Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

swear in, why, I asked myself, is not a church cupola equally sacred? That it is not so considered, is plain. What, then, becomes of my position? You may well conceive the discomfiture which my falling argument gave me. But nous terrons.

I have paid some attention to Architecture; looked a little into Model Cottages, and can prate right fluently and prettily about the Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite orders-ancient and modern Doric-the Tuscan order, now extinct; the Egyptian and the Roman styles. I have at hand, a store of ecclesiastic-architectural pedantry, well spiced with such words as:-transepts, almeries, lavatories, oratories, almonries, roods, jubes, misereres, aspersoria, naves, baptistries, pixes, crypts, auditoria, cloisters, chantries, benetiers, tabernacles, weepers, etc., to say nothing of a host of merely secular technicalities. I am, also, author of an essay, written to prove the superiority of the Jeffersonian capital, composed of the leaf and flower of the tobacco-plant, and surmounting a shaft of Indian corn, over the Greek Corinthian, of acanthus leaves, perched on a fluted column, and emblematic of nothing; also to show that Thomas Jefferson was a greater man, though no sculptor, than Callicrates, author of the Corinthian capital; that his conception was the happier of the two; and that we, Americans, are fools, fogies, and toadies, in not adopting the Jeffersonian idea, and running off after Grecian gods, when we have in our own land the elements of architectural orders, quite as beautiful, more chaste, and inanitely more syinbolic, than anything to be found either at Athens or Rome. From some inexplicable cause, the essay attracted no attention, and is now out of print.

Yet, much as I have dabbled in architecture, I have nowhere seen it stated that oaths are essentially necessary in the constraction of steeples, churches, or other sacred edifices. Their perpetual recurrence, however, falling at the rate of about sixty per hour from the aforesaid steeple, would indicate that I am at fault; and, though no writer on architecttre has yet mentioned it, you may record it as a fact, that curses are as necessary to masonry and wood-work, as are bricks, mortar, and boards. The steeple to which I allude has now attained a height of some sixty feet, inclading the church at its base; and the

vane above the spire is to be 150 feet from the ground. I do not think it any exaggeration to say, that about 1,000 oaths, not reckoning the little fellows, have been consumed in getting the steeple to its present height.

THIS SETS ME THINKING!

What a vast amount of imprecation must have been required for rearing the turrets and towers, the steeples and spires, the monuments, columns, obelisks, and domes of the world! There is the Escurial, at Madrid, whose highest point is 200 feet from the earth; Notre Dame, at Paris, 204 feet; the Porch only of Solomon's Temple, 210 feet (I can never believe that oaths were used on that work); the Wellington Obelisk, at Dublin, also 210 feet high; Porcelain Tower, at Nankin, 228; Seville Tower, in Spain, 250; Milan Cathedral, and Castellan Tower, at Valencia, each 280; the minarets on the Mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, 290 feet; St. Ivan's Tower, Moscow, and Lincoln Spire, England, each 300 feet; Trinity Spire, and St. Michael's Tower, Coventry, the former of which is 300 feet high, and overlooked by the latter, which boasts its yard more of altitude; St. Paul's, and the Dome of Milan, each 370; the Walls of Babylon, 350; the end Wall of Herod's Temple, 360; Dome of the Florence Cathedral, 380; Tower of Utrecht, 464, and of Strasburgh, 474; the ancient tower of Balbec, in Syria, 500, and St. Peter's, at Rome, 518 feet high!

What awful maledictions must have accompanied these structures, while on their way to greet the earliest glories of the rising sun! And we have not yet mounted the Egyptian Pyramids, the highest of which rears its head to the proud height of 520 feet. What shuddering imprecations frightened the hyena and the jackal of the desert, when these vast piles of stone were heaping up, and up, almost to the clouds! Think too, of the Babylonian Belus, 666 feet high; and of presumptuous Babel, seeking for the sky, and only pausing when it had mounted to a height of 680 feet. What volleys of curses must have echoed through these stupendous fabrics ere they became wonderful! No wonder, that at Babel, there should have been confusion of tongues, amid such a din of oaths, as reverberated and resounded through its gigantic tube, from base to apex! And yet, sir, I have enumerated but a few of the architectural prodigies

of the world; have not dropped a hint about light-houses; not mentioned Trinity Church, New York; nor said one word of Bunker Hill, and Baltimore. You may well join me in my surprise that the earth was not long ago "crushed out," or swung blindly from its moorings, under the weight of so large a load of profanation.

