The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [22]
There has been a civil war carrying on with great violence for some time past, in consequence of a conspiracy, among the higher classes, to dethrone his highness, the present bashaw,ae and place another in his stead. I was mistaken when I formerly asserted to thee that this dissatisfaction arose from his wearing red breeches. It is true, the nation have long held that color in great detestation, in consequence of a dispute they had some twenty years since with the barbarians of the British Islands.af The color, however, is again rising into favor, as the ladies have transferred it to their heads from the bashaw’s—body. The true reason, I am told, is, that the bashaw absolutely refuses to believe in the deluge,ag and in the story of Balaam’s ass;ah maintaining that this animal was never yet permitted to talk except in a genuine logocracy; where, it is true, his voice may often be heard, and is listened to with reverence, as “the voice of the sovereign people.” Nay, so far did he carry his obstinacy, that he absolutely invited a professed antediluvian from the Gallic empire,ai who illuminated the whole country with his principles—and his nose. This was enough to set the nation in a blaze—every slang-whanger resorted to his tongue or his pen; and for seven years have they carried on a most inhuman war, in which volumes of words have been expended, oceans of ink have been shed, nor has any mercy been shown to age, sex, or condition. Every day have these slang-whangers made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents; discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets, loaded with scoundrel! villain! liar! rascal! numskull! nincompoop! dunderhead! wiseacre! blockhead! jackass! and I do swear by my beard, though I know thou wilt scarcely credit me, that in some of these skirmishes the grand bashaw himself has been wofully pelted! yea, most ignominiously pelted! and yet have these talking desperadoes escaped without the bastinado!aj
Every now and then a slang-whanger, who has a longer head, or rather a longer tongue than the rest, will elevate his piece and discharge a shot quite across the ocean, leveled at the head of the emperor of France, the king of England, or, wouldst thou believe it, O Asem, even at his sublime highness the bashaw of Tripoli! These long pieces are loaded with single ball, or language, as tyrant! usurper! robber! tiger! monster! and thou mayst well suppose they occasion great distress and dismay in the camps of the enemy, and are marvelously annoying to the crowned heads at which they are directed. The slang-whanger, though perhaps the mere champion of a village, having fired off his shot, struts about with great self-congratulation, chuckling at the prodigious bustle he must have occasioned, and seems to ask of every stranger, “Well, sir, what do they think of me in Europe?“ak This is sufficient to show you the manner in which these bloody, or rather windy fellows fight; it is the only mode allowable in a logocracy or government of words. I would also observe that their civil wars have a thousand ramifications.
While the fury of the battle rages in the metropolis, every little town and village has a distinct broil, growing like excrescences out of the grand national altercation, or rather agitating within it, like those complicated pieces of mechanism where there is a “wheel within a wheel.”
But in nothing is the verbose nature of this government more evident than in its grand national divan, or Congress,