Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1857-10-29


boundaries of the abolition party-to in
spire in the northern mind hatred to
everything southern, and so to infame the
sentiment of the northern representation IN
Congress that battle might come Of it, and
then disunion. We don't think that since
printing was invented there was ever such
elaborate folly garnered into written essays
and given into type.
When Mr.. Fremont was nominated for
the presidency, the political millennium
seemed to these philosophers very nigh at
hand They really thought that the Gu
cumbers were going to yield sunbeams with
out any further delay. They fancied that
the American mind, through the agency of
their essays, had been regenerated and re-
deemed, and as they watched the waning of
their subscription list. they cheered them
selves with the thought that the treasury
would soon rain its dollars into their drouthy
pockets. No men ever labored as they
did in speaking, writing, through the
columns of the Tribune, from the rostrum
of the Melodeon, aided by the watchings
and fastings and prayers of three thousand
clerical allies to sanctify the bribery and
falsehood of their outdoor labor; the country
trembled to its centre with their traitorous
thunder. 20
At this crisis, Mr.. George William Curtis,
whether of his own good judgment or by the
persuasion of his brother sages we have not
learned, conceived the idea that he was
called to be a statesman, and forsaking his
pen, and leaving Mrs, Potiphar" and the
ssHovao!ji' to look after themselves, mount
ed the stump, and became an apostle Of the
new doctrine He spoke at New York; he
spoke at Philadelphia; he spoke, indeed,
wherever they would let him speak. We
remember seeing his name upon an enor-
nous poster, in gigantic capitals, prefxed
with the adjectives distinguished" i" cello
quent," brilliant" &c., with an unlimited
accompaniment of notes Of admiration. Now
and then ..the Tribune gave the public a
synopsis of the Howadji's" arguments,
fattering the young man basely, and des-
cribing his audiences as intelligent" "
brilliant" &C., when everybody knew that
they were gathered up from the outskirts of
tae metropolis, and were composed, chiefly,
of g lewd fellows of the baser sort. = -z- -
AS might have been expected, Mr.. Curtis,
or rather the people who went to hear him,
soon discovered that the talents which Gt
a man to write summer-books, or water
ing-place sketches, do not necessarily in
volve a genius for government, power of
eloquence, or the strength of a popular
leader Nevertheless, we must do Curtis
the justice to own that his theories, what
Il ii 4ho
merit of novelty. We remember one ad-
dress of his entitled &C. The Anaerican Scho-
lar," delivered before some college or other,
in which he gravely laid down the PROPOSE
ton, that the material prosperity of a ma
ton was at war with the growth Of poetry,
Of heroism. of the finer feelings Of the soul
that Holland lacked poets because it
abounded in fat farms and full barns-that
America was fastening to the same ruinous
condition, and that consequently, until the
national elbows were out, we must wait in
vain for Homer, Or the heroes to give
majesty to an Had We don't pretend to
say what the sentiment of our neighbors
may be; but, for our own part, we blush to
confess a vulgar partiality for the reign of
good clothes and good dinners, and a hor-
rible shrinking from this poetic millenni-
um-this thousand years Of glory and star
vation. .-....%+.. - ia
We all remember how Fremont fell
how hard he fell, how fat, how low. The
8" Hoaoadji' fell with him. Wherever he
had spoken, the Buchanan vote, it was OBJ
served, was unusally large He retired to
the walks of private life. There was no
hope under the !" szauc- -pooer' for the
"you',g men Of the old tan.sztes," and so
Mr.. Curtis welded what little cash he had
with the declining fortunes of Putnam, and
lost it, if we are correctly informed, by the
decease Of that respectable periodical. The
people wouldn't stand it any longer. The
experiment was failure, and the Magazine
has been remodeled on another plan. We
have had some curiosity to know what had
become of Curtis since this disaster. We
fancied that perhaps he had gone to Syria
again, OF. was composing another g tsSatannaer
Book down at Newport, or was eating
some rich mans dinners in the Fifth avenue,
with the harmless design of satirizing his
host as a ''snob' in some prospective Put
nam, or that, perhaps, he had linked his
fortunes with g the great Pathfinder him
self, and, in company with that illustrious
man, was engaged in eating mule meat, and
plotting another presidential fight in 1860.
In all these conjectures we were wrong
Mr.. Curtis is again delivering orations, not
this time before the uulgus popa.1i, not in
open lots, or from tavern porticoes, but be-
fore the scholarly gentlemen who graduate
at the Yankee colleges-the incipient philo-
sophers who are to mould the next age, as
Curtis & Co. tried to mould this
In the st. Lawrence Republican of Sep
tember %, published at Ogdensburg. New
York, anybody who has the curiosity to