  BY EDWARD HOWARD, AUTHOR OF "RATTLIN THE REEFER." The dark ages of barbarism are generally supposed to have been more prolific of monsters; but modern times,—the times of civilization and refinement—have far excelled them in this respect. What are your giants, your anthropophagi, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," as monsters, compared with that maximum of monstrosity, a dun? He is an iniquity, who may claim Impudence and Usury for his father and mother. He is a devouring Sin, a rampant atrocity, a thing unendurable. And then the double duplicity of the monster! He makes his first approaches towards his victim smiling—he actually smiles!—he offers to lend you money, the angel! or bestow upon you his goods; and then he is nothing but the beneficent assister of the poor: for every man who condescends to be in debt must be poor—if in want, pitiably poor in fact; if not in want, poor in spirit beyond the approach of contempt. But when his meshes have once entangled his prey, this seraph stands forth in the sublimity of the horrible—the Dun! Come, as we are in a free nation, let us talk about the chains of slavery, tyranny's oppression, the morgue of aristocracy, and the fiertÉ of those in authority; shall we not rise in arms against them "'Sblood! shall we not be rebels?" Stop. Let us first conquer a tyrant far stronger than any of these—a despot more despotic than any autocrat who ever existed. This persecutor violates all the sanctities of private life; he is with us at our meals, he penetrates the closet, even the bedchamber affords us no asylum. There is no sanctuary from the dun. Death? That may be, yet we know not. We should hesitate the accepting a grave gratis, even were it a mausoleum, near the "remains" of a dun. Nobody can answer for the force of habit. The ancients had very correct notions on this subject. There was a dun at the very entrance to their "shades below;" how could any place of torment be complete without one? There was Charon, with his skinny hand outstretched for a penny. It was not much, certainly; but it is a great deal more than dutiful sons, affectionate nephews, and disconsolate heirs, can now afford to bestow upon the illustrious departed. It is a good thing for the modern dead that all this about Styx and the ferry-boat is held to be fiction. Detestable as is the dun, there is something heroic about him. It has been matter of dispute among learned commentators whether the assertion respecting this right valourous Thomas Thumb should be construed literally or paraphrastically, "He made the giants first, and then he killed them." There can be no doubt about the deeds of the dun. He actually does "make his giants first, and then he kills them." Without him there would be no debtors to destroy. If debt be a crime, the creditor is more than particeps criminis. He is the originator of, and tempter to, the deed. Justice should really punish the dun for drawing his victim into debt. We deny not that lending money is glorious among the virtues: nobody can appreciate that more than ourselves. But to But what is a dun? the ignorant affluent may exclaim. It is this that the abomination is: the quintessence of vexation; a single plague, a plaguey deal worse than the whole ten that plagued Egypt. He is a substantial ghost, perpetually haunting a man, and sucking away his substance more eagerly than ever James the First imagined that a hobgoblin sucked a witch. He is far more ravenous than "the horseleech, who always cries 'Give, give!'" In his voice he imitates the cuckoo, having but one note, provided that he gets hold of yours—"Pay, pay! money, money!" He is a troublesome fiend, not to be laid with Protestant prayers, or Papistical holy water, and yet can be exorcised merely by a check. The dun hath an extraordinary sympathy with a knocker. For him, a knocker cannot be placed too high or too low, nor will his ready hand find it too heavy or too light. It is the instrument on which he most loveth to play. He can therewith simulate every man's tune; at the unobtrusive "one modest tap" of the poor cousin, the quaker-like simplicity of the postman's appel, the hearty rally of the intimate friend, and the prolonged thunder of the crimson-thighed lacquey, he is equally expert. The hypocrite can achieve every knock that has been or can be knocked in this knocking world. And yet, he can hardly deceive the poor tremulous debtor. Hence, since the times have become bad, and John Doe and Richard Roe have stalked through our streets triumphant, gentlemen have left off wearing certain appendages to the backs of their heads, as being too typical and too much reminiscent of "iteration" of the pertinacious foe. What gentleman would like to have bobbing at his back an excrescence, which, if he walked slowly, would remind him of his tailor's—if fast, of his bootmaker's summons? It would be planting an imp of importunity on his shoulders, which, like Sinbad's old man, he might shake, but could not shake off. Many are the doubts of the dun's pedigree. Some hold that he descends from one of Nimrod's illegitimates, for he is a mighty hunter by profession, as well as a tyrant by nature. A blood-hound he is, of a notable quick scent to discover his game, with a deep mouth to pursue it. His presumption is boundless; for he pretends to ape creation by attempting to squeeze something out of nothing, and raise cash from a vacuum. Etymologists have laid it down that he is called a dun, by antiphrasis, because he never will have done until he has undone you; and yet nothing is more natural and pleasant than the doing of a dun, nothing worse than his doings. Whether he repair to church or the meeting-house, he cannot be accounted a true Christian, as he never either gives or forgives, but merely lends in order to show that he has no forgiveness. He is the most persevering of all bores and the most penetrable; nothing The new penny postage is a fortunate measure for the afflicted victim of the dun. If he live so far off that he cannot be dunned three times a day, he will be punished to the amount only of what the good Samaritan gave to the wounded wayfarer; but this punishment will be daily, punctual as the day itself. He is, this dun, the acutest mental torturer that exists, and the greatest tempter to all manner of wickedness. Near, he almost annihilates you; remote, he torments you, racking your very soul. He is to the poor creditor what the guilty conscience is to the murderer; he can neither eat, drink, sleep, or walk in quiet for him. Indeed, the tenter-hooks upon which he puts a man, are enough to warp the best nature in the world. With truth he will not be satisfied, and you are forced to rid yourself of him by a lie. At length his importunity provokes you to swear at him, and then he hardens you into a determination never to pay him at all. He thus enacts the gentleman-usher to the black gentleman, leading you on from lying to swearing, from swearing to dishonesty, till at last you pave your way to a "certain place,"—more certainly than ever you will pave it with your good intentions. It would not be difficult to prove that your thorough-paced dun was the father of the seven deadly sins. Let us single out a specimen from a flock of dun-coloured duns: for the true dun affecteth not brilliancy of colours. He has marked his quarry. He pursues it cautiously, stealthily. He must be upon it, before he takes the alarm. Whilst he approaches, he puckers up his face into all the foldings of hypocrisy. He has gilded his countenance with a villanous smile. He is on tiptoe. He touches his unsuspecting victim on the shoulder—that victim was in the act of a triumphant pass with an admiring companion. He turns round!—where is the smile of exultation? He looks more affrighted than the flying hare, more ghastly than a tombstone by moonlight. And yet he suffers his clammy hand to be grasped in the horny palm of the dun—to be shaken: the contact is loathsome—he must bear it, for he owes the man money. "My little account——" Then comes the shuffling, the lying, the fawning—if the wretch be, as is generally the case, mean-spirited. One dun would go far to tame even Hercules—but two, with the assistance of a rascally sheriff's-officer, would subdue a whole army of heroes and demi-gods. It is a good thing for the wild beasts that they know not the use of money. How easy would have been Van Amburgh's task, could he but have lent his most violent lions some loose cash, and have discounted the note of paw of his most intractable tigers, they being amenable to mesne process! But that happy consummation for the duns is still far distant. It will be long before they induce carrion-crows to give an I O U, instead of a C A W; or that they will persuade eagles to indorse bills, excepting in the backs of their prey; so the dunning fraternity must be content with torturing their fellow-sharers in humanity, until men grow so wise as to discover that debt is nothing more than a moral obligation, and that it is both wickedness and folly to punish it as a crime. |
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