Martin Chuzzlewit
very harmless and agreeable one) of procuring information of any sort
in any kind of confidence, and afterwards perverting it publicly in any
manner that happened to suit him, he had determined to get at Martin’s
opinions somehow or other. For if he could have got nothing out of
him, he would have had to invent it for him, and that would have been
laborious. He made a mental note of his answer, and went in again.
‘You are from Eden, sir? How did you like Eden?’
Martin said what he thought of that part of the country, in pretty
strong terms.
‘It is strange,’ said Pogram, looking round upon the group, ‘this hatred
of our country, and her Institutions! This national antipathy is deeply
rooted in the British mind!’
‘Good Heaven, sir,’ cried Martin. ‘Is the Eden Land Corporation, with Mr
Scadder at its head, and all the misery it has worked, at its door, an
Institution of America? A part of any form of government that ever was
known or heard of?’
‘I con-sider the cause of this to be,’ said Pogram, looking round again
and taking himself up where Martin had interrupted him, ‘partly jealousy
and pre-judice, and partly the nat’ral unfitness of the British people
to appreciate the ex-alted Institutions of our native land. I expect,
sir,’ turning to Martin again, ‘that a gentleman named Chollop happened
in upon you during your lo-cation in the town of Eden?’
‘Yes,’ answered Martin; ‘but my friend can answer this better than I
can, for I was very ill at the time. Mark! The gentleman is speaking of
Mr Chollop.’
‘Oh. Yes, sir. Yes. I see him,’ observed Mark.
‘A splendid example of our na-tive raw material, sir?’ said Pogram,
interrogatively.
‘Indeed, sir!’ cried Mark.
The Honourable Elijah Pogram glanced at his friends as though he would
have said, ‘Observe this! See what follows!’ and they rendered tribute
to the Pogram genius by a gentle murmur.
‘Our fellow-countryman is a model of a man, quite fresh from Natur’s
mould!’ said Pogram, with enthusiasm. ‘He is a true-born child of this
free hemisphere! Verdant as the mountains of our country; bright and
flowing as our mineral Licks; unspiled by withering conventionalities
as air our broad and boundless Perearers! Rough he may be. So air
our Barrs. Wild he may be. So air our Buffalers. But he is a child of
Natur’, and a child of Freedom; and his boastful answer to the Despot
and the Tyrant is, that his bright home is in the Settin Sun.’
Part of this referred to Chollop, and part to a Western postmaster, who,
being a public defaulter not very long before (a character not at all
uncommon in America), had been removed from office; and on whose behalf
Mr Pogram (he voted for Pogram) had thundered the last sentence from
his seat in Congress, at the head of an unpopular President. It told
brilliantly; for the bystanders were delighted, and one of them said to
Martin, ‘that he guessed he had now seen something of the eloquential
aspect of our country, and was chawed up pritty small.’
Mr Pogram waited until his hearers were calm again, before he said to
Mark:
‘You do not seem to coincide, sir?’
‘Why,’ said Mark, ‘I didn’t like him much; and that’s the truth, sir. I
thought he was a bully; and I didn’t admire his carryin’ them murderous
little persuaders, and being so ready to use ‘em.’
‘It’s singler!’ said Pogram, lifting his umbrella high enough to
look all round from under it. ‘It’s strange! You observe the settled
opposition to our Institutions which pervades the British mind!’
‘What an extraordinary people you are!’ cried Martin. ‘Are Mr Chollop
and the class he represents, an Institution here? Are pistols with
revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things,
Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal
combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets,
your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are
among the Institutions of the great republic!’
The moment the words passed his lips, the Honourable Elijah Pogram
looked round again.
‘This morbid hatred of our Institutions,’ he observed, ‘is quite a study
for the psychological observer. He’s alludin’ to Repudiation now!’
‘Oh! you may make anything an Institution if you like,’ said Martin,
laughing, ‘and I confess you had me there, for you certainly have made
that one. But the greater part of these things are one Institution with
us, and we call it by the generic name of Old Bailey!’
The bell being rung for dinner at this moment, everybody ran away
into the cabin, whither the Honourable Elijah Pogram fled with such
precipitation that he forgot his umbrella was up, and fixed it so
tightly in the cabin door that it could neither be let down nor got out.
For a minute or so this accident created a perfect rebellion among the
hungry passengers behind, who, seeing the dishes, and hearing the knives
and forks at work, well knew what would happen unless they got there
instantly, and were nearly mad; while several virtuous citizens at the
table were in deadly peril of choking themselves in their unnatural
efforts to get rid of all the meat before these others came.
They carried the umbrella by storm, however, and rushed in at the
breach. The Honourable Elijah Pogram and Martin found themselves, after
a severe struggle, side by side, as they might have come together in the
pit of a London theatre; and for four whole minutes afterwards, Pogram
was snapping up great blocks of everything he could get hold of, like a
raven. When he had taken this unusually protracted dinner, he began
to talk to Martin; and begged him not to have the least delicacy in
speaking with perfect freedom to him, for he was a calm philosopher.
Which Martin was extremely glad to hear; for he had begun to speculate
on Elijah being a disciple of that other school of republican
philosophy, whose noble sentiments are carved with knives upon a pupil’s
body, and written, not with pen and ink, but tar and feathers.
‘What do you think of my countrymen who are present, sir?’ inquired
Elijah Pogram.
