AN AMERICAN COCK-TALE
Professor Luther Cranmer Bangs
Has travelled in Europe more than a year,
And no one need ever be troubled with pangs
At telling him aught which he thought was severe;
For there’s ne’er a Yankee of any size,
No matter how sharply he chaffs or slangs,
That can boast he ever has taken a rise
On Professor Luther Cranmer Bangs.
He was the man whom Dr. Snayle
Read a lecture to on a morning call—
Read it clear through from bill to tail;
And Bangs like Old Piety bore it all.
Said Snayle, when the sheets were all up-read,
“I’m a-going with this to Boston, you know”—
“I’m glad to hear it,” his listener said:
“I always did hate those Bostonians so!”
Well, last week on a City Atlas ’bus
The Professor and I went riding down,
While the driver politely gave to us
Opinions on things about the town.
And finding my friend was “prone to receive,”
And came from the Western land afar,
He told him just what one ought to believe
In politics, piety, love, and war.
Then glancing at Bangs, who sat to leeward,
Looking as mild as cambric tea,
He said: “I once ’ad—but I soon got cured
Of—a wish to go to Amerikee.
I was tired of always a-drivin’ these cusses,
And so I thought I would like to range”——
“You were right,” said Bangs. “In our Yankee ’busses
It’s the driver who takes (and keeps) the change!”
Sharp glanced the driver at Bangs; then said,
“What scared me of goin’ was this, d’ye see,—
I’d a friend in New York, whose letters I read;
And he wrote: In the whole of your country,
He ’ad looked the biggest graveyards through,
Looked ’em through with uncommon keer,
But never ’ad come to a single view
Of a cove[[10]] as wos aged fifty year.
“And as this is the case in hevery State,
I think there’s nothink on hearth for cure’n
A chap hof a fancy to hemigrate
Like readin’ of them graveyards of yourn.
So I thought I’d rather perlong my breath,
Tho’ sometimes here a fellow they hangs”——
“You are right, my friend. Choose your own way of death,
I go in for that,” said Professor Bangs.
“But I see you have not understood
Why no aged person is ever found
Among us. We only want young blood
On our driving, thriving, Yankee ground.
Youth alone has the power to go it;
Old men are a drag on putting it through,
So we kill them off—and our tombstones show it—
Before they arrive at forty-two.”
Here the driver gave a long cher—rup!
And gazed at the Yankee, dark and wan,
As if he had woke the wrong passenger up
While calmly Professor Bangs went on:
“In walking up and down Broadway,
Large mourning sign-boards at times appear
With this inscription in letters grey—
‘Elderly persons extinguished here.’
“And they put in your hand a pamphlet small,
Adapted to people of different stations,
Which cites the law, and exhorts them all
To dismiss in peace their old relations.
‘Why let them linger in a vale,’
It states, ‘where often colds they catch?
Send them to us, and we’ll end the tale
With politeness, humanity, and dispatch.’
“ ‘N.B.—For those who would die by the trigger
We’ve a merciful man who’s a practised shot,
With an elegant room, and a careful nigger
To lay them genteelly out on the spot.
Our principal has a chemist of fame,
Whom he exclusively employs on
Those who set their checks on a different game
And like to pass to heaven by poison.’
“ ’Tis thus the ladies generally choose it;
They love to die without pain or pangs
By a nice little globule—who could refuse it?
None but a man,” said Professor Bangs.
“A saw buck extra they always charge
For the stylish mode of extinguishing breath.
A saw buck’s ten dollars. It’s rather large,
But then it ensures you a cocktail death.”
“Vot may that be?” said the driver, meekly,
In the tone of a greatly altered man.
I observed that he seemed to be growing weakly
Since the Professor his story began.
“A cocktail’s a tipple—America vaunts of it—
So flavoured, so foamy, so spiced, and whirled,
That he who can get as much as he wants of it
Very soon drinks himself out of the world.
“ ’Tis said in the sky—right over Paris,
Where the American heaven is found,
Where everything brick-like and fast and rare is—
The cocks with tumblers for tails run round.
They cut to the bar for all things thinkable,—
All that is nice is a gratis boon,—
Then they come back with your favourite drinkable
And their sickle-feather’s a silver spoon!
“But he who invented the cocktail brew is
The man before you. Thus came the hint:
I had once been kissing a pretty Jewess,
Who just before had been nibbling mint;
And in order to recall the taste
Which I found in pressing her luscious two lips,
I mingled brandy and mint, in haste,
With sugar and ice—and thus made Juleps.
“The first step was, therefore, the julep perfected,
Which gives us a menthal spirit of wine;
And finding myself thereby respected,
I sought to make bitter and sweet combine.
So I took of bitters aromatic
(I prefer the tincture of bark myself,
With orange flavoured, but if you lack it,
Try any kind on the bar-room shelf).
“And I fixed them with sugar, and ice, and spirits,
In a silver tumbler, lightning-quick, sir,
Which I shook till all their several merits
Were combined in one subtle and strange elixir.
Then I passed it through a silver sieve
Kept carefully free from spot or rust;
And the final jimglorious touch to give,
I threw in a sprinkle of nutmeg-dust.