Sir, as an American citizen, I have serious fears lest the architect of the National Monument to Washington, hath under-estimated the amount of imprecation necessary to the completion of that work. While the census-takers are gathering pitiful pennies in aid of this truly national and patriotic design, and the managers are forced to employ all sorts of schemes and ingenuities to shame the American people into patriotism-I blush while I write it would it not be well for each State to send on a delegation of hard swearers to Washington?-or, at least, authorize their Senators and Representatives in Congress, many of whom, I understand, can outswear a trooper, to do the necessary

cussing," and at once relieve our country of the disgraceful spectacle now staring her in the face-a monument commenced to her father, creeping upwards like a snail, threatening every moment to stand still, and be transformed into a monument of base ingratitude? Sir, I consider this a most excellent and timely suggestion, and trust the managing committee may be profited by it.

the days of Fulton and Watt, when he lay under the ban of illegitimacy. You will see the bearings of this paragraph as you proceed.]

To resume my first theory, by which to account for this singular phenomenon, was, luckily, correct. I only regret that I must invoke your patience while I unfold it.

An Eastern Pacha, whenever any row, broil, tumult, or other difficulty, was brought before him for adjustment, was wont to inquire, "Who was she?" Experience, he said, had taught him, that whenever these affairs were probed to the bottom and thoroughly sifted, a woman would be found to be the prime cause of the disturbance. Woman, he believed, was at the bottom of all evil whatsoever; and he even attributed to her the misfortunes and accidents which men commonly lay to the account of illluck, or destiny. In this day and generation, we are more gallant. Whatever we may think, we are careful to assign to woman a loftier position than the corner-stone of turpitude, the foundation course of disaster. Neither doth our philosophy consider money the root of all evil the vivifying esculent which nourishes the hardy tree of wickedness. The race after wealth is daily becoming more exciting: the haste to be rich has kept pace with locomotion in general and we of the present day, so far from turning up our nostrils at lucre, and pre tending to believe it filthy, esteem it as our greatest good, and its acquisition the chief end of man. The true root of evi -the great first cause--is now ascer tained to be the arch-enemy of man kind; and the burden of sin is laid where it rightfully belongs-on the broad shoulders of its father Beelzebub. To account, now, for this church-steeple swearing.

But to return to our steeple. How do you account, Mr. Editor, for this shameful practice, thus openly pursued in the broad light of day, and in so prominent and sacred a place, as a cupola of one of God's temples? I see you are puzzled, and will only trouble you to look over the results of my investigations; if no other good come of them, I have made at least one valuable discovery, which I shall give you the benefit of in brackets, and afterwards resume the thread of this sadly disjointed and incoherent epis-seeing an arena in process of constructle.

[Necessity is the reputed mother of invention. Haven't you often wondered who was the father? As usual, alas! the mother all the world knows; but the father-who is he? Well, sir, I have discovered that Perplexity is the sire of that brat; and, further, that he is the offspring of lawful wedlock. I hope the world will be duly grateful for this discovery, and that the boy will be more kindly received for the future, than in

Can anything be more plausible than that Satan, who hates all things goodgood men, good deeds, and good books

tion, wherein he was to be encountered, grappled with, overthrown and utterly discomfited, is greatly exercised thereat, and is doing all that in him lies, to stay the progress of the work. Finding church and steeple to advance steadily, in defiance of all his machinations,-for a long, long time he persuaded the congregation they were too poor to buildhe, in his blind fury and rage, has determined at all events, to manifest his presence in and about the edifice. But,

being himself too modest to mount the steeple in the garish light of day, and in the face of a whole town, and curse it in person; and having neither imp nor satellite equal to the task, he has put oaths and anathemas in the mouths of the builders, and thus vents his spleen by proxy upon the holy pile!

