaturgus to the D----l, and that of this last-mentioned active
police-magistrate to a nun of Girgenti, I would place in a class by
themselves, as also the letters of candidates, concerning which I shall
dilate more fully in a note at the end of the following poem. At present
_sat prata biberunt_. Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are
all either square or oblong, to which general figures circular letters
and round-robins also conform themselves.--H.W.]
Deer Sir its gut to be the fashun now to rite letters to the candid 8s
and i wus chose at a publick Meetin in Jaalam to du wut wus nessary fur
that town. i writ to 271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. tha air called
candid 8s but I don't see nothin candid about 'em. this here 1 wich I
send wus thought satty's factory. I dunno as it's ushle to print
Poscrips, but as all the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus
best. times has gretly changed. Formaly to knock a man into a cocked hat
wus to use him up, but now it ony gives him a chance fur the cheef
madgustracy.--H.B.
Dear Sir,--You wish to know my notions
On sartin pints thet rile the land;
There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns
Ez bein' mum or underhand;
I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur
Thet blurts right out wut's in his head.
An' ef I've one pecooler feetur,
It is a nose thet wunt be led.
So, to begin at the beginnin'
An' come direcly to the pint, 10
I think the country's underpinnin'
Is some consid'ble out o' jint;
I aint agoin' to try your patience
By tellin' who done this or thet,
I don't make no insinooations,
I jest let on I smell a rat.
Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so,
But, ef the public think I'm wrong,
I wunt deny but wut I be so,--
An' fact, it don't smell very strong; 20
My mind's tu fair to lose its balance
An' say wich party hez most sense;
There may be folks o' greater talence
Thet can't set stiddier on the fence.
I'm an eclectic; ez to choosin'
'Twixt this an' thet, I'm plaguy lawth;
I leave a side thet looks like losin',
But (wile there's doubt) I stick to both;
I stan' upon the Constitution,
Ez preudunt statesman say, who've planned 30
A way to git the most profusion
O' chances ez to _ware_ they'll stand.
Ez fer the war, I go agin it,--
I mean to say I kind o' du,--
Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it,
The best way wuz to fight it thru';
Not but wut abstract war is horrid,
I sign to thet with all my heart,--
But civlyzation _doos_ git forrid 39
Sometimes upon a powder-cart.
About thet darned Proviso matter
I never hed a grain o' doubt.
Nor I aint one my sense to scatter
So 'st no one couldn't pick it out;
My love fer North an' South is equil,
So I'll jest answer plump an' frank,
No matter wut may be the sequil,--
Yes, Sir, I _am_ agin a Bank.
Ez to the answerin' o' questions,
I'm an off ox at bein' druv, 50
Though I ain't one thet ary test shuns
'll give our folks a helpin' shove;
Kind o' permiscoous I go it
Fer the holl country, an' the ground
I take, ez nigh ez I can show it,
Is pooty gen'ally all round.
I don't appruve o' givin' pledges;
You'd ough' to leave a feller free,
An' not go knockin' out the wedges
To ketch his fingers in the tree;
Pledges air awfle breachy cattle 61
Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out,--
Ez long 'z the people git their rattle,
Wut is there fer 'em to grout about?
Ez to the slaves, there's no confusion
In _my_ idees consarnin' them,--
_I_ think they air an Institution,
A sort of--yes, jest so,--ahem:
Do _I_ own any? Of my merit
On thet pint you yourself may jedge; 70
All is, I never drink no sperit,
Nor I haint never signed no pledge.
Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort;
I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory,
I'm jest a canderdate, in short;
Thet's fair an' square an' parpendicler
But, ef the Public cares a fig
To hev me an'thin' in particler,
Wy, I'm a kind o' peri-Wig. 80