FullReads

IX

The purpose of the legislative custom of “eulogizing” dead members of Congress is not apparent unless it is to add a terror to death and make honorable and self-respecting members rather bear the ills they have than escape through the gates of death to others that they know a good deal about. If a member of that kind, who has had the bad luck to “go before,” could be consulted he would indubitably say that he was sorry to be dead; and that is not a natural frame of mind in one who is exempt from the necessity of himself “delivering a eulogy.”

It may be urged that the Congressional “eulogy” expresses in a general way the eulogist’s notion of what he would like to have somebody say of himself when he is by death elected to the Lower House. If so, then Heaven help him to a better taste. Meanwhile it is a patriotic duty to prevent him from indulging at the public expense the taste that he has. There have been a few men in Congress who could speak of the character and services of a departed member with truth and even eloquence. One such was Senator Vest. Of many others, the most charitable thing that one can conscientiously say is that one would a little rather hear a “eulogy” by them than on them. Considering that there are many kinds of brains and only one kind of no brains, their diversity of gifts is remarkable, but one characteristic they have in common: they are all poets. Their efforts in the way of eulogium illustrate and illuminate Pascal’s obscure saying that poetry is a particular sadness. If not sad themselves, they are at least the cause of sadness in others, for no sooner do they take to their legs to remind us that life is fleeting, and to make us glad that it is, than they burst into bloom as poets all! Some one has said that in the contemplation of death there is something that belittles. Perhaps that explains the transformation. Anyhow the Congressional eulogist takes to verse as naturally as a moth to a candle, and with about the same result to his reputation for sense.

The poetry is commonly not his own; what it violates every law of sense, fitness, metre, rhyme and taste it is. But nine times in ten it is some dog’s-eared, shop-worn quotation from one of the “standard” bards, usually Shakspere. There are familiar passages from that poet which have been so often heard in “the halls of legislation” that they have acquired an infamy which unfits them for publication in a decent family newspaper; and Shakspere himself, reposing in Elysium on his bed of asphodel and moly, omits them when reading his complete works to the shades of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, for their sins.

This whole business ought to be “cut out” It is not only a waste of time and a sore trial to the patience of the country; it is absolutely immoral. It is not true that a member of Congress who, while living was a most ordinary mortal, becomes by the accident of death a hero, a saint, “an example to American youth.” Nobody believes these abominable “eulogies,” and nobody should be permitted to utter them in the time and place designated for another purpose. A “tribute” that is exacted by custom and has not the fire and light of spontaneity is without sincerity or sense. A simple resolution of regret and respect is all that the occasion requires and would not inhibit any further utterance that friends and admirers of the deceased might be moved to make elsewhere. If any bereaved gentlemen, feeling his heart getting into his head, wishes to tickle his ear with his tongue by way of standardizing his emotion let him hire a hall and do so. But he should not make the Capitol a “Place of Wailing” and the Congressional Record a book of bathos.