urse about anything
must contain every thing. We will take nothing for granted. We must
commence at the very commencement. An ejectment for ten acres reproduces
the whole discovery of America; a discussion about a tariff or a turnpike,
summons from their remotest caves the adverse blasts of windy rhetoric;
and on those great Serbonian bogs, known in political geography as
constitutional questions, our ambitious fluency often begins with the
general deluge, and ends with its own. It is thus that even the good sense
and reason of some become wearisome, while the undisciplined fancy of
others wanders into all the extravagances and the gaudy phraseology which
distinguish our western orientalism.' A specimen of this 'orientalism' we
gave in our last number. Here is another example of a somewhat kindred
character. A western orator recently delivered himself of it from the
summit of a sugar-maple stump at a political barbacue:

'Whar, I say _whar_, is the individual who would give up the first
foot, the first outside shadow of a foot of the great Oregon!
There aint no such individual. Talk about treaty occupations to a
country over which the great American eagle has flew! I scorn
treaty occupation; d--n treaty occupation! Who wants a parcel of
low-flung, 'outside barbarians,' to go in cahoot with us, and
share alike a piece of land that always was and always will be
ours? Nobody. Some people talk as though they were afeard of
England. _Who's_ afeard? Haven't we licked her twice, and can't we
lick her again? Lick her! Yes! just as easy as a bear can slip
down a fresh-peeled sapling! Some skeery folks talk about the navy
of England; but who the h-ll cares for the navy? Others say that
she is the _mistress_ of the ocean. Supposin' she is? aint we the
_masters_ of it? Can't we cut a canal from the Mississippi to the
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, turn all the water into it, and dry up
the d----d ocean in three weeks? Whar then would be the navy? It
would be _no whar_! There never would _have been_ any Atlantic
ocean if it hadn't been for the Mississippi, nor never will be,
after we've turned the waters of that big drink into the Mammoth
Cave! When that's done, you'll see all their steam-ships and their
sail-ships they splurge so much about, lying high and dry,
floundering like so many turtles left ashore at low tide. That's
the way we'll fix 'em