BY HOMER WILBUR, A.M.
James Russell Lowell
Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair,
Together dwelt (no matter where),
To whom an Uncle Sam, or some one,
Had left a house and farm in common.
The two in principles and habits
Were different as rats from rabbits;
Stout Farmer North, with frugal care,
Laid up provision for his heir,
Not scorning with hard sun-browned hands
To scrape acquaintance with his lands;
Whatever thing he had to do
He did, and made it pay him, too;
He sold his waste stone by the pound,
His drains made water-wheels spin round,
His ice in summer-time he sold,
His wood brought profit when 'twas cold,
He dug and delved from morn till night,
Strove to make profit square with right,
Lived on his means, cut no great dash,
And paid his debts in honest cash.
On tother hand, his brother South
Lived very much from hand to mouth.
Played gentleman, nursed dainty hands,
Borrowed North's money on his lands,
And culled his morals and his graces
From cock-pits, bar-rooms, fights, and races;
His sole work in the farming line
Was keeping droves of long-legged swine,
Which brought great bothers and expenses
To North in looking after fences,
And, when they happened to break through,
Cost him both time and temper too,
For South insisted it was plain
He ought to drive them home again,
And North consented to the work
Because he loved to buy cheap pork.
Meanwhile, South's swine increasing fast;
His farm became too small at last;
So, having thought the matter over,
And feeling bound to live in clover
And never pay the clover's worth,
He said one day to Brother North:--
'Our families are both increasing,
And, though we labor without ceasing,
Our produce soon will be too scant
To keep our children out of want;
They who wish fortune to be lasting
Must be both prudent and forecasting;
We soon shall need more land; a lot
I know, that cheaply can be bo't;
You lend the cash, I'll buy the acres.
And we'll be equally partakers.'
Poor North, whose Anglo-Saxon blood
Gave him a hankering after mud,
Wavered a moment, then consented,
And, when the cash was paid, repented;
To make the new land worth a pin,
Thought he, it must be all fenced in,
For, if South's swine once get the run on 't
No kind of farming can be done on 't;
If that don't suit the other side,
'Tis best we instantly divide.'
But somehow South could ne'er incline
This way or that to run the line,
And always found some new pretence
'Gainst setting the division fence;
At last he said:--
'For peace's sake,
Liberal concessions I will make;
Though I believe, upon my soul,
I've a just title to the whole,
I'll make an offer which I call
Gen'rous,--we'll have no fence at all;
Then both of us, whene'er we choose,
Can take what part we want to use;
If you should chance to need it first,
Pick you the best, I'll take the worst.'
'Agreed!' cried North; thought he, This fall
With wheat and rye I'll sow it all;
In that way I shall get the start,
And South may whistle for his part.
So thought, so done, the field was sown,
And, winter haying come and gone,
Sly North walked blithely forth to spy,
The progress of his wheat and rye;
Heavens, what a sight! his brother's swine
Had asked themselves all out to dine;
Such grunting, munching, rooting, shoving,
The soil seemed all alive and moving,
As for his grain, such work they'd made on 't,
He couldn't spy a single blade on 't.
Off in a rage he rushed to South,
'My wheat and rye'--grief choked his mouth:
'Pray don't mind me,' said South, 'but plant
All of the new land that you want;'
'Yes, but your hogs,' cried North;
'The grain
Won't hurt them,' answered South again;
'But they destroy my crop;'
'No doubt;
'Tis fortunate you've found it out;
Misfortunes teach, and only they,
You must not sow it in their way;'
'Nay, you,' says North, 'must keep them out;'
'Did I create them with a snout?'
Asked South demurely; 'as agreed,
The land is open to your seed,
And would you fain prevent my pigs
From running there their harmless rigs?
God knows I view this compromise
With not the most approving eyes;
I gave up my unquestioned rights
For sake of quiet days and nights;
I offered then, you know 'tis true,
To cut the piece of land in two.'
'Then cut it now,' growls North;
'Abate
Your heat,' says South, 'tis now too late;
I offered you the rocky corner,
But you, of your own good the scorner,
Refused to take it: I am sorry;
No doubt you might have found a quarry,
Perhaps a gold-mine, for aught I know,
Containing heaps of native rhino;
You can't expect me to resign
My rights'--
'But where,' quoth North, 'are mine?'
'_Your_ rights,' says tother, 'well, that's funny,
_I_ bought the land'--
'_I_ paid the money;'
'That,' answered South, 'is from the point,
The ownership, you'll grant, is joint;
I'm sure my only hope and trust is
Not law so much as abstract justice,
Though, you remember, 'twas agreed
That so and so--consult the deed;
Objections now are out of date,
They might have answered once, but Fate
Quashes them at the point we've got to;
_Obsta principiis_ that's my motto.'
So saying, South began to whistle
And looked as obstinate as gristle,
While North went homeward, each brown paw
Clenched like a knot of natural law,
And all the while, in either ear,
Heard something clicking wondrous clear.
To turn now to other matters, there are two things upon which it should
seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in this place,--the Yankee
character and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character,
which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies
in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that
hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth,
belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful
pencil.
New England was not so much the colony of a mother country, as a Hagar
driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which came
hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They
came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon
hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea,
even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if
the Greek might boast his Thermopylæ, where three hundred men fell in
resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where
a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished,
winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible _storge_
that drew them back to the green island far away. These found no lotus
growing upon the surly shore, the taste of which could make them forget
their little native Ithaca; nor were they so wanting to themselves in
faith as to burn their ship, but could see the fair west-wind belly the
homeward sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible
Unknown.
As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress
themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud be
long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were
long a-healing, and an east-wind of hard times puts a new ache into
every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book,
pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger of the hard
schoolmistress, Necessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled
Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed
race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had
taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two hundred years'
influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of
idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients,
half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of
shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old
enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is
best as for what will _do_, with a clasp to his purse and a button to
his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, but
against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the world with no [Greek:
pou sto] but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A
strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World,
upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such
mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such
calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such
sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new _Græculus
esuriens_ will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades
as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at
all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book
first, and a salt-pan afterward. _In coelum, jusseris, ibit_,--or the
other way either,--it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet,
after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two
centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in
solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original
groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke
Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than
with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a
hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if
ever, there were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the
Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious
still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen.
To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an
abstract idea will do for Jonathan.
* * * * *
*** TO THE INDULGENT READER
My friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, having been seized with a dangerous fit
of illness, before this Introduction had passed through the press, and
being incapacitated for all literary exertion, sent to me his notes,
memoranda, &c., and requested me to fashion them into some shape more
fitting for the general eye. This, owing to the fragmentary and
disjointed state of his manuscripts, I have felt wholly unable to do;
yet being unwilling that the reader should be deprived of such parts of
his lucubrations as seemed more finished, and not well discerning how to
segregate these from the rest, I have concluded to send them all to the
press precisely as they are.