Lob 812

BOSTON:

SAMUEL COLMAN.

1837.

1068

Ente red according to Act of Congress, in the year 1837, By THOMAS G. FESSENDEN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

713.74

Tuttle, Weeks & Dennett, Printers, 17 School St.

BUHR/GRAD
Gift

04/04/05

ABM

INTRODUCTION

TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

The following was written for the last edition of Tractoration, but omitted with the hope that reformation might supersede the necessity of castigation.

A Sublimated Proem

To Dr Caustic's Poem.

WOODEN BOOKSELLERS, MISERIES OF
AUTHORSHIP.

I, DOCTOR CAUSTIC, hew'd a brood
Of BOOKSELLERS from Peperidge wood,*
So tough that heav'n's own thunder hit it,
But met its match, and could not split it.

Said wood, the essence of nodosity,"
To use the phrase of old Pomposity,
Was just the thing for our display
Of "locomote automata."

*Peperidge wood is a species of Platanus, sometimes called Gum-tree, so very unwedgable that it cannot be riven by thunder.-See Michaux, vol. iii. p. 36.

Chaps, made of chips, and rougher, Sirs,
Than cross-cut saws, or chesnut burrs,
And ninetynine times more close fisted
Than misers doubled and hard twisted.

We made an acid gas inflation
Their principle of animation,
Their souls without responsibility
Shaved from the tip end of nihility.

Then taught them every art, by dint
Of which a Jew may skin a flint;

Harden'd their hearts, like mason's trowels,
But could n't afford them brains nor bowels.

Thus, notwithstanding their stolidity,
By dint of cunning and cupidity,
They soon became, though paltry things,
As proud as peers, as rich as kings.

More than nine tenths of all that's made
By hard work at our author's trade,
Stretches the pockets of said sinners,
While we may whistle for our dinners.

Reader, art thou possess'd by pride,
Which may, unless 't is nullified,