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of men in the State, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity: let them perform a lustration to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignatior. were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

LESSON CXXXI.

THE PHILANTHROPICAL SOCIETY.

BY THOMAS HOOD.

1. ONCE on a time-no matter when-
A knot of very charitable men
Set up a Philanthropical Society;.
Professing, on a certain plan,
To benefit the race of man,
And, in particular, that dark variety
Which some suppose inferior,-as in vermin,
The sable is to ermine;

As smut, to flour; as coal, to alabaster;
As crows, to swans; as soot, to driven snow;
As blacking or as ink, to "milk below;"
Or yet, a better simile to show,

As ragmen's dolls, to images in plaster!

2. However, as is usual in our city,
They had a sort of managing committee,
A board of grave, responsible directors,
A secretary, good at pen and ink,
A treasurer, of course, to keep the chink,
And quite an army of collectors,——

Not merely male, but female duns,

Young, old, and middle-aged,-of all degrees,

With many of those persevering ones

Who mite by mite would beg a cheese.

And what might be their aim?

To rescue Afric's sable sons from fetters?

To save their bodies from the burning shame
Of branding with hot letters?

Their shoulders from the cowhide's bloody strokes,
Their necks from iron yokes?

3. To end or mitigate the ills of slavery,

The planter's avarice, the driver's knavery?
To school the heathen negroes and enlighten 'em,
To polish up and brighten 'em,

And make them worthy of eternal bliss?
Why, no: the simple end and aim was this,—
Reading a well-known proverb much amiss,—
To wash and whiten 'em!

4. They wanted washing! not that slight ablution
To which the skin of the white man is liable,
Merely removing transient pollution,—
But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing
And scrubbing;

Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head
With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather,
And pails of water,-hottish rather,
But not so boiling as to turn 'em red!

5. Sweet was the vision; but, alas!

However in prospectus bright and sunny,
To bring such visionary scenes to pass

One thing was requisite, and that was-money!
Money, that pays the laundress and her bills,
For socks and collars, shirts and frills,
Cravats and kerchiefs,-money, without which
The negroes must remain as dark as pitch.
6. Money, the root of evil,-dross and stuff!
But, oh! how happy ought the rich to feel,
Whose means enabled them to give enough
To blanch an African from head to heel!
How blessed-yea, thrice blessed-to subscribe
Enough to scour a tribe!

While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one,
Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know
He help'd to bleach a Hottentot's great toe,
Or little one!

7. Moved by this logic, or appall'd,

To persons of a certain turn so proper,

The money came, when call'd,

In silver, gold, and copper;

Presents from "friends to blacks," or foes to whiter
"Trifles," and "offerings," and "widows' mites,"
Plump legacies and yearly benefactions,
With other gifts

And charitable lifts,

Printed in lists and quarterly transactions,
As thus: Elisha Brettle,
An iron kettle.

The Dowager Lady Scannel,
A piece of flannel;
Rebecca Pope,
A bar of soap;
The Misses Howels,
Half a dozen towels;
The Master Rushes,
Two scrubbing-brushes;
Mr. Groom,

A stable broom;
And Mrs. Grubb,
A tub.

8 Great were the sums collected!

And great results in consequence expected.
But somehow, in the teeth of all endeavor,
According to reports

At yearly courts,

The blacks confound them!-were as black as ever
Yes! spite of all the water soused aloft,
Soap, plain and mottled, hard and soft,
Soda and pearlash, huckaback and sand,
Brooms, brushes, palm of hand,

And scourers in the office strong and clever,
In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing,
The routing and the grubbing,

The blacks-confound them!-were as black as ever!

9 In fact, in his perennial speech,

The chairman own'd the negroes did not bleach,
As he had hoped,

From being wash'd and soap'd,

A circumstance he named with grief and pity.
But still he had the happiness to say,

For self and the committee,

By persevering in the present way,

And scrubbing at the blacks from day to day,
Although he could not promise perfect white,

From certain symptoms that had come to light, He hoped in time to get them gray!

10. Lull'd by this vague assurance,

The friends and patrons of the sable tribe
Continued to subscribe,

And waited, waited on, with much endurance.
Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter,-
Many a stinted widow, pinching mother,-
With income by the tax made somewhat shorter
Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter,
Only to hear, as every year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound,
And, as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!

11. But, spite of pounds or guineas, Instead of giving any hint Of turning to a neutral tint,

12

The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the color of the bird that caws;
Only some very aged souls

Showing a little gray upon their polls,
Like daws!

However, nothing dash'd

By such repeated failures, or abash'd,

The court still met,—the chairman and directors,
The secretary, good at pen and ink,

The worthy treasurer, who kept the chink,
And all the cash-collectors;

With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
Without whose help no charlatan alive
Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy chevalier, however sedulous,—
Those good and easy innocents, in fact,

Who, willingly receiving chaff for corn,

As pointed out by Butler's tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
Of being pluck'd and shorn.

13. However in long hundreds there folks were,
Thronging the hot, and close, and dusky court,
To hear once more addresses from the chair,
And regular report.

Alas! concluding in the usual strain,

That, what with everlasting wear and tear,
The scrubbing-brushes hadn't got a hair;
The brooms-mere stumps-would never serve again;
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,

The tubs and pails too shatter'd to be mended;
And,-what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,-
Though thirty thousand pounds had been expended,
The blackamoors had still been wash'd in vain.

14. "In fact, the negroes were as black as ink;
Yet still, as the committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash-

But, ere the prospect could be made more sunny,
Up jump'd a little lemon-color'd man,

And, with an eager stammer, thus began
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny :-
"What! more subscriptions! No-no-no-not I!
You have had time-time-time enough to try!
They won't come white! then why-why-why-why-
why,

More money?"

15. "Why?" said the chairman, with an accent bland, And gentle waver of his dexter hand;

"Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust, More filthy lucre,-in a word, more gold?

The why, sir, very easily is told;

Because humanity declares we must !

We've scrubb'd the negroes till we've nearly kill'd 'em;
And, finding that we cannot wash them white,
But still their nigritude offends the sight,
We mean to gild 'em."

LESSON CXXXII.

GIL BLAS AND THE ARCHBISHOP

BY LESAGE.

Archbishop. WELL, young man, what is your business with me? Gil Blas. I am the young man whom your nephew Don Fernando was pleased to mention to you.

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