y of eternal bliss?
Why, no--the simple end and aim was this--
Reading a well-known proverb much amiss--
To wash and whiten 'em!

They look'd so ugly in their sable hides:
So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot
Of sooty sweeps, or colliers, and besides,
However the poor elves
Might wash themselves,
Nobody knew if they were clean or not--
On Nature's fairness they were quite a blot!
Not to forget more serious complaints
That even while they join'd in pious hymn,
So black they were and grim,
In face and limb,
They look'd like Devils, tho' they sang like Saints!
The thing was undeniable!
They wanted washing! not that slight ablution
To which the skin of the White Man is liable,
Merely removing transient pollution--
But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing
And scrubbing,
Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head
With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather,
And pails of water--hottish rather,
But not so boiling as to turn 'em red!

So spoke the philanthropic man
Who laid, and hatch'd, and nursed the plan--
And oh! to view its glorious consummation!
The brooms and mops,
The tubs and slops,
The baths and brushes in full operation!
To see each Crow, or Jim or John,
Go in a raven and come out a swan!
While fair as Cavendishes, Vanes, and Russels,
Black Venus rises from the soapy surge,
And all the little Niggerlings emerge
As lily-white as mussels.

Sweet was the vision--but alas!
However in prospectus bright and sunny,
To bring such visionary scenes to pass
One thing was requisite, and that was--money!
Money, that pays the laundress and her bills,
For socks and collars, shirts and frills,
Cravats and kerchiefs--money, without which
The negroes must remain as dark as pitch;
A thing to make all Christians sad and shivery,
To think of millions of immortal souls
Dwelling in bodies black as coals,
And living--so to speak--in Satan's livery!

Money--the root of evil,--dross, and stuff!
But oh! how happy ought the rich to feel,
Whose means enable them to give enough
To blanch an African from head to heel!
How blessed--yea, thrice blessed--to subscribe
Enough to scour a tribe!
While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one,
Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know
He helped to bleach a Hottentot's great toe,
Or little one!

Moved by this logic, or appall'd,
To persons of a certain turn so proper,
The money came when call'd,