THE GRAND PALAVER. IGNEOUS FORMATION—VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES.
WITH passengers and boxes all aboard,
With pitch abounding and with brimstone stored,
With each convenience science can afford,
With hellish flames beneath that hissed and roared,
A fearful dubitation rose, ’twould seem,
What kind of cock would best let on the steam;
Whether to open by singing or prayer,
Or bang a gong, as most appropriate there,
To start, with happy auspices, the train;
Then let her run, till gudgeons hum again,
’Twas argued in a satisfact’ry way,
By sapient functionary old and gray,
Some kind of canticle must first be sung,
To limber up the hinges of the tongue,
That, loose in joint, the sisters might go in
And glory in this Grand Palaver win.
Proclamation for singists to volunteer
Brought forth beldames wrinkled, rheumy, and blear,
Gathered from some Sahara bleak and drear,
While here and there, a flower sandwiched between,
From some belated garden, might be seen.
Giving this Pandemonium a choir,
Which howled and screeched with a demoniac fire.
From throats with agonizing spasms wrung,
The notes in spiteful jerks and spurts were flung;
And this the maniacal hymn they sung.
“We gather, we rally
From mountain and valley—
Our banner is flung on the breeze:
The bonds that have bound us we sever!
Shall tyranny humble us ever?
No never! no never!
Not any, by sev’ral degrees—
For man may come, and man may go
But we rush on forever.
Shout, liberty! Shout long!
Go in for freedom strong!
When woman arises
She scorns all disguises—
Then tell to the nations that wonder
Religion’s a crime and a blunder;
We brand it a fable
And soon as we’re able
Its trammels we’ll scatter to thunder.
’Tis woman shall shiver
Its artifice clever,
For man may come and man may go
But we rush on forever.
Then hip, hurrah!
Sing fal, la, la!
The glorious day is breaking,
When love is free
To you and me—
You have it for the taking.
So don the breeches,
And leap like witches,
The very ground beneath us shaking;
Let impulse draw
By higher law
And we’ll obey it ever
For man may come, and man may go
But we rush on forever.”
This song with mad applause and frenzied cheer
The crowd received—from which it doth appear,
“Music hath charms to tickle savage ear”
Like storms terrestial, this infernal blow
Died out, and business had some little show.
Above the motley multitude presiding
To give the necessary rule and guiding,
An elephantine beauty coarse and hard,
Of bust colossal, bearded like a bard,
On democratic tripod throned in state,
With visage wisely stolid, stiffly sate.
She first essayed t’evoke, like Homer’s God,
Order from chaos, by traditional nod.
Through some mishap the mighty effort failing
She rose and ’gan the stated song retailing.
Sternly she waved her pasteboard truncheon high,
While frowns the lack of queenly pow’r supply.
Quite heavy was her plaint, beyond compare,
And rendered with a true teutonic air.
“Hail sisters! brothers hail! (if such there be
From pride of sex and vulgar passion free.)
This day when woman first begins to live,
A welcome warm to all her friends I give—
This day, in maidhood’s pure unsullied name
True freedom and equality proclaim.
Here, even here, upon this dirty plank,
With democratic juices foul and rank,
Resurgent truth shall stand with new-born pow’r,
And justice date from hence her natal hour.
The place of birth, so far as I can see,
Gives no complexion to the progeny.
I therefore deem these walls, secure from danger,
As fit for lying-in as any manger.
(Don’t pun the term, nor term it pun—receive it
Accordant with the emphasis I give it.)
Eventful day! destined, if truth succeed,
To be emancipation day indeed!
My soul prophetic glows with inward fire!—
My thoughts to loftier, heav’nlier flights aspire!
I see futurity’s productive womb
Impregnant with our bestial masters’ doom.
With head exalted, upward turning eyes,
Waiting to mount the zenith of the skies,
I see the coming woman where she stands,
On reason’s height, with free unfettered hands
To dark forgetfulness cast all her bands!
Her dress abbreviate, to suit the times,
Displays the fair proportions of her limbs;
While, poised like Ellsler on one dainty toe
She points the other at the crowd below:
Thus showing at one end the bent to soar,
At ’t’other, proper scorn for man, and more.
