Fools may sneer and call family feelings all humbug,
But I feel that one blood in the veins of us flows:
Our tongues are the same, though I don't like your fashion
Of talking, (as you'd make me pay) through the nose.
We snarled and we scratched, in the days of our folly,
When you wanted to leave me and start for yourself;
To think of those times makes me quite melancholy——
The blood that we wasted——the temper and pelf!
When I vowed that I'd tame you, and make you knock under,
And you dared me and bit, like a vixen as well;
I did think by this time we had both seen our blunder;
Meant to live as good friends and in peace buy and sell.
But of late I can't think what the deuce has come o'er you:
First, you turn your own house out of window, and then,
Declare that I want to o'erreach you and floor you,
Stop my ships, seize my passengers, bully my men!
I can stand a great deal from my own blood-relations,
And I know that your troubles your temper have soured;
But I can't take a blow, in the face of all nations,
And consent to see law by brute force overpowered.
Only own your friend Wilkes is a blundering bully,
And make over Mason and Slidell to me,
And all that is past, I'll condone, fair and fully,
Kiss you now, and in future, I do hope, agree!
Yet Lincoln, the peacemaker of the occasion, got little credit from Punch, which, indeed, began now to pursue him with unremitting invective.
The gorilla-like caricature of Lincoln's features makes its first appearance in a cartoon wherein this repulsive face is joined to a raccoon's body.
The "coon" is shown up a tree, Colonel Bull, standing below, has drawn a bead on him with his gun.