The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1856-04-04

OH 59aiilg lyy5 .y2ouIrpal. 80 I',tll
THE AMERICAN ALADDIN !.


T. THE AMERICAN ALADDIN. 10
When we, go out on Saturday afternoons t
tmoralize and see new houses, we usually tax,
our young ones by Aladdin's palace Aladdin
was a Yankee. He started life by swapping
ljackknivps, then putting the halves of broker
I marbles together and passing them off as whole
1 ones When he had gathered some brass, he
went TO school all the summer to learn the
Lgolden rule of arithmetic-addition for himself
land Subtraction for his neighbor.. sd5 o slss
At an early age Aladdin was considered to
be. good atia bafgain--which meant that he
could always succeed in changing worse for
a better-always Keeping the blind side of a
| horse to the wall when he had to sell it; and
The village said that certainly Aladdin would
succeed. When he left, "he will be rich,,
said the village, with more approval than it
Would say, 'he will be generous and true.o-
70 Aladdin the world was but market in
which to buy cheap and sell DEAR For him
there was no beauty no history no piety, no
lheroism. Yainly the stars shone over him
fEainiy the south wind blew. In the wake of
tie great ship Argo, in which Jason and his
'companions sailed for the Colder Fleece, over
the cleaning Medterranean--where the ships
of Tyre Rome and of the Crusaders had been
before him-through. the Pillars of Hercules,
IN a new. Wor1d-now sails Aladdin to find
fortune. To him ali lands are alike No
Homersang for him in the Egean; he only
curses the wind that will not blow him into
Odessa. No syrens sing for him, but he loves
the huge oath of1t7eiy boatswains With the
Bibf+ In his hand and quid of tobacco in his
mouth, he goes about the holy places in Jeru-
salem, and calculates" their exact site He
sees the land Of the Rumeses and the Ptole-
mics; and the reverend records of the Lybian
desert, whose echoes have slumbered since
they were tramped over by Alexan ler's army,
are now awakened by the shriil whistle of Old
Dan Tucker. He insults the Grand Llama
hobnoos with the Grand Mogul, turns his back
upon emperors, and takes a pinch out of the
Pope's snuff box. He chews with the Arabs,
smokes opium with the Turks and rides for al
bride with the Calmuck Tartals g9F,
Aladdin comes home again, and the cadmr-
ing village points him out to the younger gen
GRAFTON as a successful man. "Iy son, look
at him; he began with nothing-now see."
MY son" does see, and beholds6hinl million
of dollars-of all societies of which he is not
president, director. His name is as good as
gold-he has bought pictures and statutes
he has also bought Mrs. Aladdin and housed
her in luxury; but he picks his mouth with
silver fork. He, has home fora poet, but he
makes it his boast that he reads nothing but
his newspaper He goes to church twice on
Sundays, and only wakes up when the preach
er denounces the sinners ofSodom and Gomor-
rah, and those ''tough old Jews' of Jerusa- |
leth. His head is bald and shiny with the ser
mons which hit and glance off. He claps his
hands in prayer, but forgets to open them
when the poor b3x is passed around and he |
goes home like a successful man, thanking God
that he is not as other men are. And after
dinner he sits before the fire ii his easy chair
lights large cigar, and lookslanguidly at Mrs.
Aladdin through the thick smoke.
By and by old Aladdin dies. The conven-
tional virtues are told over as the mourning
carriages are. called out. The papers regret
they are called upon. to deplore the loss of
revered parent, generous friend, public spirited
citizen, and pious man., and the precocious
snapper of jjackknivcs, and the model set up
to the young generation is laid in the dust.
Above his grave the stars he never saw, now
born with soft lustre which no lamps about
a kings tomb can emulate; and the south wind |
for whose breath upon his brow he was never
grateful, strews his lonly last bed with anem-
ones and tioletes that his heel crushed when
living and we who are to be formed upon that
model carelessly remark. $50 old Aladdin is
gone.a last; and, by the way, how much did 1
he leaYe"-tG. ". Curtis.
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