New-York tribune., 1874-11-19
THE TRIBE or SELLERS.

galaxy of representative Americans. lie Is
caricature, an absurdity-this genial spcculator
who bOrrows ten cents while he divulgeS his
scheme involving as many mlllons-but nc is
nevertheless living and distinctive type OF
real American and peculiarly American char
acter. 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 recognizes Ill
him his next door neighbor, his chum at col
lege, his wife's unclc-the one that ruined the
family. lie is to be seen every day in the
street, every night at the club or the theater,
every morning in the neighborhood OF some
cheap restaurant. Every man in New-York,
every man in Washington, every man in Pike
County, knows him. lie 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 everywhere the same odd,
incomplete genius, who never more than half
began, half did or half finished anything in
his life; whose sleeping hours are the least
crowded with dreams, and who is always con-
structing q new rainbow out OF the scattered
prIsms of the old.
Of the tribe of Sellers there are many fami-
lies, but the two great divisions are, per-
haps, the honest and the dishonest. The
honest Mulberry keeps himself. as well as
every one around him, in perpetual pow
erty. He is always on the point or
making a fortune too huge for the use OF
one man, Colonel though he be, and he an
nounces his intention of sharing it with you;
as preliminary step he induces you to
indorse his note or to lend him the little store
you had Laid up against II rainy day, and shoots
it into the hopper Of his enterprise. You are
ruined and his eye still beams upon you with
disinterested affection and undated 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; went into
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 a new "cOrner" or
"strike" sparkling in his eye. He is genuine
Micawber howered on American soil, but
greater than Micawber, for he is inyincible.
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 tho expenditure of ingenuity
and industry which honestly exerted would
make him a mllionaire-if his name was any
thing but Sellers. His schemes are no less
thou Of no
Mulberry, but they are all aimed at the ap-
preparation of somebody else's money or
thoughts or labor. He is q civilized robber,
and is invariably captured. He plots rail-
road swindle, and the reporters pry it out
with their pencils; he worms himself into the
confidence of defrauded bondholders, and is
speedily discharged; he publishes a poem, and
next day sees the original and his plagiarism
printed in parallel columns; he secretly in
fringes upon a patent and is at once served
with papers in suit for damages .he COM
mits q forgery, and is detected by the first
cashier he anccr.cc::.cchi:3Gs The curse Of lluck
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.
At Washington, Mulberry Sellers is ubqui-
tous aud influential He has held score Of
seats in every Congress within the memory
of man, while in the lobby he is always in a
majority. Mulberry, the lobbyist, lives a
gilded, hollow sort of life, dining sumptuously
during the session and starving during the
recess. His bill fails of passage for want of
three minutes time on the morning of the
Fourth of March, and is knocked on
the head by the blow of the Speakers
mallet which declares the Congress
ended; or his project is referred to
Committee whose Chairman, he finds to his
disgust, is virtuOus. He inaugurates Pacific
Railroads and lays the foundations for vast
fortunes on which others build. He takes
hand at President-making and his candidate
suffers q paralytic stroke the week before the
Convention. Mulberry, the Member, fails to
get the appropriation his constituents wanted,
and those kindly souls burn him in eliigy, and
intimate their purpose OF running him out of
the county if he should ever return to it.
Mulberry, the writer, is always beginning o
new novel which is to be the great American
novel, and of which he reads you the first
and last-chapter; or he declaims his poem
to you, and his eyes water at his own bathOs.
Mulberry, the dramatic asDirant, wants to star
the first night. Mulberry. the journalist, starts
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 minority and leaves it just be-
fore it regans Its majority. Mulberry, the
artist, plumes his flight as high as Dore, and
lands Oh q scene-painters stool. Mulberry tho
preacher, wears imaginary lawn sleeves while
he draws his missionary pittapce, Mulberry.