Jaalam, and (prospective) member of many learned societies. The first
paper was a derisive address to a recruiting sergeant, with a
denunciation of the "nigger-drivin' States" and the "Northern
dough-faces;" a plain hint that the North would do better to secede
than to continue doing dirty work for the South; and an expression of
those universal peace doctrines which were then in the air, and to
which Longfellow gave serious utterance in his _Occultation of Orion_.

"Ez for war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment for that;
God hez said so plump an' fairly,
It's as long as it is broad,
An' you've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God."

The second number was a versified paraphrase of a letter received from
Mr. Birdofredom Sawin, "a yung feller of our town that was cussed fool
enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a dram and fife," and who
finds when he gets to Mexico that

"This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin'."

Of the subsequent papers the best was, perhaps, _What Mr. Robinson
Thinks_, an election ballad, which caused universal laughter, and was
on every body's tongue.

The _Biglow Papers_ remain Lowell's most original contribution to
American literature. They are, all in all, the best political satires