Since strong desire, ’tis said, hath power still
To work its own fulfillment, through the will,
We soon shall see the sprouting of her wings
And rare development of other things.
Tremble tyrants! no more shall slavish chain
Of sexual love our faculties restrain.
Woman no more shall live like gilded toy,
Your daily solace or your midnight joy.
Each weak, effem’nate grace henceforth we scorn,
And will no more of softer mould be born.
No more will cling like ivy to the oak,
(That horrible tho’ venerated joke,)
No more will coo round man, like petted dove,
To win the sweet amenities of love.—
Nor pay in woman’s anguish and despair
The costly tribute to his fost’ring care.
We’ll grind the curse beneath our conqu’ring heel
And heav’n itself besiege for its repeal.
Let all the list’ning earth attend the hour
When man shall abdicate the throne of pow’r;
When woman shall assume supreme command,
The sceptre of dominion in her hand.
Delicate are we, forsooth! and so weak
Our feebleness must man’s protection seek!
Fine phrases! Jugglers tricks! the gilded pill
Wherewith man chloroforms us to his will.
Look here! Behold my muscle, and then
Decide if women need be slaves to men.
I say ye’re victims to your childish fears
And foolish impulse. Lo, these forty years
I’ve trod the earth the vestal that you see
“In maiden meditation fancy free,”
And never one assailed my vig’rous charms
Or dared adventure in their lusty arms.
If wine ye drink and patronize good cheer
Ye may aspire to such as I appear,
Eat, drink, and act like man, and manly grace
And strength will baby softness soon displace.
And then, in fullness of parturient time,
In some more favored land, some happier clime,
Ah! then, emancipated, disenthralled,
The weaker sex no longer basely called,
Ships we’ll build, delve in mines; with sturdy blow,
Will lay the “monarch of the forest” low:
Quarry huge rocks, exalt the lofty tow’r,
The ocean ride and breast the whirlwind’s pow’r—
The pond’rous train, its head ablaze with light,
We’ll drive, like arrow, shooting through the night—
Tame the wild horse, and charm the tiger’s rage—
With deeds of valor brighten hist’ry’s page,
And triumph o’er the world! So woman’s honor,
Like robe of comfort loose shall hang upon her,
To doff or don, convenient disguise:
So all the world shall stare with wond’ring eyes,
All trifles note, with imbecile surprise;
Just how she wipes her nose, how wears her stocking,
And barely smile when she does something shocking.
Such meed hath earthly fame. But I forbear.
These thema are not for me. Be mine the care
To guide your counsels well. It follows next,
That resolutions—something for a text—
Some “thema” which you may at will discourse on,—
A kind of banneret to centre force on—
Are now in order.”
Thus, her task completed,
The burly dignitary straight was seated.
And while her speech excited some sensation
Her ending fairly shook the whole foundation.
On heated brains, with scattered thought distracted,
The unexpected proposition acted
Like acid into alkali decanted,
Hubbub rousing: Sisters fluttered, paled, panted,
Chattered and squeak’d, in one tremendous frothing,
Yet bound to go the swine complete or nothing.
All, crazed by new responsibility
Skipped to and fro with rare agility,
But nought produced of much utility.
At length, while now the “pop,” not timely tasted,
To stale unpalatable mixture wasted,
In misty distance looming blue and vastly,
Thrust forth her awful visage grim and ghastly,
That spinster prim, Apochryphalia Playgood:
A tall, angular and imperious jade,
Who still, tho’ not in fame what all would say good,
By lucky chance retained the name of maid,
Despite what envious gossips sneering said,
And deemed herself a heav’n appointed agent,
Like bold Joan, to head the gorgeous pageant.
As murky cloud o’er morning’s rosy blush,
Her presence bred a melancholy hush.
She, in her haste to meet the chair’s suggestion,
At first designed to move the previous question;
For reasons twain and good—it first occurred,
And was a potent something, she had heard,
Much lauded in the halls of legislation
For forcing things to speedy termination.
But when one, wiser in her generation,
Opined the monster like to cut debate off,
She vowed she’d “go her death agin it” straight off.
A vetran oft ’gainst “death or victory” pitted,
She countermarched, to common sense remitted
By this snubbing; then from her spacious pocket
Dug up the following immortal docket:
The which, with “hems” by readers always needed
Forwith, to read, she simp’ringly proceeded.
