The Portland daily press., 1874-12-01
The Trihn Of GaIInre

The Tribe OF Sellers.
Mulberry Sellers has taken his place in the
galaxy of representative Americans. He is a
carcature, an absurdity-ths genial speeula-
tor who borrows ten cents while he dvulges
his scheme involving as many mllions-but
he is nevertheless living and distinctive
type OF real American and peculiarly Ameri-
can character. He is no dramatic myth.
American society is full of these interesting
wrecks stranded on the shoals of misfortune,
yet always basking in the sun. Every one
knows Mulberry Sellers at once, and recog-
nizes in him his next door neighbor, his chum
at college, his wife's uncle-the one that
ruined the family. He is to be seen eyery
day in the street, every night at the club or
the theater, every morning in the neighbor-
hood OF some cheap restaurant. Every man
in New York, every man in Washington, ev-
cry man in Pike County, knows him. He is
in law and in literature, in politics and in
business, in real estate and in journalism, in
sOap-boiling and in the drama; and eyery-
where the same odd. incomplete genius, who
finished anything in his life; whose sleeping
hours are the least crowded with dreams,
and who is always constructing new rain
bow out of the scattered prisns of the old,
OF the tribe of Sellers there are many fami-
lies, but the two great divisions are, perhaps,
the honest and the dishonest. The honest
Mulberry keeps himself, as well as every one
around bin, in perpetual poverty. He is al
ways son the point of making fortune too
huge for the use of one man, Colonel though
ne be, and he announces his step he
induces II w VITO T9 YYRRddorse his note or to lend
him the little store you had laid up against
rainy day, and shoots it into the hopper OF
his enterprise. You are ruined, and his eye
still beams upon you with disinterested affec-
tion and unabated hope. He believes every
word he says. His sincerity is coextensive
with his Imagination, and the more gigantic
his castles in the air, the more pro-
found his conviction that he is the owner Of
them all in fee.simple. The honest Mulberry
went into oil, and was ruined again went in
to stocks, and was ruined again; went into
real estate, and came out poorer than before;
went into railroad bonds, and emerged
bankrupt, though no one could see what
there was left to go to smash. And every
time he comes up smiling, with the light of
new corner or "strike'' sparkling in his
eye. He is genuine Micawber fowered on
American soil, but greater than Micawber,
for he is invincible. He is too American for
despair; he steps up promptly to each new
round with Fate-and gets thrown every
time.
The dishonest Mulberry is a less pleasing
fellow. He makes precarious and disrepu-
table living by the expenditure Of ingenuity
and industry which honestly exerted would
mako him millinnaire-ifh his name was any,
thing but Sellers. His schemes are no less
stupendous than those of the more scrupulous
Mulberry, but they are all aimed at the ap-
preparation of somebody else's money or
thoughts or labor. He is civilized robber,
and is invariably captured. He plots a rail-
road swlndle, and the reporters pry it out
with their pencils he worms himself into the
confidence of defrauded bondhelders, and is
speedily discharged; he publishes poem, land
next day sees the original and his plagiarism
printed in parallel columns; he secretly in
fringes upon patent, and is at once served
with papers in a suit for damages; he COM
mits forgery, and is detected by the first
cashier he approaches. The curse of ill-luck
withers every speech and action OF his life,
and yet he goes on to the end OF his days the
same undaunted, rascally Mulberry Sellers.
tous and influential. He has held score of
seats in every Congress within the memory
of man, while in the lobby he is aIHays in a
majority. Mulberry. the lobbyist lives a
gilded, hollow sort Of life, dining sumptuously
during the session and starving during tie
recess. His bill fails of passage for want of
three minutes tine ON the morning of the
Fourth of March, and is knocked on the
head by the blow of the Speakers mallet
which declared the Congress ended; or his
project is referred to committee whose
Ch airman, he finds to his disgust, is virtu.
Gus. He inaugurates Pacific Railroads and
lays tine foundations for vast fortunes on
which Others buile. He takes hand at
President-making, and his candidate suffers
paralytic stroke the week before the Con-
vention. Mulberry, the Member, fails to get
the appropriation his constituents wanted,
and those kindly souls burn him in effigy,
and intimate their purpose of running him
out of the county if he should ever return to
i. Mulberry, the waiter, is always begin
ming new novel which is to be the great
American novel, and of which he reads you
the frst-and last-chapter; or he declaims
his poem to you, and his eyes water at his
own bathos. Mulberry, the dramatic as
pirant, wants to star the first night. Null
berry, the journalist, starts a new paper
without any greenback mill to back it, and
makes it an organ. Mulberry, the politician,
joins the other party just before it goes into
a minority and leaves it just before it regains
its majority. Mulberry, the artist, pumes
his flight as high Dore, and lands on a
scene-painter's stool. Mulberry, the preacher
wears imaginary lawn sleeves while be draws
his missionary pittance. Mulberry, the
clerk, is absorbed in visions of promotion and
gets his pay docked.
Many man is a Mulberry Sellers who
would be astounded if you dubbed him so.
Superficial men who never learn or do or say
anything thoroughly; immethodical men
who lack the system and fidelity that make
success; inconstant men who abandon one
purpose as soon as their quick brains con-
ceive another, and accomplish none of them |;
foolish fellows who think that real success is
thing to be stolen or bought or snatched
out of the hand of Fate-the:e are represent
ative Americans and representative of much
that is raw and worthless in our civilization.
The moral of Mulberry Sellers is good, what
ever his morals may be.-N. Y. Tribune.