made by both divisions of the Union. Had we been of French or
Spanish descent, there would have been barricades, _coup-d'états,
pronunciamentos_; but the English race know better how to treat the
body-politic. They never apply the knife except for the most desperate
operations. But where hard words were so plenty, blows could not fail.
Duels were frequent, cudgellings not uncommon,--although as yet the
Senate-Chamber had not been selected as the fittest scene for the use
of the bludgeon. It is true that molasses-and-water was the beverage
allowed by Congress in those simple times, and that charged to
stationery.

What terrible fellows our ancestors were for calling
names,--particularly the gentlemen of the press! If they had been
natives of the Island of Frozen Sounds, along the shore of which
Pantagruel and Panurge coasted, they would have stood up to their
chins in scurrilous epithets. The comical sketch of their rhetoric in
"Salmagundi" is literally true:--"Every day have these slangwhangers
made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents,
discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded
with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead,
wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive
enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to
compounds;--"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot
of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating
hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning
over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, those eager,
snarling editors of fifty years since, and mostly forgotten. Even the
ink which records their spiteful abuse is fading away;--

"Dunne no more the halter dreads,