[From the New York Times, of 1855.]
Stephen H. Branch on Worms,—The Vermicular Theory of Greatness.—Subdued Sea-Serpents—Alligators Outdone—Look out for a Rise in the price of Vermifuges.
To the Editor of the New York Daily Times:
Some men donate or construct public and private institutions for the public applause while living, while others write the sunny side of their lives from motives of fame and accumulation. I shall leave both sides of my career for the historian after I have departed for the spirit land.
Since my return from Europe, with the Brandon Register, with little Georgy Matsell recorded therein, (as having been baptised and received into the Church in 1811, which corresponds with his own oath before the Police Committee, that he was born in 1811—stick a pin here,)—I have been violently assailed by journals in the Matsell interest, published on the Five Points, who attack me for sins committed while I had a superabundance of mischievous worms in youth and early manhood, and while I was scattering wild oats rather profusely over my father’s field.
No man lives who would not gladly efface every oat he sowed during the fervors and exhilerations of boyhood and early manhood. But the deliberate perjury of full-grown manhood can only be effaced through long years of retired and tearful contrition. By unceasing supplication, the wilderness may ultimately hide from scorn the cool and premeditated perjurer; but no man exists who would not blot from the living and eternal records whole rows of wild oat hillocks; and no infant who has not premature teeth, to bite and snarl at their nurses, and to scream and raise Beelzebub all night—and no boy who does not have a profusion of worms, and a nature literally suffused with sharp vinegar and aqua-fortis, with two or three little devils in his stomach—no infant or boy without these hateful qualities ever make much stir in the world. And if, in the morning of life, we do not reflect Vesuvius in our eyes, and belch lava and brimstone from our mouths, we seldom effect much in the great scuffle of life, and go down to our graves with Miss Nancy inscribed at the head and tail of our grassy mounds.
Man, like a horse, must have mettle, and plenty of it, with an immense bottom, or he cannot expect to contend with the fiery steeds of the turf and the forum. And, above all, a man must have a crop or two of worms at 40. All men have more worms in their bellies than they are aware of, (or their physicians, either,) and some have quarts.
But they must not keep the old crop too long. Worms must come and go with the seasons, or they will produce incarcerated wind, which often produces apoplexy and paralysis. Nervous dyspepsia also arises from an old crop of worms and a pent-up atmosphere. 1 got rid of eleven worms, ten inches long, about two years since, and I have been losing my energy and courage ever since. I caught the rascals thus: While in a bath-room one day, I saw something very mysterious. I applied a lighted cigar to its head or tail, (for it was sharp at both ends,) and I observed a slight movement. I touched it at the other end, and it moved in an opposite direction. I then struck a match, which I applied to its middle, when, lo! it was a worm, and alive and kicking. It died in about two minutes by Shrewsbury clock. I began immediately to take worm seed, and the following day I discovered five worms, one of which was tied in a perfect knot. The last worm I discovered was very small, which satisfied me that it was the last of his race. I think I always had whole generations of worms up to this last little scamp, and I kept him to transmit to my posterity. For, when coming home from school one day, I pulled on a worm until I could pull no longer, and got another boy to pull him entirely out. And when I beheld the monster on the ground, I ran home for my life, and before I got home, a thunder storm arose and terrified me almost to death.
Worms, doubtless, are the source of impulse. And impulsive persons have more or less worms, and never less than a pint. And very impulsive persons have not less than a quart. Matsell is nearly as fat as Daniel Lambert, and has about two gallons of colossal worms. And these miserable worms conquer us when living and dead. They have been my masters all my days. They have produced the dark spots in my history, over which I have dropped many a tear, and over which I shall weep until I get down into my extremely narrow and tranquil and undying abode.
Worms produce the evil in the history of all men, and yet they are prolific of infinite good. When they violently dart from extremity to extremity, and come up and look over the tongue, and dart back to the sweet bowels’ depths, and squirm most horribly for their regular food, a man swells with unconquerable fear, and can face the cannon’s mouth, and the devil himself, and people call him a courageous patriot,—when worms achieved every battle that was ever won. Napoleon had a most ungodly quantity of worms, and in their constant pecking at his liver, they finally produced a cancer of which he died. Worms did not start Patrick Henry’s eloquence until he was forty years old. Jackson, too, had worms, that made his eye flash like a rifle and his voice drown the cannon. Jackson’s worms, in early life, elicited a passion for horse-racing and cock-fighting, and caused such expressions as “by the Eternal.” But as soon as the worms left him he lost his nerve, and joined the Presbyterians. The worms of Julius Cæsar, at the verge of the Rubicon, were asleep over a hearty meal, but during his protracted contemplation of its passage, they suddenly awoke, and over he went with gigantic strides, and established Brandon, in the eastern counties of England, where little Georgy Matsell was born. Worms incarcerated Lafayette and Louis Napoleon, and worms made Eve tempt Adam, and Cain kill Abel, and are the source of the rise and fall of empires, and of all the good and evil that exist. And Shakspeare’s worms got hungry one day, and he went out on a poaching excursion, and thereby lost his honor, and had to fly from the dear scenes of his youth. But a fresh crop of worms, and their subsequent generations, directed a pen that will entwine his memory around and within the body, flesh, blood, bones and marrow of the solitary being who beholds the orbs of night and day forever close their brilliant eyes on a numerous, funny, and mysterious race of worms that have so long defaced, and polluted and crawled through earth, sea and air, leaving their nauseous slime behind.
Respectfully, Stephen H. Branch.