Sir, I am no believer in spiritual rappings, necromancy, sorcery, or other humbug. I believe that witches are obsolete, and all manner of spells and enchantments broken-at best they were, in my opinion, but so much nonsense. But allow me to say, that however the world may scorn the idea, I do believe in a Satan. I accept him, sir, hoof, horns and tail, according to orthodoxy; and I believe him to be an active, wily, wide-awake, trap-setting, plotting, birdliming, sulphureous fiend. Moreover, I believe HE IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS CUPOLA!

Another brace of brackets, if you please, Mr. Editor; 'twill break the connection but a moment.

[One of the workmen on the steeple has just called, in a loud voice, upon God to damn him! What superlative folly, to say the least, for a man upon a steeple to be guilty of! "Help thyself, and Heaven will help thee," is an old proverb, and a good one. Nor can I see why this man should invoke the Divine aid in a matter so easily arranged without it. Still less can I approve of the petition, when the whole neighborhood, old men and maidens, fathers and mothers and servants, and wee little ones —who have a great knack for imitation, and turn all they hear into availabilityshould be compelled to listen to it, or emigrate, and remain in exile from home till the lightning-rod is tipped, and the steeple finished. Why call upon God at all in this emergency? What with a fall of sixty feet-the route diversified by an occasional corbel, and terminating in a pile of slab-stones, setting up edgewise at the base of the steeple-it does strike me, and it will strike the experimenter even more forcibly, that a man of moderate abilities might contrive most effectually to damn himself, by simply leaping from the steeple to the stones. He who takes the leap may rest assured he will aever be hung: and, with no better passport into heaven than the oath last upon his lips, I can promise him St. Peter will never grant him admittance.]

Having succeeded, as I trust, in ferreting out the cause of the dire effects

about which I complain, will you deign, Mr. Editor, to cast your eye over the following conversation in which Necessitas, Perplex, and I, participated; and containing, as you will see, numerous plans submitted by them with a view to cure or alleviate the evil, together with my comments upon them respectively. PERPLEX.-(loquitur.) "I believe

with you, that the devil is at the bottom of your steeple-the true and sole cause of this evil of swearing. Can he not be dug up-rooted out?"

EGO." Alas! Perplex, I fear not. For though Satan is as arrant a Paul Pry as ever popped in,' and is solicitous never to be intrusive; though, like a bad shilling, he is always on hand-I fear that any attempt to be rid of him by excavation, would end in defeat. You have no idea at what an immense depth he lies concealed. There is an artesian well in Charleston (S. C.), which has attained a depth of more than a thousand feet, and though every turn of the screw was expected to bring up water, there was no water yet at last accounts. Now, philosophers suppose the volcanic or fire strata of the earth to lie below the aqueous regions; and, as we should have to find fire before finding Satan, you will at once perceive the impracticability of your plan. Besides, to say nothing of the expense attendant upon the execution of your scheme, before we could attain such immense profundity of depth as would be necessary, the steeple would be finished, the bells hung, and then-an oath would stand no sort of chance by the side of a 'bob-major ' in the belfry."

PERPLEX. Can you not exorcise him-lay him in some way?"

EGO." You forget the ubiquitous nature of the fiend; that he is spry as well as black as a flea-just under your thumb till you lift it to get him between your fingers. Even were there any power in incantation, which I do not believe, the subject to be exorcised must first be found as a hare must be caught ere boiled-before you could commence to work upon him. While utterly faithless as regards the power of spells, I know of but one process for raising the devil, which of course would have to be done, prior to laying him. Danæus de Sortiaraiis tells us, that he who would raise Beelzebub, must sacrifice to him, a dog, a cat, and a hen, all his own property (none of which I possess); must

swear eternal obedience to him, and receive a mark in some unseen place, either under the eyelid, or in the roof of the mouth, inflicted by the devil in person-a pretty piece of business truly, for a quiet man, and an antiswearer, to be engaged in!