PREAMBLE.
Whereas, a wise mysterious providence
Has summoned us to arms in self-defense—
Has brought us through “perils, flood, and field,”
(In this his wisdom specially revealed)—
Through desert places with few to carry us,
Or guard our virtue, and none to marry us—
Whereas, from man with much upon his hands,
With care of railroads, horses, houses, lands,
With love of smoke and countless fetterments
For us the hope is small of betterments—
Whereas, again, it greatly doth behoove us
To be a-doing lest the Lord removes us
Unprofitable servants from the land
And use less brazen sticks upon his stand,
Or lamps with oil of grace more apropos,
T’ illuminate his earthly temple, so
RESOLVED, FIRST.
That revelation, history and song
Have ever done to women grievous wrong,
Regarding her a weaker vessel made
For coarser man to love, protect, and aid,
While truly, if the case were justly tried,
Each faculty that fosters manly pride,
She owns in full, and mother-wit beside;
Whereby we know that cunning women can
Eclipse the dull experience of man;
And, tho’ to work is not her special mission,
She lifts great loads “by woman’s intuition”
Therefore, in order that the race may thrive
The man should hold the plow and woman drive.
SECOND.
This meeting gives approval hearty to
Victoria’s proposition bold and new,
To bore a hole right down to old Cathay,
Through which, while twilight-beams still ling’ring play,
The parting sun may dart his upward ray
And banish night—so shall bold woman’s sway
Prove harlinges of an eternal day.
THIRD.
The Maker in his several creations
Took coarse material to build foundations,
But rose by imperceptible gradations
To gases in the highest elevations.
The lesson taught is plain. ’Tis easy seeing
That man’s a coarse disreputable being,
While woman rounded into grace imperial,
Was doubtless made of gaseous material.
It follows hence he’s only fit to mate her
As under mates the upper crust in “natur.”
And last: Resolved, in solemn conclave met,
Although we ne’er can liquidate the debt
We owe to holy mother Bantam’s name,
Hereby we publicly renew the same.
This paying debts we clearly understand
Shows want of confidence on either hand.
We therefore pledge the whole of women kind
To pay no debts of whatsoever kind.
In lieu thereof we vote her now a niche,
And canonize her as a blessed witch,
(The only kind of Cannonizing we
Consider worthy of our bravery)
Whose manly inde—— no we scorn the phrase,—
Whose brazen firmness courts the public gaze—
Whose noble disregard of social rules—
Those spider-webs designed to fetter fools—
All plainly indicate her as the she
Exponent fit of woman’s destiny.
Her views of individual repose,
Must needs ameliorate the bridal woes;
’Twill further much convenience, rest, and pleasure,
And is withal a sanitary measure.
At least such doctrines logically tend
To bring our revolution to an end.
Her free abandonment of orbit high,
Where once she shone the glory of her sky
Make her in human reason’s eye appear
A fallen star—the evening one ’tis clear—
The morning star, ’tis known, shot from his sphere
Just at creation’s dawn; from which ’twould seem,
The night draws on whereof our poets dream.
But we behold in these events design
Which shows fulfillment of a plan divine.
Redemption is a scheme, as we believe,
Made possible by fall of luckless Eve.
Like problematic benefit may spring
From sister Bantam’s modern tumbling.
With one united voice we ever will
Exalt her as a spiritual virgin still.
Her busted form perpetual shall stand
By desolated hearthstones through the land.
In sulphurous flames her utterings shall glow
Bright in the midst of ev’ry household wo.
Now, Madame President, with your permission,
One word, to fortify the strong position
In these four resolutions taken. Before,
However, I proceed to offer more,
One thing I wish to have you understand,
My own, as yet, is at my own command.
Thank God, I’m not like silly married noodles
Reduced to suckle twins and drink in puddles;
Not firmly bounden body, soul and breeches
To toil and slave like Irishmen in ditches,
For man’s convenience or emolument,
While he, in Congress or in Parliament,
Sits cool like lion in his lordly den,
Jeering at woman with his fellow men.
Vipers! wretches! Of earth the filth and scum!
