The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman PotterAdams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
General
The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter
Adams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
Political fiction
I would also advise him to give his thoughts entirely to himself,
and be careful not to betray them with his words, lest some
ambitious critic set them down and use them at some future day to
his damage. He must likewise sufficiently eulogize the companions in
his exploits; and though they were true to nothing but debauchery
and their own conceits, it will serve him best if he tell
distressing tales of their patriotism. And above all, he will be
wholly deficient in rendering himself justice, if he do not set
forth with the very best of his rhetoric, how much he is
misrepresented by the press, which will persist in calling him a
monster, when in truth he is a servant of heaven, sent upon earth to
raise the fallen. And when he shall have been drawn through a
sufficient number of streets, and the eyes of the curious shall have
been gratified, and the dyspeptic fifer has exhausted his wind, and,
together with the Dutch drummers, can no longer invest the jaded
train with a martial spirit, then, if the lean animals have strength
enough left in their dilapidated frames, the cortége, as it is well
called, may proceed into the Park, where the hero, if it do not
rain, may take off his hat to the multitude of rejected humanity,
(such as ragged politicians and wasted vagrants,) there assembled.
Having paused a few moments, (to the great impatience of his
shattered admirers,) that the aldermen who accompanied him may
quench their thirst, he will alight amidst the huzzas of the throng
and ascend the platform, built for the occasion by an enthusiastic
carpenter. An ex-alderman, of dogged deportment, whom the clamorous
mob greet with the title of judge, will welcome him in an address,
(he will read it by the light of a tallow candle, held in the hand
of a corpulent councilman,) written by a well starved critic on the
Times newspaper, and for which service he (the said starved critic)
was promised five dollars. The hero will undoubtedly take it for
granted, that he is as great a general as he is there set down; nor
must he be amazed if he find it written of him, that the noble deeds
of which he is the champion far outshine all that has heretofore
been set down in history. In fine, he must receive each compliment
with a gracious bow, remembering that they are employed with the
sincerity so characteristic of our gravest politicians. It being
customary, I make no doubt the address will be received with
"deafening applause," though it were impossible those present could
hear one word of it. The reading will then conclude with twenty
thousand voices spontaneously calling for the hero, who must rise
with great gravity, and, having surveyed the dilapidated throng,
proceed to respond in a speech of at least half an hour long. While
delivering himself of this speech, he must be careful not to think
of the gray haired fathers and mourning orphans he has left to
mingle their tears over the devastation he inflicted upon their
country, lest it damage his rhetoric.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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