'Bet your Cashmere on that,' quoth Sam. 'But you mustn't say it.'
'Mustn't say the truth?' I replied. 'Was the American Revolution a lie, because it had Arnolds, and Tories, and all sorts of scallawags?'
'Come,' said Nella, 'this puts me in mind of something. I've got in my desk the queerest poem! It's on this subject. It tries to show, if I remember right, that even in a time which we always think of as being without low and vulgar people, there were probably some who went into ignorant extremes and abused every thing. Sam, suppose you read it.'
And in a few minutes she produced the document. It had been given to a friend of hers by the editor of the Family Pudding, who couldn't quite make any thing out of it, except that the style was inelegant and the moral obscure, and who had therefore indorsed it as 'rejected.'
And turning himself round, so as to face the great multitude, Sam began:
The Legend of Crispin.
BY MEISTER KARL.
When the Romans, the never-to-be-forgotten Romans—
Romans, Roman citizens, S. P. Q. R.—
Travelled out of Pompeii,
Pompeii!
When Mount Vesuvius was pouring down her lava,
Dust—Ashes—Scoria,
Ruin, Desolation,
Eternal Misery!
Fire-works, Annihilation,
And Things.
They left a Sentry standing at the door,
They did.
Citizens went rushing past him,
Rushing like hurlycanes,
Like hydrants,
Like rifle-bullets on their travels,
Carrying baggage—
Some of it marked 'Lucius Sempronius,'
Some of it 'Drusilla.'
Band-boxes, inscribed with the nomina of Marcia Messalina;
The trunks of Flavius Gracchus,
The bronzes of Spurius,
The Elephantine books of Laufella,
Of Ægle, Lalage, Chione, Dione, Clodia,
Sulpitia, Lais, Bassa,
And the traps of all that fast crowd,
The jolly, half-Greek Romans of that Blue-Sea town.
It was a fast party, and no mistake;
Used to cutting up high old didoes,
Going in on Falernian,
Nunc pede libero,
Myrrhine cups, Serican mantles, beautiful slaves,
Harp and psaltery, kisses and wine, alma Venus!
Live and love, you beauty—Beauty is Divine!
Go it, girls—go it while you're young!
Sic vita—hodie nobis.
Disce bone clerice virgines amare,
Quare sciunt dulcia oscula prestare.
Juventutem floridam tuum conservare,
Et cetera.
Now they ran, shrieking, bewildered, pale-white,
Scared to fits—
Poor, pretty, little unfortunate devils,
Having a hard old time of it:
While a newly-escaped convict, a fellow named Crispin,
Who was to have been thrown to the lions in the circus,
But who had got out of his cage and feliciter evasit
Just escaped martyrdom and canonization,
Stood on a dung-hill, preaching Millerism
To the unfortunate Pompeians.
'Sarves yer right,' quoth he,
In uncommonly bad Latin. He was a Thracian shoe-maker!
'Sarves yer right—
Dives eritis—you used to be rich as blazes,
Fat and sarcy—every thing but ragged,
Dern you! Now things is workin'—
O Domine Deus! an't I glad!
Now you're all goin to thunder
Along with yer blamed old gods and goddesses,
Jupiter Jovis, Mars, Apollo!
Oh! git ëout!
Diana! Talk about her bein' decent!
Shaw!
Law bless your soul! she an't no better than she should be.
Juno! she was a nice lot, she was I don't think:
Didn't marry her brother nor nothin', I spose!
Hercules! There's a pretty character now, to make a god of!
Why, he never was nothing better'n a sort of sporting man:
Used to go boxin' rëound in a low way,
An' killin' things.
Worship him! I'd as soon worship an old chaw tobacco:
Fact! Just as live's not.
Mercury!
Sounds well, don't it, to be prayin' to him?
Shows yer derned thieves any how, to think of such a thing.
Why, he's nothin' but a pick-pocket,
A common burgular; a hoss-stealer;
A fellow who shoves the queer and buzzes blokes, as they say in their low slang.
That's what he is. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
'Fore I'd be seen in his temple, I'd go worship Cloacina. Fact!
That's what I'd do.
Oh! they're a putty set—these divinities of yourn:
Minervy, for instance. She don't know nothin',
She an't o' no account. She's a humbug.
Why, I know a gal, Paula Innocentia; lives round by the Forum; sells slop.
Kin read the 'Pistle to the Romans right strut through—
Well she can. That's more'n Minervy ever did.
Then, there's Neptune! Now I arsk you as reas'nable men,
Don't you consider him as an old blower—a regular gas-bag.
Feller citizens: I arsk you to argy this point temperately and soberly, without usin' no aggravatin language.
Don't you think a man must be a blarsted old fool to believe in any such narsty stuff as this beastly my-thology of yourn?
Shaw! There an't no use talkin',
It's all a dead cock in the pit, the hull of this Olympus:
I don't say nothin agin Pluto, however,
(Only you ought to call him Satan by rights.)
Some of you'll find out mighty soon, I calculate, whether he's a smellin' rëound or not.
Rather!
Oh! go 'long with you. Sho-o-o-o!
Yeu narsty, indecent, leëwd, unproper critters!
Yeu miserable coots.
Fellers with about half the interlect of a common-sized shad,
Yeu goneys. Ya—ya—yap—yap—BOO!
Yeu don't have an imparticularly hard time on 't. Sa-ay!
Layin' off on triclinia, drinkin' Falernian out 'er pocula, and snake-handled Etruskin calices,
Serpans in patera Myronis arte,
To the health of Venus!
Ea-au-au-a'a'a'h! You make me sick!
Venus!!
Bibis venenum, you drink serpent pison and no mistake under them 'ere circumstances.
Venus! Sh-aw!
She 's just the filthiest....
....dern'dest....
....ugh—ugh!'
(Here he grew black in the face with howling and spitting.)
'Beautiful indeed! I hate beauty. Blarst it!
'Tan't moral. I'd rather see the lousiest old slave a-goin',
Than all the clean-washed beauty of all Lesbos,
Corinth, Athens, Rhodes,
Or any other man.
Look-a-here, you goneys! There's a statue of Venus now:
Mighty putty—an't it? Vide, dico, vobis!
Here's a big pavin'-stun. I'm a-goin' to smash her nose in.
I'll spile some of your pretty for you—mœcha damnata!
You carn't do nothin' to one of the Chosen, you know!
Here goes at her! Rip! snap!—one, two, three!'
And it flew from his hands. The multitude, in terror,
Paused in their flight, shocked at the sacrilege,
Waiting the wrath of the foam-white-limbed Goddess
Aphrodite, eternal daughter of sun-shine,
Of the blue-sea and beauty infinite.
Was it the accursed stone which struck the features
Chiselled by Phidias or Scopas?
Was it the shock of the earthquake?
But as the mountain gave a roar tremendous,
As though all Orcus had burst loose on earth,
And in a flash, as of all Jove's lightning,
Down fell the marble queen of loveliness,
Crushing to kindred dirt, in one foul mass,
Crispin the Scoffer. Lo! the gods are just!
'That's a rather Remarkable,' quoth Sam, as he wound up.