VI. — An Editorial in the Examiner
On the following morning I opened the Examiner, and the first article which I saw was the following one, on
THE BLOCKADE-RUNNER.
“We owe to the kindness of SHEM’S Express Company, which has charge of the line between the front door of the State Department and the back door of the Tuileries kitchen, the advance sheets of a new novel by VICTUS HAUTGOUT, which bears the striking title, Les Fortunés, and which consists of five parts—ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB, JUDAH, and BENJAMIN. Of course, the discerning reader will not suppose for a moment that there is any connection between Les Fortunés and Les Misérables; between the chaste style of HAUTGOUT and the extravaganzas of HUGO; whose works, in former days, were not considered fit reading for an Anglo-Saxon public, whose latest and most corrupt fiction owes its success (let us hope) rather to the dearth of new literature than to the vitiated taste of the Southern people. How great the difference between the two authors is, can best be appreciated by comparing the description of the gamin in Marius, with the following extracts from HAUTGOUT’S portraiture of the BLOCKADE-RUNNER:—
“Yankeedom has a bird, and the crocodile has a bird. The crocodile’s bird is called the Trochilus. Yankeedom’s bird is called the blockade-runner. Yankeedom is the crocodile. The blockade-runner is the Trochilus.
“Couple these two ideas—Yankeedom and the crocodile. They are worth the coupling. The crocodile is asleep. He does not sleep on both ears; he sleeps with one eye open; his jaws are also open. Rows of teeth appear, sharped, fanged, pointed, murderous, carnivorous, omnivorous. Some of the teeth are wanting: say a dozen. Who knocked those teeth out? A demon. What demon? Or perhaps an angel. What angel? The angel is secession: the demon is rebellion. ORMUZD and AHRIMAN: BALDUR and LOKI: the DEVIL and ST. DUNSTAN. So we go.
“The Trochilus picks the crocodile’s teeth. Does the crocodile object? Not he. He likes to have his teeth picked. It is good for his health. It promotes his digestion. It is, on the whole, a sanitary measure. ‘Feed yourself,’ he says, ‘my good Trochilus, on the broken meats which lie between my grinders. Feed your little ones at home. I shan’t snap you up unless I get very hungry. There are Confederates enough. Why should I eat you?’
“This little creature—this Trochilus obsidionalis—this blockade-running tomtit—is full of joy. He has rich food to eat every day. He goes to the show every evening, when he is not on duty. He has a fine shirt on his back; patent-leather boots on his feet; the pick and choice of a dozen houses. He is of any age—chiefly of the conscript age; ranges singly or in couples; haunts auction houses; dodges enrolling officers; eats canvass-backs; smells of greenbacks; swears allegiance to both sides; keeps faith with neither; is hand and glove with ABE’S detectives as well as with WINDER’S Plugs; smuggles in an ounce of quinine for the Confederate Government, and smuggles out a pound of gold for the Lincolnites; fishes in troubled waters; runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds; sings Yankee Doodle through one nostril, and My Maryland through the other; is on good terms with everybody—especially with himself—and, withal, is as great a rascal as goes unhung.
“He has sports of his own; roguish tricks of his own, of which a hearty hatred of humdrum, honest people is the basis. He has his own occupations, such as running for hacks, which he hires at fabulous prices; crossing the Potomac in all kinds of weather; rubbing off Yankee trade-marks and putting English labels in their stead. He has a currency of his own, slips of green paper, which have an unvarying and well regulated circulation throughout this gipsy band.
“He is never satisfied with his pantaloons unless they have a watch-fob, and never satisfied with his watch-fob unless it contains a gold watch. Sometimes he has two watch-fobs; sometimes a score.
“This rosy child of Richmond lives, develops, gets into and out of scrapes—a merry witness of our social unrealities. He looks on ready to laugh; ready also for something else, for pocketing whatever he can lay his hands on. Whoever you are, you that call yourselves Honor, Justice, Patriotism, Independence, Freedom, Candour, Honesty, Right, beware of the grinning blockade-runner. He is growing. He will continue to grow.
“Of what clay is he made? Part Baltimore street-dirt, part James River mud, best part and worst part sacred soil of Palestine. What will become of him in the hands of the potter, chance? Heaven grant that he may be ground into his original powder before he is stuck up on our mantel-pieces as a costly vase, in which the choice flowers of our civilization can but wither and die.”
Admire that grim humor, reader—the firm stroke with which this Aristophanes of 1864 drew my friend, Mr. Blocque. See how he reproduced every trait, delineated the worthy in his exact colors, and, at the foot of the picture, wrote, as it were, “Here is going to be the founder of ’one of the old families,’—one of the ornaments of the future, who will come out of the war rich, and be a costly vase, not a vessel of dishonor, as at present.”
Grim satirist! You saw far, and I think we want you to-day!