And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts State House and being
struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in the Representatives'
Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as would seem, to be
observed except on Sundays. Eloquent Philip Vandal, I appeal to you as a
man and a brother, let us two form (not an Antediluvian, for there are
plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against the flood of milk-and-water
that threatens the land. Let us adopt as our creed these two
propositions:--
I. _Tongues were given us to be held._
II. _Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man
above the brute._
Every one of those hundred orators is to me a more fearful thought than
that of a hundred men gathering samphire. And when we take into account
how large a portion of them (if the present mania hold) are likely to be
commemorated in stone or some even more durable material, the conception
is positively stunning.
Let us settle all scores by subscribing to a colossal statue of the late
Town Crier in bell-metal, with the inscription, "VOX ET PRAETEREA
NIHIL," as a comprehensive tribute to oratorical powers in general.
_He_, at least, never betrayed his clients. As it is, there is no end to
it. We are to set up Horatius Vir in effigy for inventing the Normal
Schoolmaster, and by and by we shall be called on to do the same
ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting uselessly learned (as if any man
had ideas enough for twenty languages!) without any schoolmaster at all.
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