Would heav’n, in wrath, might strike the monsters dumb—
That heaviest curse that can on mortals come—
Had I ordained the building of this planet,
Or been consulted ere the Lord began it,
The universe one station would have seen
Of man and man’s belongings bare and clean;
One place where free’d from plagues to craze and pester,
Woman might dwell with nothing to molest her.
Where hairy lips should never scratch our noses,
Or kisses paint our damask cheeks like roses—
With pepper cheap and vinegar at will,
With none to order woman to be still,
With muddy boots and curling smoke no more
To spoil the curtains or bedaub the floor,
With flies and filth and hourly sweeping banished,
And e’en the ground of crystal, smooth and planished—
No living thing, save woman, clean and clever,
To sit alone forever and forever—
With absolutely naught to curb or fetter
Can mortal maid expect or ask for better.
But ah! when once the fates such offers spurn
The golden moment never can return!
Such sad mistake no effort can repair!
There’s no reprieve! we’re doomed to grin and bear!
At least, while selfish men control and own us,
They can’t obtain my plan without a bonus.
The sole resort is, by concerted movement,
To force adoption of that grand improvement,
Before this honorable body stated,
In sev’ral resolutions just related.
Dear Sisters! Do you rightly comprehend
Of cruel man the purpose, aim, and end?
Have you observed how from the first beginning,
He schemed to catch unhappy women sinning?
That, while confused and blind with fright and wonder
He might the more completely them under?
And ever since contrives to lord it o’er ’em
By holding up that “lapsus in torrorum”
With full intent I solemnly believe
To terminate our sex at mother Eve;
And equally perpetuate his own
By forcing us to carry boys alone?
Whether ’twas accident or nice design
That ultimately saved the female line
And keeps it, holy records fail to show.
Perhaps, one of the “lost arts”—this I know;—
Such confidence have I in female cunning,—
If woman willed to keep the girls-a-running
And stupid man refused his aid about it,
She’d find some easy way to do without it.
Retaliation is a law of “natur,”
Which was decreed by the benign Creator,
Or stated by some holy commentator,
And must be right. I therefore recommend
Such measures be adopted as shall end
In making man, the author of our woes,
A “lusus naturae,” the pride of shows.
No more let children male encumber earth
But strangle at, or just before their birth.
In resolution one, you may perceive
What mighty amphitheatre we leave
To woman open; where complete success
Is guerdon sure to cunning and finesse.
Lest some its secret sense may fail to gain
Permit your humble servant to explain,
Nor deem the “modus operandi” vain.
A tale, for illustration good and fit,
Is somewhere told; I think, in holy writ.
A righteous man whose name in scripture rings
As king of concubines and other things,
A mighty temple builded, rich and costly,
With ornaments of gold and silver mostly.
To that Jehovah whom his race adored
The house was deeded, hoping ’twould afford
Free grazing in the pastures of the Lord,
The transit smooth o’er Jordan’s stormy billows,
And pardon gain for sundry peccadilloes.
For seven years, reported dry and dusty,
Thousands of men, with sinews strong and lusty,
Labored like beasts at timber, stone, and plaster
To rear its column, wall, and huge pilaster.
Yet tho’ no stick, or stone, or bolt, or rivet,
Did Solomon’s own labor give it,
(Or, if he did, no writer ever said it)
He cunningly contrived to gain the credit,
Of its erection. Thus, to work by proxy
Seems sanctioned by the highest orthodoxy.
And is procedure, if come-at-able,
With woman’s nature quite compatible;
Thereby, from labor we may gain exemption
And so inaugurate our great redemption,
When woman to her proper “sphere” promoted,
On husbands shoulders shall be raised and toted.
I hate this silly rant on “woman’s sphere!”
’Tis simply nauseous to lib’ral ear,
The very word’s disgustingly offensive
Suggesting bounds to woman’s plans extensive;
Implying still, whatever one’s pursuit is,
Existence wasted in a round of duties.
An Irish bull—a term chimerical!
She has no sphere—she’s hemispherical!
’Twere vain to iterate in word specific
The long complaint not gentle nor pacific
Of which the vixen’s fancy proved prolific.