"Moreover, what would be the use of laying him, when he has been laid again and again, and will not stay laidlike the nasal organ of the urchin whose father took him to see the great Dr. Franklin; and who, when affectionately requested by his sire to blow his nose, replied, that he had repeatedly performed that interesting operation, but the nose 'wouldn't stay blowed.'”

PERPLEX.-"Decant a thousand o' brick' from the top of the steeple, so as to take the old reprobate just between the horns."

EGO. "Ingenious, but not practicable. It would be folly to proceed thus, unless you had his majesty so cabined, cribbed, and confined," that he could not dodge the falling missiles. You constantly forget that he is still at large, and that catching him is the first great step to be taken. In the event that we had him in such close quarters as I have described, what would it profit us? Didn't Father O'Flaherty hit him wunst over the top ov his head wid a testamint, widout aven stunnin' ov him? And shure, didn't he come back the very next night widout aven a bit of rag 'round his horns?'

"I am of opinion we can do nothing with Beelzebub. Will you please contrive some plan, dear Perplex, for rendering the evil endurable. Cure it we cannot, unless we could remove the cause."

PERPLEX.-"Could not these swearers be induced to adopt the plan of the Louisiania sugar-planter, who was an awful swearer in his wild-oat days, but as the years grew thick upon him, became converted at a camp-meeting, and, instead of his old oaths, would ejaculate a terrific Thunder!' when his wrath was provoked."

EGO. "You are still seeking to cure, rather than to alleviate. Men are forgetful, and swearers proverbially short of memory. Were the neighborhood to adopt the expedient you suggest, it would destroy our present watchfulness. In our joy at having at last found a remedy, we would throw off all restraint, instead of sitting, as we now do, on a perpetual qui vive, with shoulders

shrugged and eyes shut, awaiting the impending oath. Ere we knew it, some swearer would forget his substitute, and down would come a big, black oath, like a bomb-shell at a mess-table, scattering confusion and dismay in every direction, and completely upsetting confidence. I have heard of your sugar-planter before; and may as well tell you, what perhaps you have never heard, that when his ire was greatly provoked, he forgot to 'thunder' after the new style."

PERPLEX. Let the swearers be persuaded to commence work an hour or two before dawn-not with their hammers and trowels, but their oaths. And while Age is recruiting for the morrow, Innocence peacefully dreaming, Childhood smiling in its sleep, and Infancy chatting with the cherubim-ere darkness has flown to the uttermost parts of the earth, or the East grown warm with the blushes of Aurora,-let these fellows take a private 'cuss' of an hour's duration, to last them through the day."

EGO. "A very pretty scheme, but like most pretty schemes, thoroughly Utopian. Swearing is said to be only good in its place (for my part I do not think it good in any place). To illustrate :-A traveller who once stopped at a badly kept inn, complained to the waiter, that his plate greatly needed cleansing, aud received for answer that "every man must eat his peck of dirt before he dies." To this he replied (I am sorry to say with an oath), that he had no objection to complying with that requisition, but he'd "be d-d" if he "liked this way of making a fellow eat the whole peck at a meal." Thus, I fear it would be, with our steeple-swearers. They might curse you for your suggestions, and prefer to take their oaths in DRIBLETS.

Another consideration: men could not easily be brought to swear, at that hour, upon a steeple. The darkness shrouding the tall spire in its sable folds -the striking similitude of the cupola's deep, black, and hollow void, to an abyss deeper, darker, and infinitely more profound-and, above all, the sweet, silent stars, which at that hour would still be shining overhead, would set the strongest lungs at variance, and illy attune the tongue to imprecation. Methinks that men, with hearts of men, would be more inclined to adoration, amid the deep stilness, the solemn grandeur, and holy beauty of such a scene.

