actually delivered in serious earnest, and on an
important question, too—General Riley's speech,
in the Missouri House of Representatives,
February 8, 1861. It will show how utterly unlike
are the ideas of oratory in England and America:

After a long and heated discussion on the reference
of a bill amending the charter of the City of
Carondelet to a standing Committee of the House,

Mr. Riley obtained the floor, and addressed the
House:

Mr. Speaker,—Everybody is a pitching into this
matter like toad frogs into a willow swamp, on a
lovely evening in the balmy month of June, when
the mellow light of the full moon fills with a delicious
flood the thin, ethereal atmospheric air. [Applause.]
Sir, I want to put in a word, or perhaps a word and
half.

There seems to be a disposition to fight. I say, if
there is any fighting to be done, come on with your
corn-cobs and lightning-bugs! [Applause.]

Now, there has been a great deal of bombast
here to-day. I call it bombast from "Alpha" to
"Omega." Sir, the question to refer, is a great and
magnificent question. It is the all-absorbing question
—like a sponge, Sir—a large immeasurable sponge, of
globe shape, in a small tumbler of water—it sucks
up everything. Sir, the debate has assumed a
latitudinosity. We have had a little black-jack
buncombe, a little two-bit buncombe, bombast
buncombe, bung-hole buncombe, and the devil and his
grandmother knows what other kind of buncombe.
[Laughter.]

Why, Sir, just give some of 'em a little Southern
soap and a little Northern water, and quicker than
a hound pup can lick a skillet they will make enough
buncombe-lather to wash the golden flock that roams
abroad the azure meads of heaven. [Cheers and
laughter.] I allude to the starry firmament.

The Speaker.—The gentleman is out of order.
He must confine himself to the question.

Mr. Riley.—I'll stick to the text as close as a
pitch plaster to a pine plank, or a lean pig to a hot
jam rock. [Cries of "Go on!" "You'll do!"]

I want to say to these carboniferous gentlemen,
these igneous individuals, these detonating
demonstrators, these pereginuous volcanoes, come on with
your combustibles! If I don't——well, I'll suck
the Gulf of Mexico through a goose quill. [Laughter
and applause.] Perhaps you think I am diminutive
tubers and sparse in the mundane elevation. In the
language of the noble bard—
                  "I was not born in a thicket
                  To be scared by a cricket." [Applause.]

Sir, we have lost our proper position. Our
proper position is to the zenith and nadir—our heads
to the one, our heels to the other, at right angle with
the horizon, spanded by that azure arc of the lustrous
firmament, bright with the corruscations of innumerable
constellations, and proud as a speckled stud-
horse on a county-court day. [Cheers.]

"But how have the mighty fallen! " in the
language of the poet Silversmith. We have lost our
proper position. We have assumed a sloshindicular
or a diagonological position. And what is the cause?
Echo answers, "Buncombe," Sir, "Buncombe." The
people have fed on buncombe, while a lot of spavined,
ringboned, hamstrung, wind-galled, swine-eyed,
split-hoofed, distempered, poll-eviled, pot-bellied
politicians have had their noses in the public crib
until there ain't fodder enough left to make a gruel
for a sick grasshopper. [Cheers and laughter.]

Sir, do they think they can stuff such buncombe
down our craw? No, Sir; you might as well try to
stuff butter in a wild cat with a hot awl. [Continued
laughter.] The thing can't be done.

The public grindstone is a great institution, Sir
—yes, Sir, a great institution—one of the greatest,
perhaps, that ever rose, reigned, or fell. But, Sir,
there is too much private cutlery ground. The
thing won't pay. Occasionally a big axe is brought
to be fixed up, ostensibly for the purpose of hewing
down the gnarled trunks of error and clearing out
the brushwood of ignorance and folly that obstruct
the public highway of progress. The machine
whirls; the axe is applied. The lookers-on are
enchanted with the brilliant sparks elicited. The
tool is polished, keenly edged; and, while the public
stare in gaping expectancy of seeing the road cleared,
the implement is slyly taken off to improve the
private acres of some "faithful friend of the people."
What is the result? The obstructions remain
unmoved. The people curse because the car lags—or,
if it does move, 'tis at the expense of a broken wheel
and jaded and sore-backed team. I tell you the
thing won't pay. The time will come when the
nasal promontories of these disinterested grinders
will be put to the stone, instead of their hardware.
[Applause.] I am mighty afraid the machine is a
going to stop. The grease is giving out thundering
fast. It is beginning to creak on its axis. Gentlemen,
it is my private opinion, confidentially expressed,
that all the "grit " is pretty near worn off.
[Applause.]

Mr. Speaker, you must excuse me for my
latitudinosity and circumlocutoriness. My old
blunderbuss scatters amazingly, but if anybody gets
peppered, it ain't my fault if they are in the way.

Sir, these candadical, supersquirtical, mahogany-
faced gentry—what do they know about the blessings
of freedom? About as much, Sir, as a toad-frog
does of high glory. Do they think they can escape
me? I'll follow them through pandemonium and
high water! [Cheers and laughter.]

These are the ones that have got our liberty-pole
off its perpendicularity. 'Tis they who would rend
the stars and stripes—that noble flag, the blood of
our revolutionary fathers embalmed in its red. The
purity of the cause for which they died—denoted by
the white and blue—the freedom they attained, like
the azure air that wraps their native hills and lingers
on their lovely plains. [Cheers.] The high bird of
liberty sits perched on the topmost branch, but there
is no secession salt on his glorious tail. I fear he will
no more spread his noble pinions to soar beyond the
azure regions of the boreal pole. But let not Missouri
pull the last feather from his sheltering wing, to
plume a shaft to pierce his noble breast; or, what is
the same, make a pen to sign a secession ordinance.
[Applause.] Also, poor bird, if they drive you from
the branches of the hemlock of the North, and the
palmetto of the South, come over to the gum-tree of the
West, and we will protect your noble birdship, while
water grows and grass runs. [Immense applause.]
Mr. Speaker, I subside for the present.

Now, this speech, extracted from the New York
Tribune of only a month ago, was not meant as
a joke; it was a serious impassioned speech,
coloured with that peculiar tone of exaggerated
humour which has become naturalised in
America. But it was addressed to simple people
of no very great education, who understood the
Rabelaisque jargon. Only the other day, at one
of the local Houses of Representatives, an ex-
member was brought a glass of egg-nogg, in