Columbia, puzzled what she should display Of true home-make on her Centennial Day, Asked Brother Jonathan: he scratched his head, Whittled a while reflectively, and said, “Your own invention and own making, too? Why, any child could tell ye what to do: Show ’em your Civil Service, and explain How all men’s loss is everybody’s gain; Show your new patent to increase your rents By paying quarters for collecting cents; Show your short cut to cure financial ills By making paper collars current bills; Show your new bleaching-process, cheap and brief, To wit, a jury chosen by the thief; Show your State Legislatures; show your Rings; And challenge Europe to produce such things As high officials sitting half in sight To share the plunder and to fix things right. If that don’t fetch her, why, you only need To show your latest style in martyrs,--Tweed: She’ll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears At such advance in one poor hundred years.”
These verses, as may readily be guessed, brought out wrathful rejoinders, and Lowell was accused of having made a cheap exchange of his democratic principles for aristocratic snobberies when absent from his country. The situation called out a vigorous defence of Lowell in an article by Mr. Joel Benton, entitled “Mr. Lowell’s Recent Political Verse,” which was published in _The Christian Union_ of 10 December, 1875. Lowell acknowledged the service in a letter to Mr. Benton which was printed after Lowell’s death in _The Century Magazine_, November, 1891. It is so valuable a witness to Lowell’s mind that I give it here again.[60]
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the manly way in which you put yourself at my side when I had fallen among thieves, still more for the fitting and well-considered words with which you confirm and maintain my side of the quarrel. At my time of life one is not apt to vex his soul at any criticism, but I confess that in this case I was more than annoyed, I was even saddened. For what was said was so childish and showed such shallowness, such levity, and such dulness of apprehension both in politics and morals on the part of those who claim to direct public opinion (as, alas! they too often do) as to confirm me in my gravest apprehensions. I believe “The World’s Fair” gave the greatest offence. They had not even the wit to see that I put my sarcasm into the mouth of Brother Jonathan, thereby implying and meaning to imply that the common-sense of my countrymen was awakening to the facts, and that _therefore_ things were perhaps not so desperate as they seemed.