For similes affecting or destructive
And wild hyperboles of scorn productive,
She gleaned the country o’er from snowy Maine
To verdant Alabama’s flow’ry plain:
Ransacked antiquity’s moth-eaten store,
And drained the fount of legendary lore
For intermittent precedents to prove
The inutility of human love.
She spawn’d forth words with vast facility
And talked with ceasely volubility,
Guiltless of reason or civility;
Affording thus a patent wool-dyed sample
Of teaching both by precept and example.
And yet this brawling of such heady creatures
Is not without some few redeeming features:
For, tho’ the utt’rance is a public curse
Suppression might induce condition worse.
Surplus vitality demanding vent
In rampant caracoling thus is spent;
And so perchance avoids a sad explosion,
By action too prevents as bad corrosion;
Since woman, made of matter much refined,
Is keen finesse and subtlety combined,
And greatly prone, as seen in state primeval,
To pioneer in taste of good and evil.
In proof consult what ev’ryone supposes
A veritable tale by holy Moses.
Now when this patient had been well delivered,
While yet the panting bosom thrill’d and quiver’d,
At once there rose greetings loud and long,
Commingled bass and treble, from that throng.
Then might you see advancing on that stage
A tott’ring form becrowned with snow of age,
On whom the thoughtful gazed with bated breath,
As one might gaze on wrinkled bride of death:
For, hoary hairs, colleagued with folly,
Must ever wake emotions melancholy.
But ah! when aged women takes to soaring,
And, motherhood forgetting, and ignoring
“The divinity that doth hedge” her round,
In strange and unbecoming walks is found,
Deserting sacred joys of hearth and home,
Delighting in forbidden paths to roam.
A gloom o’erhangs the soul, like fun’ral pall.
Still, not such horror fell on all
For, certes, loud and lengthened was the call
When saintly mother Katy Bantam rose
With “healing on her tongue,” corns on her toes,
And upward rubbed her venerable nose:
Then solemnly her spectacles adjusted
As if the nation had that moment “busted”.
A harmless old gray hen who took to crowing
With ne’er a comb or caudal feather showing,
Her spouse attained distinction in the nation
Expelling foxes from all public station,
When cheek by jowl he rode with freest rider
The rallying cry “log cabin and hard cider;”
(That reckless charge and wild triumphant yell
The sage of Lindenwald remembered well)
And after, much affected gallopading
On abolition hobby, “nigger-raiding;”
Which happening the crowd to please,
Made “hobbying” a family disease.
His dame for notoriety then itching
Was worried from propriety and stitching,
And, goaded by the mad’ning titilation,
Mistook the itch for heav’nly inspiration:
And, being crazed, despite advancing age
Began her missionary pilgrimage.
She vow’d a vow, if folks would only ask her
She’d travel post from Maine to Madagascar
To make a single speech: Hence, small persuasion
Procured her services on this occasion.
So when adorers all had screamed and shouted
She op’d her mouth and feebly spouted
Chaotic mumblings of senility,
Sad proofs of nacent imbecility.
It seemed she trusted thoughts would wax and strengthen
Unlike our forms, while ages grow and lengthen:
Or deemed a speech a kind of rubber fixture—
Perchance a marv’lous hom’opathic mixture,
Whose pow’r, ’tis boasted by the science makers,
Increases, spread o’er fifty thousand acres.
She dismal talked of terrible “upheaving”
Of systems and peoples, quite past believing.
“Upheaved” the church, “upheaved” the contract civil;
“Upheaved” poor man, but couldn’t eject the devil.
She catch-words droned—“oppressed,” “enslaved,” “humbled”
“Downtrodden,” sound and sense together jumbled:
As if, late motherhood developing
She soothed declining years enveloping
The public doll in shreds and filaments
Of Ethiop’s cast-off habiliments;
Or, if she’d stipulated in a barg’n
To fulminate a giv’n amount of jarg’n,
And muttered tales designed for terse and witty
Which ’stead of mirth excited only pity.
A legend ster’otyped she droned and drivelled
Of Brobdingnagian beldame lean and shrivelled
Who urged by passion wild, by love enraptured,
A Liliputian bridegroom sought and captured.
The groomsman too, it seems, was small and puny;
Likewise the priest quite “little for the money”
Which granny good esteemed so queer and funny
It must induce a general conviction,
Unto the tall belongeth jurisdiction.