‘Oh! very pleasant,’ said Martin.
They were a very pleasant party. No man had spoken a word; every one had
been intent, as usual, on his own private gorging; and the greater part
of the company were decidedly dirty feeders.
The Honourable Elijah Pogram looked at Martin as if he thought ‘You
don’t mean that, I know!’ and he was soon confirmed in this opinion.
Sitting opposite to them was a gentleman in a high state of tobacco, who
wore quite a little beard, composed of the overflowing of that weed, as
they had dried about his mouth and chin; so common an ornament that it
would scarcely have attracted Martin’s observation, but that this good
citizen, burning to assert his equality against all comers, sucked his
knife for some moments, and made a cut with it at the butter, just as
Martin was in the act of taking some. There was a juiciness about the
deed that might have sickened a scavenger.
When Elijah Pogram (to whom this was an every-day incident) saw that
Martin put the plate away, and took no butter, he was quite delighted,
and said,
‘Well! The morbid hatred of you British to the Institutions of our
country is as-TONishing!’
‘Upon my life!’ cried Martin, in his turn. ‘This is the most wonderful
community that ever existed. A man deliberately makes a hog of himself,
and THAT’S an Institution!’
‘We have no time to ac-quire forms, sir,’ said Elijah Pogram.
‘Acquire!’ cried Martin. ‘But it’s not a question of acquiring anything.
It’s a question of losing the natural politeness of a savage, and that
instinctive good breeding which admonishes one man not to offend and
disgust another. Don’t you think that man over the way, for instance,
naturally knows better, but considers it a very fine and independent
thing to be a brute in small matters?’
‘He is a na-tive of our country, and is nat’rally bright and spry, of
course,’ said Mr Pogram.
‘Now, observe what this comes to, Mr Pogram,’ pursued Martin. ‘The
mass of your countrymen begin by stubbornly neglecting little social
observances, which have nothing to do with gentility, custom, usage,
government, or country, but are acts of common, decent, natural, human
politeness. You abet them in this, by resenting all attacks upon their
social offences as if they were a beautiful national feature. From
disregarding small obligations they come in regular course to disregard
great ones; and so refuse to pay their debts. What they may do, or what
they may refuse to do next, I don’t know; but any man may see if he
will, that it will be something following in natural succession, and a
part of one great growth, which is rotten at the root.’
The mind of Mr Pogram was too philosophical to see this; so they went on
deck again, where, resuming his former post, he chewed until he was in a
lethargic state, amounting to insensibility.
After a weary voyage of several days, they came again to that same wharf
where Mark had been so nearly left behind, on the night of starting for
Eden. Captain Kedgick, the landlord, was standing there, and was greatly
surprised to see them coming from the boat.
‘Why, what the ‘tarnal!’ cried the Captain. ‘Well! I do admire at this,
I do!’
‘We can stay at your house until to-morrow, Captain, I suppose?’ said
Martin.
‘I reckon you can stay there for a twelvemonth if you like,’ retorted
Kedgick coolly. ‘But our people won’t best like your coming back.’
‘Won’t like it, Captain Kedgick!’ said Martin.
‘They did expect you was a-going to settle,’ Kedgick answered, as he
shook his head. ‘They’ve been took in, you can’t deny!’
‘What do you mean?’ cried Martin.
‘You didn’t ought to have received ‘em,’ said the Captain. ‘No you
didn’t!’
‘My good friend,’ returned Martin, ‘did I want to receive them? Was
it any act of mine? Didn’t you tell me they would rile up, and that I
should be flayed like a wild cat--and threaten all kinds of vengeance,
if I didn’t receive them?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ returned the Captain. ‘But when our people’s
frills is out, they’re starched up pretty stiff, I tell you!’
With that, he fell into the rear to walk with Mark, while Martin and
Elijah Pogram went on to the National.
‘We’ve come back alive, you see!’ said Mark.
‘It ain’t the thing I did expect,’ the Captain grumbled. ‘A man ain’t
got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views. Our
fashionable people wouldn’t have attended his le-vee, if they had know’d
it.’
Nothing mollified the Captain, who persisted in taking it very ill
that they had not both died in Eden. The boarders at the National felt
strongly on the subject too; but it happened by good fortune that they
had not much time to think about this grievance, for it was suddenly
determined to pounce upon the Honourable Elijah Pogram, and give HIM a
le-vee forthwith.
As the general evening meal of the house was over before the arrival of
the boat, Martin, Mark, and Pogram were taking tea and fixings at the
public table by themselves, when the deputation entered to announce this
honour; consisting of six gentlemen boarders and a very shrill boy.
‘Sir!’ said the spokesman.
‘Mr Pogram!’ cried the shrill boy.
The spokesman thus reminded of the shrill boy’s presence, introduced
him. ‘Doctor Ginery Dunkle, sir. A gentleman of great poetical elements.
He has recently jined us here, sir, and is an acquisition to us, sir,
I do assure you. Yes, sir. Mr Jodd, sir. Mr Izzard, sir. Mr Julius Bib,
sir.’
‘Julius Washington Merryweather Bib,’ said the gentleman himself TO
himself.
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Excuse me. Mr Julius Washington Merryweather
Bib, sir; a gentleman in the lumber line, sir, and much esteemed.
Colonel Groper, sir. Pro-fessor Piper, sir. My own name, sir, is Oscar