Great is the power of Humbug. Credulous, very, is Bunkum,—
Bunkum that seeth things only as they are distorted by Humbug,—
Humbug that useth poor Bunkum’s vanity, whims, and caprices
As medicines through which to show him the facts and the figures around him.
Facts are reputed as stubborn; but not half so stubborn as asses,
Asses who spurn out at facts and bray at the mention of figures,
Figures that show that the West is the spot that aboundeth in asses.
Great is the power of Humbug, credulous very are asses;
Hast thou not heard of a quadruped, of this same genus—Jerusalem—
Innocent slave of a needy but very ingenious carpenter?
Carpenter, who the green spectacles fixed on the nose of his neddy,—
Neddy, who straightway ate shavings, thinking them first-rate green forage?
That was the triumph of Humbug over the weakness of Bunkum.
Even thus Bunkum devoureth the rubbish presented by Humbug.
True that the simile’s wooden; true that the metaphor’s donkeyfied!
Asinine also and wooden the subject it seeketh to illustrate.
Solomon’s famed for his wisdom,—Molteno’s Solomon’s prophet—
Small is the profit that Solomon’s wisdom secureth his minions;
He putteth green spectacles fast on the nose of poor Western neddies,—
The poor mokes believe his chaff grass, and devour it all with much gusto.
Figures are all topsy-turvable; may be read backwards or forwards;
Sixes inverted are nines, and nines with their tails off are ciphers,—
All Western donkeys are curtailed, thus there is no end of asses.
Dobson went forth from the East with his cranium crammed full of figures,
Figures which made the inflated Westerns to let off their gas
And collapse like mere bubbles of error when pierced by the arrows of truth.
Dobson retired from the conquest to rest ’neath the shade of his laurels,
Molteno purloined his figures and curtailed his nines and his sixes;
And all this to show that the rotten old shank bone abounded in maggots.
Dobson returned unsuspecting, to visit the scene of past glory,—
Oh! how the poor neddies brayed when they fancied the trick had succeeded,
Oh! what an asinine chorus greeted the hero’s returning!
What wonder that Dobson retreated disgusted, nauseated, and bilious?
The stomach, accustomed to good Christian beef and orthodox cabbage,
Will turn against infidel snork, and rice is its abomination.
Disgust they mistook for defeat, contempt they imagined was chagrin,—
What bad living did for our hero, they fancied their wit had accomplished.
Contempt and disgust are too dignified weapons for poor abject Bunkum,
Still they bray o’er their own self-deception—while Dobson sits calm in his garden
Smoking his dudeen, the calumet of a sound head and clear conscience,—
He knows, though his figures were stolen and mischievously mutilated,
Like the sheep of Bo-peep they’ll come home and bring all their pendants behind.