Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Paperstives, Honorable. We have a right to call our Privy CouncillorsRight Honorable, our Lords’ sons Honorable, andso forth; but for a nation as numerous, well educated,strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to giveits distinguished citizens titles of honor—monstrous assumptionof low-bred arrogance and parvenu vanity!Our titles are respectable, but theirs absurd. Mr. Jones,of London, a Chancellor’s son, and a tailor’s grandson,is justly Honorable, and entitled to be Lord Jones at hisnoble father’s decease: but Mr. Brown, the senator fromNew York, is a silly upstart for tacking Honorable to hisname, and our sturdy British good sense laughs at him.Who has not laughed (I have myself) at Honorable NahumDodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honorable Hiram Boake,and the rest? A score of such queer names and titles Ihave smiled at in America. And, mutato nomine? I meeta born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. Thisdrivelling noodle and his descendants through life areyour natural superiors and mine—your and my children’ssuperiors. I read of an alderman kneeling and knightedat court: I see a gold-stick waddling backwards beforeMajesty in a procession, and if we laugh, don’t you supposethe Americans laugh too?Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like,are folly. Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a goodman, and no one laughs at him or good Mrs. Bobus, asthey have their dinner at one o’clock. But who will notjeer at Sir Thomas on a melting day, and Lady Bobus, atMargate, eating shrimps in a donkey-chaise? Yes, knighthoodis absurd: and chivalry an idiotic superstition: andSir Walter Manny was a zany: and Nelson, with his flamingstars and cordons, splendent upon a day of battle,was a madman: and Murat, with his crosses and orders,at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, wasonly a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern-waiter,and was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dressand legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy,who told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were smirkingFrench dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waitingupon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane masquerade:and Chivalry is naught; and honor is humbug;and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly; and Ambition is20