Dan'l Appears in Washington
Poetic Version of How the Ghost of Immortal Webster Returned to Exercise Its Critical Prerogatives
FORTY YEARS after it entered the sphere of the blessed, the spirit of Daniel Webster, 1801, is reported to have returned to the scenes of its mundane triumphs, exercising a spirit's proper right to upbraid and to counsel the merely living. The evidence for this return, like that for so many other spirit visitations, is in a poem, the title piece in an uncommon volume, Webster's Ghost and Other Verses by Morton E. Peck, published at Cedar Rapids, lowa, in 1893. The author was then an underclassman in Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa; he has since written other and more mature verse, and, as professor of botany at Willamette University, articles on the distribution of seed plants.
"Webster's Ghost" is a poem of seventyfive four-line stanzas, in three principal movements. The first describes a grisly night in Washington—
The very atmosphere did seem Laden with sulphrous taint.
Black, clammy wings and horned heads Flitted before men's eyes, And thrice was seen that wrinkled crone Who nightly sweeps the skies.
The weather prophets all were met To read the portents strange. . .
One of them, gifted with special sight, decided
'These are the blest angelic throng, Come from the pearly gates, To counsel our wise congressmen In the deep things of state."
The second movement describes the effort of a congressman, nightmare beset (as must have been many a congressman in that period of shifting voters), to relieve "his over-burdened brain" by strolling about the streets of Washington.
"Oh, Ye far-seeing powers of night! Declare to me, I pray, The destiny in store for me On next election day!"
To his horror he is checked by a wan but phosphorescent shade, whose speech makes the remainder of the poem.
At length the spectre cleared its throat, Which grave-yard damps did choke, and lifted its voice in lament.
"I, who was Daniel Webster once, Am now no more than Haine! Oh, that would pain my very heart, If heart I had to pain.
"But hungry worms have gnawed on that Till only dust is left, Likewise of all my other parts I have been long bereft.
"If ghosts had appetites to lose, Mine had been lost ere this, To see, since I laid down the flesh, How things have gone amiss.
'But 'tis too much for even a ghost Who was not born a saint, To see his precepts flouted so, And offer no complaint."
But instead of the particular ills of the iBgo's, the shade is troubled chiefly by the ancient spectacle of demagoguery, first in its newer garb of the printed word.
"Vainly I seek repose in sleep, For even in my dreams I hear the tortured printing-press Utter its dismal screams.
And O, thou shade of Guttenburg! Doth it not rouse thy rage, To see thy blessings so abused By this ungrateful age?
'Each unfledged printers-devil crams His intellectual maw With the spoiled fish of politics (Vox famae), bolted raw.
"Oh, Congressman! Oh, Congressman! My very soul it pains. To see so much good paper spoiled On national campaigns!"
The eloquence of congressmen, too, has fallen from that of former times
When words were more than empty sound, And honest speech no crime.
"Their dreary croak from morn till night Knows neither change or pause, 'Twould set my very teeth on edge Were teeth yet in my jaws.
Then the theme takes an almost KnowNothing turn.
"Was it to give the human race A pit for social slime, Your nobler sires while they bled Dreamed of a better time?
"Turks, Arabs, Russians, Japanese, Egyptians and Hindoos; Irish, Norwegians, Sweeds, Dutch, French, Italians, Spaniards, Jews;
"like clouds of noisome flies they swarm To this devoted shore, Till the good blood we claimed of old Runs in our race no more.
"Your generous-minded statesmen prate Of homes for all mankind, With one eye on the ballot-box, The other 'gravel blind.'
"The plump and well-paid orator Pines ever to embrace With tears of joy the virtuous poor Of all the human race.
"And so this chaos of all tongues Thickens from year to year, Until the endless jargon grinds On even a ghostly ear.
"I hear the party coffers groan, Brimful of campaign gold, That pours into the market-place, Where men are bought and sold.
"And angling politicians drop Their lines into the brooks, 'Fishers of men,' that lure their prey With golden-baited hooks.
"The honest statesman buys his power Only to sell himself, And for the traffic wisely lays His morals on the shelf." ,
The spectacle grows too dark even for a spirit. It threatens to return and wreak a ghost's vengeance unless the Congressman remembers
"While standing in the shoes Of better men, 'tis never wise Their precepts to abuse."
A second time the lusty cock Gave warning to the sprite, Who melted like a puff of smoke And disappeared from sight.
