Congress, and see their speeches, and if they don't, they
send a piece to the paper, enquirin' if their member died
a nateral death, or was skivered with a bowie knife, for
they hante seen his speeches lately, and his friends are
anxious to know his fate. Our free and enlightened citizens
don't approbate silent members; it don't seem to them as
if Squashville, or Punkinville, or Lumbertown was right
represented, unless Squashville, or Punkinville, or
Lumbertown, makes itself heard and known, ay, and feared
too. So every feller in bounden duty, talks, and talks
big too, and the smaller the State, the louder, bigger,
and fiercer its members talk.

"Well, when a critter talks for talk sake, jist to have
a speech in the paper to send to home, and not for any
other airthly puppus but electioneering, our folks call
it _Bunkum_. Now the State o' Maine is a great place
for _Bunkum_--its members for years threatened to run
foul of England, with all steam on, and sink her, about
the boundary line, voted a million of dollars, payable
in pine logs and spruce boards, up to Bangor mills--and
called out a hundred thousand militia, (only they never
come,) to captur' a saw mill to New Brunswick--that's
_Bunkum_. All that flourish about Right o' Sarch was
_Bunkum_--all that brag about hangin' your Canada sheriff
was _Bunkum_. All the speeches about the Caroline, and
Creole, and Right of Sarch, was _Bunkum_, In short, almost
all that's said _in Congress_ in _the colonies_, (for we
set the fashions to them, as Paris galls do to our
milliners,) and all over America is _Bunkum_.