PERPLEX.-"Get the swearers to curse

in some foreign lingo, which your children, at least, would not understand. You can easily collate from the dictionaries, a variety of oaths, some of which might strike the fancy of these fellows, and be adopted in lieu of their native-tongued cur-es."

EGO. Too much like your Sugarplanter scheme. I tell you there is no trusting the memory of a swearer. Besides, Perplex, do you not see that the furnishing of such a list would bring us in, as accessories to the crime. 'Tis all one with God, whether men use their mother tongue or an adopted one, in which to blaspheme. Nay, there are men, who will one day be called to account for oaths nestling deep down, like a brood of serpents, within their hearts, but forbidden by propriety, decency, or other motive, to come to the lip for utterance; others, for oaths inaudible, born in the rancor of the heart, and dying in whispers between their teeth."

What think you, Perplex, of mounting a parson on the steeple?"

PERPLEX.-"Aye-or, a committee of ladies. The difficulty would be in procuring these worthy conservators of morals. Twould be an unheard-of duty to require of the clergy; and the ladies could not long survive so severe a trial as keeping guard, for days and weeks, over a regiment of hard-swearers.”

"I fear, sir, I must give up your case as irremediable; I am quite in despair."

NECESSITAS." Please, sir, I have just thought of a remedy, occurring to me at the moment, when Perplex spoke of his despair."

EGO.- Speak, Madame: I do attend ye."

NECESSITAS.-"I propose, sir, that you do sink, or cause to be sunk, at bottom of your steeple, a pit, deep, wide, and roomy; covered in with staunch, stout boards, all tongued and grooved, and sealed hermetically, save an aperture in the middle plank, through which you insert a tube, in length ten feet; five thereof below and five above, the intersection. Into this shaft, conduct tubes supplemental, in length sufficient to o'ertop the highest point to which your spire aspires, 150 feet (as all the morning journals say), and in numbers such as to supply each scaffolding that girts your spire. And at each landing in the hollow void, where airy ladders kiss, each ladder, ladder's foot, connecting tubes you place, all snugly fitting, with interjoinings nice. Thus then, each swearer,

VOL. V.-4

or high or low in standing, when he fain would curse, hath but to turn him round, and fire into the tubes; once safe therein. the flying oaths would quickly find their destined grave, which hideth all deformity."

EGO.-"Bravo! Necessitas-I will-

I will."

You have heard Mr. Editor; and now, may I beg of you to have the order for the tubing filled (which you will find inclosed), and ship the same to my address, at your earliest convenience. Be pleased to have the tubing of gutta percha, firmly riveted, and finished in a thorough manner. Some splitting, shivering oaths will try its strength, ere they become innocuous in the earth.

And now, sir, that I am done, I have misgivings lest you should think my tone too light. I assure you, I was never more serious in my life.

What would you have had? A sermon or a homily with the untaking title, "Swearing?" Sir, your patrons would never have read it. Nine-tenths of them would have turned over the leaves bearing that caption, with an impatient twirl of finger and thump, making a "dog-ear" at each corner, as they hurried forwards to the next article; just as people, at a book-auction, when a splendid binding surprises them with an inside Bible, shut it up with a contemptuous bang, and pry about for an Annual, -some "Love-Token," "Forget-me not," or anything, in short, "interesting."

The Swearers have so often been soundly drubbed for their iniquities, they have become case-hardened and sermon-proof; of course they would have passed it by, perhaps with an oath, or a malediction on my devoted head. As it is, many will have an itching to know how their brethren appear while in successful operation on a church steeple. Much good may the sight do them.

The anti-swearers would, of course, have passed it over, as not meant for them.

As for the ladies-heaven bless them -they, too, would have thought it in no way useful to them, not knowing, in their innocence, that the world contained so unnatural a creature as a female swearer. While one-half your ladyreaders would have been prodigiously shocked at the bald, hard word "SWEARING," and immediately “skipped" the paper; the other half would have hell up their pretty little hands in duml

« AnteriorContinuar »