226

BUNN’S OBITUARY BUNCOMBE
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The North Carolina Congressman Runs Amuck in Rhetoric.
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Senator Vance’s Death Causes Him to Mix His Metaphors In a Dreadful Manner.
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The Superlatives of the English Language Exhausted and Elijah Pogram Not in it for a Minute.
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Senatorial sorrow is one of the institutions of the republic. Congressional grief is as much a part of our national life as taxes. Without the eulogies which bereaved representatives pour from overburdened hearts in celebration of their deceased colleagues, the Congressional Record would be – dull. As one who has the incurable habit of reading books, and an occasional attack of reviewing. I am not prepared to call the Congressional Record dull. Anything so absolutely useless could never be anything but amusing In an ordinary library, where the books are properly arranged according to the ideas they represent, the Congressional Record is invariably placed among the belle lettres. Even if this had not been the invariable custom among the diletanti, it would now be, since one of the finest gems of obitual eloquence ever penned by an American has been incorporated within its impassioned pages

Congressman Benjamen H. Bunn of North Carolina, lamenting Senator Zeulon Vance of the same state, opens his speech as follows

“Mr. Speaker, in that sweetest and tenderest, the sublimest, and most beautiful love tragedy that was—ever written—the thrilling, the heart-moving, the soul-electrifing play of Romeo and Juliet—Mercutio, the wit of that play, is made to say, when he had received a fatal wound in his breast by the hand of Tybalt, “Tis hot, so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve.’

“And so the wound of bereavement which has been made in the hearts of his countrymen by that cruel dagger, death, which removed from time to immortality the spirit of the lamented Vance, is deeper than the soundless depths of old ocean and broader than the whole Christian church, and it will remain there until the last ripple in the river of time has been mingled with the waves in the ocean of eternity.

“And, now, Mr. Speaker, in coming to pay my humble but sincere and heart-nursed tribute to transcendent worth, and exalted greatness and loftiest excellence,’ I feel the poverty of human expression and the weakness of strongest language, for words, however expressive and graphic, are at best but poor vehicles for the transmission of those feelings, when the heart is swept by the rushing billows of grief that sweep o’er the ocean of an overwhelming bereavement. And so, my tongue is in the coffin of Vancer, and I can only bow my head and weep o’er the memories of him who is now sleeping where the myrtles grow and the daisies peep “

There are carpers—small and hypercritical souls—who might maintain that the fact that Mr Bunn’s tongue was in the coffin with Vance, would be more or less inconvenient at the outset of a speech But on reflection one recognizes that it could have been no more of an inconvenience than that met with by Mark ‘Antony when his heart lay in the coffin there with Casesar, and that the embarrassment of Mr Bunn could be no more distressing than that of Antony s [?]steners after he had begged them to lend him their ears, and they had sweetly complied with the request

The public had long been aware of the feebleness of health suffered by Senator Vance, but not knowing the nature of his complaint, can not but feel some surprise at learning that ‘ he went down like the blazing meteor, more brilliant and dazzling and resplendent in its downward coruscations than when in pristine glory and unsullied radiance it first glistened in the firmament with planets” One has no demur to make to Mr Bunn’s tributes to the manysidedness of, the lamented senator, nor to the experience, disinterestedness and loftiness of mind of that well-known and justly celebrated statesman There tributes could hardly have been expressed in more words But what are words for, if not to be used?

But the public was, perhaps, not prepared for the following statements, which inform of qualities possessed by Mr Vance, the existence of which was not commonly known

“In the fields of literary culture” says Mr Dunn, “and classic research, Senator Vance was indeed suberb, for his speeches, while containing golden nuggets of ripest wisdom, sparkled with gems of richest humor and glistened with the auroral lights of the finest poetic fancy. Thousands have been charmed and enchanted with the richly blooming flowers of his poetic garden and lulled and soothed by the rhythmic flow of his graceful winding current of mellifluent rhetoric. All of his speeches were forceful in their presentation of truth and facts, noble in their ethical teachings of duty to country, luscious with the mellowest fruitage of lofty patriotism, opulent with the gems of successfully garnered wisdom, kingly in the imperial sweep of their royal eloquence, and regal in the magnificent drapery of the most ornate diction They will prove monuments to the fame of Senator Vance more lasting than marble, for on the adamantine and invulnerable surgace of their imperishable worth, unequaled merit, superb splendor and magnificent beauty the corroding and devastating moth of decay will never fix a fang”

Living, as we Nebraskans do, in the very lair of the Corporation Cormorant and the Venal Vampire, and being acquainted, as we all are, with their unusual and somewhat spectacular anatomy, so to speak, we cannot ell the surprise that may be experienced by people of other localities at the fact that the Devastating Moths of Decay, should have fangs Night moths have antennae Why should not devastating moths have fangs? As a piece of natural information this is not without it value, and is respectfully referred to Prof Daniels of Omaha. But even Nebraskans may feel some surprise that there should be such a thing as a ripe nugget—which means, one must suppose, a juicy and matured nugget, ready for the picking This also is valuable, however, in the way of information and perhaps explains better than [?] Mr. William J Bryan could do why gold is so scarce An untimely frost must have nipped the nugget-bearing trees of Colorado, or perhaps the season is early and the nuggets are as yet too green for packing

Mr Bunn chokes back his tears to say: “When the sad news of his death was sent on the quivering bosom of the electric current throughout his native state it opened the floodgates to the briniest waters in the stream of human bereavement, for all felt that one of North Carolina a truest, and noblest and grandest sons had been stricken down like a flower in fullest bloom and beauty.”

Even the ignorant have been aware that electricity was possessed of volts and ohms, but it has remained for Representative Benjamen H Bunn—this cannot indicate surely that the representative’s name is Hot Cross Bunn—to enlighten the lay public on the existence of this electrical quality which is referred to as a quivering bosom The electricians have been strangely alient about this. One does not venture to hazard a guess as to their motives. The least they can do under the circumstances is to explain themselves.

Incomplete 7/26/2020.