He was bestridden by sprigs of royalty as long ago as when Absolom the lengthy-locked rode under the boughs of a great oak, wherein his hair became entangled, "and the Mule that was under him went away,"--thus sayeth the Scriptures! Unspeakable Mule, fraught with immeasurable destinies! Had he stood until great David's shear-bearers could come up and cut loose the best-beloved, the whole current of Israel's history might have changed, saving vast research to the modern sensational divine working a heresy advertisement for all there is in it. Solomon, next-beloved, might never have reigned; his superfluous seven hundred wives and his indispensable three hundred concubines, with their lissome, lightsome round of free hand riots, internal and interminable, might never have been accumulated; neither seen the sparkle of his three thousand proverbs, nor heard the ripple of his songs a thousand and five.
It is thus manifest that although this interesting hybrid is virtually an afterthought, he is not one of those later-day improvements in a chronic state of apology. This is authentic. It is also reassuring to such typical, representative citizens weighing three hundred pounds each as still have misgivings. Had the speechless unspeakable Mule been simply an unperfected modern invention in the rough, his hair not yet dry, his effectiveness and hope of glory would have been greatly lessened. The surviving boasters "ablest to be heard" now on grassy village streets, with two million major-generals, colonels, first sergeants and other soldiers, might never have been able to suppress the most causeless and wicked rebellion ever waged by an army of barefooted chevaliers, fed on corn meal, sporadic acid and gunpowder, always in light marching order. N. B. They were always in hard fighting order likewise, since by an eternal law increment of bile is superinduced by shrinkage of commissariat.
Almost any mediocre can compile a mass of information from the cyclopedia. Even the vague enthusiast who goes through the world wearing an air of crushed strawberry resignation on his face and shaking hands with one finger can do that. But it is not the desideratum in a matter of this sort.
People prefer to see things step out with stereoscopic rotundity. Like the juvenile Lochinvar, they stay not for stone and stop not for air brakes. They demand the decentralization of apothegms. They desire sculpture from a chisel that, ignoring down and dimple, cuts thought and carves breath from the marble, without risk of challenge for implied bias. In the absence of stone-cutters, let a cyclopedia furnish from its cold-storage vaults some preliminary fundamentals. If they be plain, ascertainable, intelligible statements of fact, clothed in tights as it were, devoid of frills and amplifications, so much the better--and briefer! I quote: