Popular Absurdities

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POPULAR ABSURDITIES.

Wendell Phillips’s satire was as truthful as amusing when he said—“Put an American baby six months old on his legs, and he will instantly ejaculate, ‘Mr. Chairman,’ and call the next cradle to order.” Excessive formality is with us fast taking the place of that simplicity which should distinguish the citizens of the only true republic which the world has ever seen. Speech-making, resolution-offering, platform-concocting, are carried with us to an extent so extravagant as finds a parallel in no other country.

Some days since a Sabbath School at Syracuse went on an excursion. They enjoyed themselves during the day, as young folks generally do on such occasions; but some pompous teacher or minister must needs spoil the whole by calling them together in a meeting, when a magniloquent preamble and two resolutions were passed. The one returned “thanks to Divine Providence for his guardian care”; the other to Mr. Somebody for providing excellent refreshments. This episode would be ludicrous if it did not verge on blasphemy—and it seems that Divine Providence deemed it the latter, for he rewarded the resolution-makers for classing him with the caterer, by bringing such a storm about the vessel on her homeward trip, that the excellent provisions to which the resolution referred were vomited forth by the grateful partakers thereof. Another incident is going the rounds of the papers just now, of similar application. A Southern gentleman had an altercation with a negro waiter at one of the fashionable watering places. A fight ensued, and the Southerner got the worst of it. Instead of appealing to the landlord to discharge the waiter, or to the law, or even to the code duello, the Southerner calls a meeting of his fellow travellers from that section—at which we are told speeches were made, and resolutions passed, strongly denouncing the insolence which the gentleman had been subjected to.

These may be extreme cases; but there are plenty of the same species to be found all around us. This resolution-passing, these swelling paragraphs of Buncombe, constitute one of the most ludicrous features of the day. We know of but one thing that is equally absurd, and that is the “obituary notice.” Peter Popkins kicks the bucket, and straightaway we have an affecting stanza inserted in the newspaper records of mortality:

“Afflictions sore long time he bore, Physicians was in vain.” &c.

Solomon Smith’s baby goes off in a whooping-cough, and straightway we have something about—

“—Death came with kindly care, The op’ning bud to Heaven conveyed And bade it blossom there.”

The feeling which prompts this sort of thing is doubtless very commendable, but the effect is so inharmonious, so inappropriate, oftentimes so laughable, that the good intention is frustrated, and the sacred majesty of Death is turned into a matter for jest.

What we sadly lack is—good taste. Oh, what a lack is there, our countrymen! When will people learn that bombast and turgidity only sink a subject into the lowest depths of bathos, and that to be effective one only needs to be simple and direct. Reform these absurdities—reform them altogether.