MAGA IN AMERICA.
New York, August 1847.
My Dear Godfrey—You will laugh when you hear into what a practical blunder I was led, by a desire to gratify your curiosity concerning Maga's Icon in America. I wondered you should ask me for a description, when it was so easy to have ordered out the thing itself; and so resolved to save myself the trouble of writing a long story, by duly exporting a specimen of the American Ebony, from which you might form your own conclusions as to its counterfeit merits, and its supposed relations to the great question of international copyright. Segnius irritant—you know! What disciple of old Plunkett's will ever forget the difference between the demissa per aurem, and
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——"quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus!" |
I have always maintained that his illustration of this great principle gave Dickens the hint of his Dotheboy's Hall. You remember, doubtless, poor Harry Farmar's false quantity, and how Plunkett made him peel onions till he cried his eyes out; asserting his confidence in Horace's maxim, and that he had found the usual box on the ear quite incapable of any exciting effect on Harry's mind. Who would have said that the same Harry, surviving the operation, would have lived to hunt bisons on the prairies of Western America, after riding on elephants in India, and bestriding a camel's hump through the waste places of Edom! Harry's wandering mind has developed as vagabond a habit of life as ever his prophetic instructor ventured to predict; but he vows himself cured at last, and that, if he ever sets foot again on England's terra firma, he will at once become one of the manly hearts that guard the fair, and settle down in contented conjugation. He it was, then, who offered to be the bearer to yourself at C—— of any despatches, or parcels, I might choose to send; but he affected to think me so thoroughly Americanised, that he entered a caveat against my loading him with a consignment of bowie knives or cotton-bales. A nicely packthreaded parcel was accordingly put up, and duly adorned with your most Saxon name and address, in the delusive expectation that none but your own hands would presume
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"——to set the imprison'd wranglers free And give them voice and utterance once again." |
I was doomed to be quickly undeceived; and as I doubt not Harry will be giving you his own version of the affair, over a glass of wine, some three weeks hence, at the Hall, you shall know beforehand how much to allow, in this matter, for his habitual unveracity, or rather love of romance.
I waited on him yesterday and presented the packet; but you should have seen him start, when I happened to mention its contents. Not the captors of Guido Fawkes bounced with more consternation, when that eminent pyrotechnist proposed to touch off his gunpowder for their especial gratification and amusement. "What!" exclaimed our mutual friend—"Have you lived so long in America, as to have forgotten the laws of a civilised and Christian land! Would you have me seized as a smuggler; posted in every newspaper as an importer of contraband goods; brutally insulted by the officers of her Majesty's Customs; and perhaps actually brought before a justice, and locked up where the only prospect would be a distant view of New South Wales!" It was in vain that I remonstrated with his eloquent horrors, at the thought of renewing his travels at government cost: he insisted that my proposal might actually have ensured the catastrophe; and from this appeal to my feelings, passed to a bold invective against literary piracy, and concluded by a generous compromise in favour of the cotton-bales, if I would pardon the warm expressions with which he found himself compelled to decline my extraordinary commission. You should have seen him, Godfrey! If he ever takes that seat in Parliament which he threatens to make the sequel of matrimony, I predict wo to the whole race of Humes, Brights, and Cobdens, should they ever start him on a subject capable of transatlantic illustration.
I could not but laugh, though, when I saw the true state of the case, at the comical scene that might have ensued, had he taken my parcel without explanations. Think of Harry's air of fearless innocence before the inspectors of imports, till from the depths of an enormous trunk comes forth a parcel, which those faithful officials at once lay bare, with the professional dexterity of a private tearing his cartridge. The officer stares, and Harry looks still more astounded, at the sight of a familiar visage, peering forth from under the wrapper, and giving mute but significant expressions of pain and displeasure. It is the head of Geordy Buchanan! It is Blackwood, imported from New York! The confounded servant of her Majesty's Customs begins to whisper contraband, and expresses a wish for the undoubted original, which you, just stepping up to welcome your friend, are enabled to supply. The fresh number from your coat-skirts, and the suspicious importation from America, are set together like the two Dromios before the duke. "Look on this picture, and on that!" Behold the two Buchanans!