Black Beetles in Amber - Ambrose Bierce (smallest ebook reader .TXT) 📗

I know not, Mr. Catton, who you are,
Nor very clearly why; but you go far
To show that you are many things beside
A Chilean Consul with a tempting hide;
But what they are I hardly could explain
Without afflicting you with mental pain.
Your name (gods! what a name the muse to woo--
Suggesting cats, and hinting kittens, too!)
Points to an origin--perhaps Maltese,
Perhaps Angoran--where the wicked cease
From fiddling, and the animals that grow
The strings that groan to the tormenting bow
Live undespoiled of their insides, resigned
To give their name and nature to mankind.
With Chilean birth your name but poorly tallies;
The test is--Did you ever sell tamales?

It matters very little, though, my boy,
If you're from Chile or from Illinois;
You can't, because you serve a foreign land,
Spit with impunity on ours, expand,
Cock-turkeywise, and strut with blind conceit,
All heedless of the hearts beneath your feet,
Fling falsehoods as a sower scatters grain
And, for security, invoke disdain.
Sir, there are laws that men of sense observe,
No matter whence they come nor whom they serve--
The laws of courtesy; and these forbid
You to malign, as recently you did,
As servant of another State, a State
Wherein your duties all are concentrate;
Branding its Ministers as rogues--in short,
Inviting cuffs as suitable retort.

Chileno or American, 'tis one--
Of any land a citizen, or none--
If like a new Thersites here you rail,
Loading with libels every western gale,
You'll feel the cudgel on your scurvy hump
Impinging with a salutary thump.
'Twill make you civil or 'twill make you jump!



THE NATIONAL GUARDSMAN

I'm a gorgeous golden hero
And my trade is taking life.
Hear the twittle-twittle-tweero
Of my sibillating fife
And the rub-a-dub-a-dum
Of my big bass drum!
I'm an escort strong and bold,
The Grand Army to protect.
My countenance is cold
And my attitude erect.
I'm a Californian Guard
And my banner flies aloft,
But the stones are O, so hard!
And my feet are O, so soft!



THE BARKING WEASEL

You say, John Irish, Mr. Taylor hath
A painted beard. Quite likely that is true,
And sure 'tis natural you spend your wrath
On what has been least merciful to you.
By Taylor's chin, if I am not mistaken,
You like a rat have recently been shaken.

To wear a beard of artificial hue
May be or this or that, I know not what;
But, faith, 'tis better to be black-and-blue
In beard from dallying with brush and pot
Than to be so in body from the beating
That hardy rogues get when detected cheating.

You're whacked about the mazzard rather more
Of late than any other man in town.
Certes your vulnerable back is sore
And tender, too, your corrigible crown.
In truth your whole periphery discloses
More vivid colors than a bed of posies!

You call it glory! Put your tongue in sheath!--
Scars got in battle, even if on the breast,
May be a shameful record if, beneath,
A robber heart a lawless strife attest.
John Sullivan had wounds, and Paddy Ryan--
Nay, as to that, even Masten has, and Bryan.

'Tis willingly conceded you've a knack
At holding the attention of the town;
The worse for you when you have on your back
What did not grow there--prithee put it down!
For pride kills thrift, and you lack board and lodging,
Even while the brickbats of renown you're dodging.



A REAR ELEVATION

[He can speak with his eyes, his hands, arms, legs, body--nay, with his very bones, for he turned the broad of his back upon us in "Conrad," the other night, and his shoulder-blades spoke to us a volume of hesitation, fear, submission, desperation--everything which could haunt a man at the moment of inevitable detection.--_A "Dramatic Critic."_]


Once Moses (in Scripture the story is told)
Entreated the favor God's face to behold.
Compassion divine the petition denied
Lest vision be blasted and body be fried.
Yet this much, the Record informs us, took place:
Jehovah, concealing His terrible face,
Protruded His rear from behind a great rock,
And edification ensued without shock.
So godlike Salvini, lest worshipers die,
Averting the blaze of his withering eye,
Tempers his terrors and shows to the pack
Of feeble adorers the broad of his back.
The fires of their altars, which, paled and declined
Before him, burn all the more brightly behind.
O happy adorers, to care not at all
Where fawning may tickle or lip-service fall!



IN UPPER SAN FRANCISCO

I heard that Heaven was bright and fair,
And politicians dwelt not there.

'Twas said by knowing ones that they
Were in the Elsewhere--so to say.

So, waking from my last long sleep,
I took my place among the sheep.

I passed the gate--Saint Peter eyed
Me sharply as I stepped inside.

He thought, as afterward I learned,
That I was Chris, the Unreturned.

The new Jerusalem--ah me,
It was a sorry sight to see!

The mansions of the blest were there,
And mostly they were fine and fair;

But O, such streets!--so deep and wide,
And all unpaved, from side to side!

And in a public square there grew
A blighted tree, most sad to view.

From off its trunk the bark was ripped--
Its very branches all were stripped!

An angel perched upon the fence
With all the grace of indolence.

"Celestial bird," I cried, in pain,
"What vandal wrought this wreck? Explain."