“And I am told by the spirit-rappers
That in the American Paris-heaven,
Though they’ve fancy drinks which are total snappers,
There’s nothing better than mine are given.
So they die in New York without any pangs,
For they know in the next world, to requite ’em,
They’ll sit over Paris,” said Mr. Bangs,
“A-drinking cocktails ad infinitum.”
Here we got down, and the driver said,
“Vell, you’re of the kind that will allers bang ’em!”
And turning our mocassins homeward, we sped
To that great American wigwam, the Langham.
Said Bangs, “O’er my eyes there is drawn no wool.
That man has no heart who would tell you a mock tale;
But story for story I told to the Bull,
What I call a real American cocktail.”
| [10] | Cove, a word erroneously supposed to be slang. It is derived from the Gypsy covo or covi, meaning that—that fellow, that thing. |
JUDGE WYMAN
a rural yankee legend
Long ago, in the State of Maine,
There lived a Judge—a good old soul,
Rather well up in “genial vein,”
And not by any means “down on” the bowl.
N.B.—By “bowl” I mean the “cup,”
And by “cup”—N.B.—I mean a glass,
Since neither bowls nor cups go up
At present when we our liquor pass.
(Although I recall—
’Tis three years this Fall—
When travelling in the wilderness,
And things were all in an awful mess,
And our crockery, with a horrible crash,
Had gone its way to eternal smash)
(It came, as the driver allowed, from racin’),
We drank champagne from a tin wash-basin.
Excuse the digression—non est crimen—
And return to our Judge, whose name was Wyman.
The Judge oft drank in a hostelrie
Kept by a man whose name was Sterret,
Where he met with jolly company,
But where the whisky was void of merit.
The real Minié rifle brand,
That at forty rods kills out of hand.
Well, it came to pass that one night the Judge
At Sterret’s, after a long, hot day,
Got so tight that he couldn’t budge,
And found himself “well over the bay,”
With a “snake in his boot” and one in his hat,
Like a biled owl, or a monkey horned,
Tangle-legged, hawk-eyed, on a bat,
Peepy, skewered, and slewed, and corned.
Couldn’t tell a skunk from a pint of Cologne,
Couldn’t see the difference ’tween fips and cents;
And when he attempted to walk alone,
Simply made a Virginia fence;
Till liquor yielded at last to sleep,
And he sank into Dream River—four miles deep.
Sanctus Ivus fuit Brito, advocatus sed non latro.
“Saint Ives the Briton first took a brief,
For though a lawyer he wasn’t a thief.”
This is what the story declares,
Which says he listens to lawyers’ prayers.
Likely enough! perhaps he may—
Whenever a lawyer tries to pray!
But another legend, old and quaint,
Assigns them a different kind of saint,
With a singular foot and peculiar hue,
Whose breath is tinged with a beautiful blue;
And this was rather the saint, I think,
Who inspired the young lawyers, twenty-four,
Who helped Judge Wyman to stow his drink,
And made them rejoice to hear him snore.
Who, save the devil, would not have wept
To see these graceless legal loons
Tricking the good old Judge as he slept,
And filling his pockets with Sterret’s spoons?
With silver spoons; likewise for butter
A handsome ten-dollar silver knife;
Then put Judge Wyman on a shutter,
And carried him home to his loving wife.
If any ladies read these rhymes,
Which in Edgar A. Poetry are called “runes,”
They may just imagine what sort of times
Mrs. Wyman had when she found the spoons!
The Judge’s grief was full of merit,
And his lady wasn’t inclined to flout it;
But she quietly took the spoons to Sterret,
And nothing more was said about it.
A month went by, and Fama, the wench!
Had not spread a whisper to urge remorse,
And Judge Wyman sat on the legal bench,
Trying a fellow for stealing a horse.
The evidence was all due north.
It froze the prisoner every minute,
Till Judge Wyman called the culprit forth,
And asked what “he had to say agin it?”
The prisoner looked at the planks of pine
Of the little rural court-house ceiling,
At all the jury in a line,
Then answered, his only small card dealing,
“Judge, I hev lots of honesty,
But when I’m drunk I can’t control it;
And as for this ’ere hoss—d’ye see?—
I was drunk as blazes when I stole it.”
Answered the Judge, “If this Court were a dunce,
She would say, in law that is no excuse;
For the Court held that opinion once,
But of late her connection’s been gettin’ loose.
One may be certain on law to-day,
And find himself to-morrow dumb.—
“But answer me one thing truly, and say
Where’bouts it was you got your rum?”
“I drank because I was invited,
And got my rum at Sterret’s, d’ye see?”
“Mr. Sheriff,” cried the Judge, excited,
“This instant set that poor man free!
The liquor that Sterret sells, by thunder!
Would make a man do anything,
And some time or other, I shouldn’t wonder
If it made a saint on the gallows swing;
It will run a man to perdition quicker
Than it takes a fiddler to reel off tunes;
Why, this Court herself once got drunk on that liquor,
And stole the whole of old Sterret’s spoons!”