Rats! rats! rats!
Oh, Truth and Justice, and Common-Sense
When will you drive this rat-tribe hence?
Bait 'em and beat 'em! hurry 'em! skurry 'em!
With satire and scorn and laughter flurry 'em!
In hole and corner and cranny to hide,
The Flunkey Rat, and the Rat of Pride,
Selfishness, Pedantry, Cant, and all that,
Till nobody hears of a single Rat!
["THE CREOWNIN' GLORY OF THE UNITED STATES."—Knickerbocker Magazine.]
My Hearers:—My text ain't in Worcester's Pictorial, nor Webster's big quarto; but it is in the columns of the Bunkum Flagstaff and Independent Echo—"Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n States'n." Thar ain't a feller in all this great and glorious Republic but has studed readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic. Thar ain't a youngster so big that you couldn't drown him in a spit-box but what has read Shakspeare's gogerphy, and knows that all the world is a stage, with two poles instead of one like a common stage; and that it keeps goin' reound and reound on its own axis, not axin' nothin' o' nobody; for "Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n States'n." Who was it that, durin' the great and glorious Revolution, by his eloquence quenched the spirit of Toryism? An American citizen. Who was it that knocked thunder out of the clouds, and took a streak o' greased lightnin' for a tail to his kite? An American citizen. Who was it that invented the powder that will kill a cockroach, if you put a little on its tail and then tread on it? Who was it that discovered the Fat Boy, and captured the wild and ferocious What Is It? An American citizen! Oh, it's a smashin' big thing to be an American citizen! King David would have been an American citizen, and the Queen of Sheba would have been naturalized, if it could a bin did; for "Edication is the Creownin' Glory of the United'n States'n." When you and I shall be no more; when this glorious Union shall have gone to etarnal smash; when Barnum shall have secured his last curiosity at a great expense; then will the historian dip his pen in a georgious bottle of blue-black ink, and write—"Edication was the Creownin' Glory of the United'n States'n."
[THREE FOOLS.—C. H. Spurgeon.]
I will show you three fools. One is yonder soldier, who has been wounded on the field of battle—grievously wounded, well-nigh unto death. The soldier asks him a question. Listen, and judge of his folly! What question does he ask? Does he raise his eyes with eager anxiety and inquire if the wound be mortal, if the practitioner's skill can suggest the means of healing, or if the remedies are within reach and the medicine at hand? No, nothing of the sort. Strange to tell, he asks: "Can you inform me with what sword I was wounded, and by what Russian I have been thus grievously mauled? I want," he adds, "to learn every minute particular respecting the origin of my wound." The man is delirious, his head is affected! Surely such questions at such a time are proof enough that he is bereft of his senses.
There is another fool. The storm is raging, the ship is flying impetuously before the gale, the dark scud moves swiftly overhead, masts are creaking, the sails are rent to rags, and still the gathering tempest grows more fierce. Where is the captain? Is he busily engaged on the deck, is he manfully facing the danger, and skillfully suggesting means to avert it? No, sir, he has retired to his cabin; and there, with studious thoughts and crazy fancies, he is speculating on the place where this storm took its rise. "It is mysterious, this wind; no one ever yet," he says, "has been able to discover it." And so, reckless of the vessel, the lives of the passengers, and his own life, he is careful only to solve his curious question. The man is mad, sir; take the rudder from his hand; he is clean gone mad!
The third fool I shall doubtless find among yourselves. You are sick and wounded with sin, you are in a storm and hurricane of Almighty vengeance, and yet the question which you would ask of me this morning would be: "Sir, what is the origin of evil?" You are mad, sir, spiritually mad; that is not the question you would ask if you were in a sane and healthy state of mind. Your question would be: "How can I get rid of the evil?" Not, "How did it come into the world?" but, "How am I to escape from it?" Not, "How is it that fire descended from heaven upon Sodom?" but, "How may I, like Lot, escape out of the city to a Zoar?" Not, "How is it that I am sick?" but, "Are there medicines that will heal me? Is there a physician to be found that can restore my soul to health?" Ah! you trifle with subtleties, while you neglect certainties.