GATHERING OF THE CLANS. MOLLUSKS, SAURIANS, PACHYDERMS.
Wherein is found a full and true relation
Of tribal gathering in convocation,
Designed and called by sundry faded beauties,
For reconstructing man’s revolted duties,
Of such discordant elements compounded,
It ended in “confusion worse confounded”—
A gossip’s ripping bee with rags to mend it,—
A sick’ning witches stew with hags to tend it,—
A love-feast gross—a sacrament absurd
Of painted demirep and gallows bird—
A woman’s carnival, a crazy fair—
A vast impromptu home-made dinner where
All projects wild and visionary schemings,
Licentious crudities and zealots dreamings
Unwashed were tumbled in—each other spoiling—
One single, mighty cauldron, hot and boiling
Till smell of everything but sulphur rose,
And made creation gladly hold its nose.
As erst, on tall Olympus thundering Jove
Convened th’ assembly of the Gods above,
In solemn council, ripe for high debate
On mighty themes and grand affairs of state;
So now, when envious hate had placed her throne,—
When baseless jealousy was broadcast sown—
When discontent had poisoned all the land—
Ambition frenzied issued her command
And congregated, drawn from lands afar,
Women intent to wage the wordy war.
By common impulse summoned to the field,
(Fledglings, eager their sprouting arms to wield
In strife, for vain renown and empty fame,
At honor’s cost and woman’s holy name,)
They met to revolutionize the nation;
To topple down all bars ’twixt sex and station—
With reckless zeal and sacrilegious hand
To upheave the social systems of the land;
Forsooth, to cast their fancied Bastile down,
And win unbounded license for their crown.
Panting, in furious concourse gathered then
This rabble rout, in uproar shaming men.
Now might be seen, with faces brazen there,
Beauty in ev’ry style from brown to fair
Widows, with smiles and wiles in rare perfection,
Seeking a mart for second hand affection.
Old maids, whose charms tho’ wholly unprotected
Blind man to seize had cruelly neglected.
Unfortunate beings whom nature unkind
Had stinted in powers of body or mind.
Whom love had deluded or envy had sour’d,
In gloomy recesses now huddled and cowered,
Chewed cardamon fiercely and balefully glower’d;
For want of affinities sadly complaining,
Or bitterly mourning virginity waning.
But baffled and hampered by fate in their plan,
They sought their misfortune to visit on man.
The usual style—men glut themselves with evil
Till sickened, cloyed; then charge it to the devil,
And by perverted ethical provision
Transform the harlot to the prince precision,
Whose zealous dupes with saintly honors load her
Dying in unction of a holy odor.
Some few there were who, still for husbands angling
Affect the opposite of rant and wrangling,
Soft, sentimental bread-and-butter misses,
Purring like kittens, and open to kisses.
Bewildered by philanthrophy perverted,
Of them naught good or bad could be asserted.
Their souls, pervaded by some sleepy vapor,
Emit a sickly light like penny taper.
They curts’y, loll, and bend with sighs and fawning,
With simp’ring smile their faces faintly dawning,
And would, indeed they would (unheard of kindness!)
Rejoice if man were healed of mental blindness.
It pains their gentle souls ethereal,
To view such waste of good material.
If men would only see just how the case is
And humbly sink to their intended places,—
Ah me! such stout convenient nasty creatures!
Such splendid foils to woman’s lovely features!
They’d be so useful in the she-millenium
As butments for the grand proscenium!
Doubtless such putty products sleek and glossy
Some purpose serve, in esse or, in posse,
Tho’ heaven knows one scarcely can believe it;
Perhaps, as floating log, when sailors heave it,
Declares their speed by rate at which they leave it,
And so assists the nautical profession,
These bubbles show society’s progression
And earth the better is for their possession.
Among the other wonders of creation
Who sped in haste “from earth’s remotest nation”
To magnify this great conglomeration,
And darted icy jets from jetty eyes
On all who dared oppose this high emprise,
There came a certain pair, free lovers higho,
Whose souls bemoaned their sex’s helpless plight,
And sauntered, arm in arm, that crowd among,
They usually were loud enough of tongue;
But, having bolted dinner in advance,
Confessed themselves, “two fools for utterance.”
Twin sisters, they were called in gay pretense—
Sin twisters rightly, in a moral sense.
Bold-eyed, they strode uneasy to and fro,
Like tigers caged to complement the show
Intensely lib’ral in their private action
They scoff at mere conventional compaction;
And, even edicts from the eternal throne,
As far as promulgation makes them known,
If framed to fetter spinster, wife, or “widder”
But empty ceremonial consider.
They hold themselves at liberty to cater
To healthy promptings of their carnal “natur;”
For this, they tell us, is a right attendant
On our condition free and independent.
Since God to rule our bodies has commanded,
We’re bound to do it fair and even-handed,
To ev’ry function deal impartial measure
Of duty, worship, labor, and of pleasure.
So, skillfully, they argue; whether truly,
I own I’m unprepared to answer duly:
For I’m not learn’d in law Levitical
Nor skilled in “schemas” Jesuitical.
We’ll therefore give a simple explanation,
A truthful mathematic demonstration,
Of fancy, fact, or whimsical delusion
Toss’d on the surface of this wild confusion;
Hoping the next or other generation
Will yield a bard of heavn’ly ordination
Who, skill’d in ethical analysis
May classify this rare catalysis:
Who gifted with discriminative art
Shall better know the tasteful pruner’s part.
Him all the world with rapt’rous recognition
Shall usher to his hardly-earned position,
And cry “What have we here?” a poet new,
Whom nature self hath sealed a poet true!
With presence prompt to grace the grand occasion
In force were seen the priests of that persuasion,
Which runs the mail across the mystic border,
And manufactures miracles to order.
Nor think it strange such birds should flock together;
For being clearly of a common feather,
They find, tho’ not in visible connection,
Their points objective in the same direction.
“Id est,” while differing in the main design
They operate a “non-competing line.”
These winnow wisdom from a world of chaff
The others suck it through a telegraph.
Of rhymster’s and scribblers some dozens were there,
With intellects sadly in want of repair;
Quite shrewdly divining their chances must be
The fairest, where patching and darning were free;
Reporters, whose need of sensations compelled them,
Like rag-men, to dig in the gutters that held them;
Sleek prelates, whom zeal for religion assisted
To garble good logic, ’till, crooked and twisted,
It argued that measures, tho’ wicked and hateful,
If righteous in purpose, are healthy and grateful.
So, deeming that suffrage and other such folly
Might possibly benefit mother church holy;
Nor seeing what future could ever prevent it
From popular proving, their countenance lent it.
And lawyers, whom oldest of records declare
Distinguished for scenting the carcass afar,
Came hotly careering and snuffing the air.
The meeting included political hacks,
Who carry the nation about on their backs,
Nor wanted the proper admixture of quacks,
Clairvoyants, and witches, magnetic magicians,
And humbugs notorious, all sorts and conditions—
The lightest of chaff, tossed loosely together
By turn of a chance, or freak of the weather.
Like Quixotes exploiting with banner unfurled
And license unbridled the shame of the world.