This really seemed, amid the wild confusion
Of sense, the only possible conclusion.
No other ornament adorned her tale—
To find a moral, even priests must fail.
Abundance more, as previously requested
The good dame spoke—no doubt her “level-best” did,—
Then from her painful labor ceased and rested.
Of all this mighty concourse, hither borne
By various mood, just one came here to mourn.
A bachelor, in attitude forlorn,
Who sadly grieved that ever he was born,
With features smileless, haggard, grim, and pale,
Sat roosting on the semicircle’s rail
Which there enclosed the sacred altar in;
His elbow on his knee, on hand his chin.
When now there came a lulling in the roar
And none at present occupied the floor
He madly leaped to gain the speaker’s station,
In labor groaning with a young oration,
And wildly screamed this famous declamation.
“O woman, woman; foully fair,
Thou source of bliss and yet despair—
Thou pride of heav’n thou curse of hell,
Thou greatest woe on earth that fell
When mad Pandora op’d her box
And horrors issued forth in flocks—
Thou richest gift vouchsafed to man
When heav’n look’d down his wants to scan,—
Thou type of goodness, beauty, worth—
The tie that links our hearts to earth
With silken cords we scarcely feel
Yet strong as pond’rous bars of steel—
Thou ray of glory from on high,
Thou charmer, cheater, rib awry,
How oft for you I’ve madly cried!
How oft become a tempocide!
How often suffered, bled, and died!
Deceiver vile, yet fount of truth,
A Dian pure, a harlot Ruth,
O, why wast thou to mortals given?
To tempt to hell—to lure to heav’n!”
In agony he writhed at its conclusion,
And swoon’d amid the general confusion.
While red with flame the oven still was heated
Like hapless Daniel’s seven times repeated,
And self-elected cooks were fairly aching
To have a finger in this public baking,
Some sharp director of the frothy brewing,
Intent on shrewdest ways and means pursuing,
Espied a form whose locks, uncombed and matted,
Betokened hasty rising,—or belated,—
Involving toilet scanty and neglected:
Or, more belike, he cunningly affected
Some studied roughness in the coat and trouser,
To give “eclat” as leading “rabble rouser.”
Tho’ mingled with peculiarities
His mind a storehouse was of rarities,
Wherein dame nature wrought in broadest plan,
The full unstinted measure of a man.
Exuberant fancy pruned to limits fit
A yield profuse returned of golden wit;
While wisdom, logic, sense, and virtue rung
With eloquence spontaneous on his tongue.
One, briefly, who the happy art possessed
To do the thing another just professed.
Him they beset, with gen’ral acclamation,
To “throw himself” for their regeneration.
The time was trying, critical th’ occasion:
But finally he yielded to persuasion,
Tumbled his mane accordant with his custom,
And, while he wished their vanity would bust ’em,
Talked gingerly as dubious to trust ’em.
His speech, tho’ tough enough, and smooth and limber,
Had not that sturdy, manly, ringing “timbre,”
Which carpenters of old from stock selected,
When massive structures were to be erected.
He seemed gallant, who, minded to be civil,
Reduced himself to childish woman’s level;
And, so regarding their capacity,
Talked little sense with much vivacity.
As jugglers, when their trade they ply,
Of tinsel make display, to catch the eye,
And thus have “scope and verge” to cut their capers,
Beneath the very nose of stupid gapers.
He whiles like angry lion growled and grumbled,
While mutterings like distant thunder rumbled.
Anon, wit’s scintillations dazzled all,
Like sunlight sparkling on a waterfall.
With small regard for aught, for nothing stopping,
Rising he thus broke out like champagne popping.
Sing Io Bacche! Io Susan sing!
Shout hallelujah! let the welkin ring!
Let all the male creation bound and free
Hosannas raise in woman’s jubilee!
The mighty tide is rolling, waves are dashing,
Oppressors tremble, kingly thrones are smashing;
Triumphant woman’s chariot wheels are flashing,
And bigot’s bones like brittle glass are crashing
Beneath the blows of woman’s sabre slashing.
Great is Diana! marvellous her plan!
For her I feel as never yet for man.
I could for her my energies exhaust
And deem my ends attained at trifli