Degenerate, we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that these garments have at some period, more or less remote, been scorched! The mystery is a mystery no longer; we comprehend instantly the cause of the brevity of the Sack Degenerate. Behold now, and marvel, how one branch of universal philosophy illustrates another; how every variety of human knowledge, bears upon every other variety! Behold with admiration, how the greatest and earliest of sciences comes in its direst extremity to the aid of the least and the latest, of which I am the great prophet and supporter! How could the gentlemen wearers of sacks, have burnt the tails of them? Only by venturing them too near the fire, as the comets have done. Why did they so? To warm their hands. Very well; now be attentive, for I am coming to the very pith of my argument. I am concentrating, like Burke, all my examples and illustrations on one single point, and if you lose the thread one moment now, you are dished, without hope of redemption. To this point I have been tending slowly but surely, as the current of the Niagara river to the falls, ever since the beginning. I have now arrived at the 'jumping-off place;' so, prepare! prepare! prepare! Follow me boldly, firmly! Hold fast to my skirts, like Don Cleofas de Zambullo to those of Asmodeus, lest ye fall, and perish in the confusion! It is a time-honored and undisputed principle in the consideration of mankind, that it is a very rare circumstance to find any but a conceited man approaching the fire with a great-coat or sack degenerate on his back, for the purpose of warming his hands. The very act itself is admitted as proof presumptive, circumstantial evidence, of conceit; a masonic sign, not to be mistaken by the initiated. The vulgar Englishman always does this. The vulgar Englishman is the very personification of conceit. The vulgar Englishman, (as do his imitators,) invariably wears one of these docked garments. Ergo, the garment in question, the Sack Degenerate, is an almost infallible indication of this foible of the mind. Quod erat demonstrandum,' as Euclid hath it. Verily, the beginning and the end of all things is the same. Proud as I am of this lecture, as a model of reasoning, I cannot help sighing to think that it will find many imitators. Why will not the lawyers of the day take example from the lucid and convincing arguments, the concise and elegant logic, displayed in this performance? Wedded to precedents, slaves of technicalities, stubborn in their conceit, they refuse to be taught, and scoff at improvement. Let them go their ways. But oh! what an extraordinary and superior lawyer I should have made! The only possible plea in my opinion in excuse of this enormity, or rather prodigy; this coat that is not a coat, but a sort of undershirt stretched out and worn in the wrong place; is that of economy! If any can afford to buy no better, let him purchase one of these; but Heaven have mercy on his miserable family, or if he have no family, on his miserable self! He receives my sincere commiseration: I do not wish to insult him by extending the sympathy which may not be desired, but I repeat it again, I pity him. Cold must be the heart of that man who does not! Have none of the gentlemen wearing the Sack Degenerate ever observed a cat licking and pawing her tail on a summer's afternoon? What is the object of the process? Every fool can understand that she licks it for the purpose of cleaning or washing it, but not every wise man even knows why she paws it. The vulgar and commonly-received opinion is, that she does so with the intention of drying it, of squeezing out the moisture. Very plausible, but not the true solution. Some philosophers have supposed that by the operation she excites a current of electricity, which causes a pleasant sensation, while not a few dull people have declared that she amuses herself in that manner, merely for want of something better to do, and have urged, in support of their opinion, that if a mouse appear, she instantly ceases from her employment. But I affirm, and will maintain against all comers, that her manipulations are to be attributed entirely to her desire of lengthening out her tail and preserving it supple. Now, why may not these unfortunate gentlemen take the hint? It is marvellous that necessity has not before this given them the wit to discover of themselves, that by dint of pulling daily the skirts of their coats, they may induce them to hang down a little lower, or at least break them of a habit they have of sticking straight out behind, as if they were anxious to part company with their owners. Not to be scandalous, I have seen in the streets some Sacks Degenerate, the tails of which brought forcibly to my mind the remembrance of those figures which almost every one in his time has constructed out of paper, and which, from time immemorial, by a great stretch of imagination, have been universally recognized among children as true, undoubted chickens. Oh! that I possessed the caricaturing pencil of Leonardo da Vinci! Then would I give you an idea of the appearance which words cannot adequately describe. If cheated by their tailors, these gentlemen all must acknowledge to be the victims of a relentless destiny, and I am satisfied that no well-principled jury would award damages to a tailor, in case of an assault and battery, in consequence of his sending home to a man such a garment. The making of it amounts, to all intents and purposes, to a libel on a gentleman's figure; and it is a principle of law that no man shall profit by his own misdemeanor; so that it might perhaps even be adjudged that no man should be expected to pay for a Sack Degenerate. I hope, however, that such a decision may never be made, lest they become too popular. If it be really the desire of the wearers of the Sack Degenerate that their vestments should be cut in that peculiar mode, there is nothing more to be said, except that I pronounce their taste to be unnatural, artificial, perverted, monstrous and unhallowed; their course to be calculated to undermine and subvert the foundations of all beauty and gracefulness in dress. That it is not a natural taste, may be gathered from the proceedings of the sailor when he arrives in port after a long cruise. His first ambition, (after having a spree,) is to make his appearance in a long-tail coat; his second, to ride in a hack. That it is not an elegant taste, the example of Jim Crow, the most exquisite of all negroes, sufficiently proves. I need scarcely say, that I allude to his choice of a long-tail blue.' Furthermore, it is a vulgar taste. Else why do we speak so contemptuously of the 'tag, rag and bob-tail' of the earth, meaning thereby the extreme vulgar, the very off-scouring of humanity? Does not this evince the universal opinion in all time of the vulgarity of short tails? A few words more, and I have done. Error in all ages hath been anxious to make converts, and persevering in extending itself. These gentlemen may be presumed to be desirous of gaining proselytes to their system. Like the tail-less fox in the fable, they would probably like to see the whole of their race suffering under the same infliction. For myself, I have no hesitation in acknowledging that I have an innate respect for a long, old-fashioned, snuff-colored or blue broadcloth great-coat. I am really persuaded that I would not be afraid to lend money (if it were abundant with me,) to a man that dared to wear such a garment; I am always interested in such a person by an unaccountable sympathy; my heart yearns toward him, as kindred spirit. I have no objection to a man's wearing a linen jacket in summer; but as for these mongrels, these abortions, these detestable Sacks Degenerate, they find no favor in my eyes. I am not for them, nor they for me. I say, down with them, and down with all conceited men! I call upon you, ye old-fashioned people, to aid me in resisting this new-fangled invention; I call upon you, ye gentlemen, that have good figures, set your faces against this graceless garment; I call upon you, ye gentlemen with bad figures, use your utmost endeavors to put down this coat, which makes you look ten times worse; I call upon you, ye princes and potentates of the fashionable world; let us summon a Congress of Vienna, and preserve the integrity of our tails entire; I call upon ye, all good citizens; let us have a meeting in the park, and protest against and 'take measures' to check the growth and diffusion of foreign principles and foreign influence in our blessed country, through the medium of Sacks Degenerate! THE MANIAC. A LIVING statue, whence a soul has fled, Silent and thoughtless, mid Life's high commands, The cold stern skeleton of Thought is there, And sickly fancies o'er his features stray Through lines where burning tears have seared their way: A living grave, a palace of Despair. How round his brain unhallowed fancies rave! |