He raised his eyelids as if tired:
"What is a Vandal?" he inquired.

"This is the Tree of Life. 'Twas stripped
By Durst and Siebe, who have shipped

"The bark across the Jordan--see?--
And sold it to a tannery."

"Alas," I sighed, "their old-time tricks!
That pavement, too, of golden bricks--

"They've gobbled that?" But with a scowl,
"You greatly wrong them," said the fowl:

"'Twas Gilleran did that, I fear--
Head of the Street Department here."

"What! what!" cried I--"you let such chaps
Come here? You've Satan, too, perhaps."

"We had him, yes, but off he went,
Yet showed some purpose to repent;

"But since your priests and parsons filled
The place with those their preaching killed"--

(Here Siebe passed along with Durst,
Psalming as if their lungs would burst)--

"He swears his foot no more shall press
('Tis cloven, anyhow, I guess)

"Our soil. In short, he's out on strike--
But devils are not all alike."

Lo! Gilleran came down the street,
Pressing the soil with broad, flat feet!



NIMROD

There were brave men, some one has truly said,
Before Atrides (those were mostly dead
Behind him) and ere you could e'er occur
Actaeon lived, Nimrod and Bahram-Gur.
In strength and speed and daring they excelled:
The stag they overtook, the lion felled.
Ah, yes, great hunters flourished before you,
And--for Munchausen lived--great talkers too.
There'll be no more; there's much to kill, but--well,
_You_ have left nothing in the world to tell!



CENSOR LITERARUM

So, Parson Stebbins, you've released your chin
To say that here, and here, we press-folk ail.
'Tis a great thing an editor to skin
And hang his faulty pelt upon a nail
(If over-eared, it has, at least, no tail)
And, for an admonition against sin,
Point out its maculations with a rod,
And act, in short, the gentleman of God.

'Twere needless cruelty to spoil your sport
By comment, critical or merely rude;
But you, too, have, according to report,
Despite your posing as a holy dude,
Imperfect spiritual pulchritude
For so severe a judge. May't please the court,
We shall appeal and take our case at once
Before that higher court, a taller dunce.

Sir, what were _you_ without the press? What spreads
The fame of your existence, once a week,
From the Pacific Mail dock to the Heads,
Warning the people you're about to wreak
Upon the human ear your Sunday freak?--
Whereat the most betake them to their bed
Though some prefer to slumber in the pews
And nod assent to your hypnotic views.

Unhappy man! can you not still your tongue
When (like a luckless brat afflict with worms,
By cruel fleas intolerably stung,
Or with a pang in its small lap) it squirms?
Still must it vulgarize your feats of lung?
No preaching better were, the sun beneath,
If you had nothing there behind your teeth.



BORROWED BRAINS

Writer folk across the bay
Take the pains to see and say--
All their upward palms in air:
"Joaquin Miller's cut his hair!"
Hasten, hasten, writer folk--
In the gutters rake and poke,
If by God's exceeding grace
You may hit upon the place
Where the barber threw at length
Samson's literary strength.
Find it, find it if you can;
Happy the successful man!
He has but to put one strand
In his beaver's inner band
And his intellect will soar
As it never did before!
While an inch of it remains
He will noted be for brains,
And at last ('twill so befall)
Fit to cease to write at all.



THE FYGHTYNGE SEVENTH

It is the gallant Seventh--
It fyghteth faste and free!
God wot the where it fyghteth
I ne desyre to be.

The Gonfalon it flyeth,
Seeming a Flayme in Sky;
The Bugel loud yblowen is,
Which sayeth, Doe and dye!

And (O good Saints defende us
Agaynst the Woes of Warr)
Drawn Tongues are flashing deadly
To smyte the Foeman sore!

With divers kinds of Riddance
The smoaking Earth is wet,
And all aflowe to seaward goe
The Torrents wide of Sweat!

The Thunder of the Captens,
And eke the Shouting, mayketh
Such horrid Din the Soule within
The boddy of me quayketh!

Who fyghteth the bold Seventh?
What haughty Power defyes?
Their Colonel 'tis they drubben sore,
And dammen too his Eyes!



INDICTED

Dear Bruner, once we had a little talk
(That is to say, 'twas I did all the talking)
About the manner of your moral walk:
How devious the trail you made in stalking,
On level ground, your law-protected game--
"Another's Dollar" is, I think, its name.

Your crooked course more recently is not
So blamable; for, truly, you have stumbled
On evil days; and 'tis your luckless lot
To traverse spaces (with a spirit humbled,
Contrite, dejected and divinely sad)
Where, 'tis confessed, the walking's rather bad.

Jordan, the song says, is a road (I thought
It was a river) that is hard to travel;
And Dublin, if you'd find it, must be sought
Along a highway with more rocks than gravel.
In difficulty neither can compete
With that wherein you navigate your feet.

As once George Gorham said of Pixley, so
I say of you: "The prison yawns before you,
The turnkey stalks behind!" Now will you go?
Or lag, and let that functionary floor you?
To change the metaphor--you seem to be
Between Judge Wallace and the