The Adventures of My Cousin SmoothTempleton, Timothy
General
The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth
Templeton, Timothy
Pierce, Franklin, 1804-1869 -- Humor; United States -- Politics and government -- 1853-1857
nation, sycophantism dies, and with it that pest of peoples,
kingcraft! So, with the most amiable intentions, does Solomon set out
for Washington, to have a first talk with General Pierce: this talk he
hopes will be a prelude to putting straight the nationalities now
drifting on the rock of intrigue, without that safety-valve which a
people fully conscious of enjoying their rights can give. And while
thus employed, Smooth does not forget that it is a well laid down rule
that many small Presidents may talk very large and yet cut very
ridiculous figures: hence his first talk with Mr. Pierce, who is well
known for general and very respectable characteristics, may be
productive of great good to mankind in a mass. In New England
educated, (that land where niggers may be white men, and white men too
often turn niggers), loving universal rights, peace to consolidate a
nation's good, and keep down that martial spirit which is its
cankering curse--being tenacious of freedom in its broadest
acceptation, and commercial prosperity with a general diffusion of its
results, it is Mr. Smooth's candid opinion that ere another century
rolls into the page of time America will whip, feed, civilize, and
republicanize the great American continent. Could this be done at an
earlier period, so much the better for mankind in general. Smooth was
borne out in this opinion from the fact that Europe had got into a
great fuzzle, the result of which was an equally great fight. Kingdoms
and empires had become disordered, their craft was stranded;
potentates were turning their people into minions of slaughter.
Nicholas (modest god of all the Russias) thought his murdering a few
thousands an act most pious: it was all for the sake of Christianity
and a very small holy _rite!_ On the other hand, there was Mister John
Bull, so dogged at times, and yet so hard to hold once his propensity
for fighting somebody was excited, hurling very unchristian lead and
steel into. Nicholas's subtle-headed serfs. But the thing most
wondrous was, that Uncle John, now foaming with the fever of war, had
got Johnny Crappo at his back instead of his belly--a fact that would
be recorded on the strangest page of history. Strange fighting
companions were they; but as pig and dog do now and then become
bed-fellows, who can give too much expression to his surprise at this
strange Anglo-French combination? Let the world say what it will with
reference to our worthy friend Uncle John fighting the battle of
Mohamedanism--let it lay at his door the grave charge of degrading
himself by seeking to make firm the rotten props of one of the most
debased governments that has stained the history of the world with its
crimes, John will humanely acknowledge the charge while forwarding to
Turkey a copious edition of his "Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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