Picture 1."A pot-house soldier, he parades by day,
And drunk by night, he sighs the foe to slay."
Page 19.
THE
AMERICAN CYCLOPS,
THE
AND
SPOILER OF SILVER SPOONS.
Dubbed LL.D.
by
PASQUINO.
BALTIMORE: KELLY & PIET.
1868.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
KELLY & PIET,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
District of Maryland.
HE following little illustrated effusion is offered to the public, inthe hope that it may not prove altogether uninteresting, or entirelyinappropriate to the times. The famous pre-historic story of Ulyssesand Polyphemus has received its counterpart in the case of twowell-known personages of our own age and country. Ulysses of oldcontrived, with a burning stake, to put out the glaring eye ofPolyphemus, the man-eating Cyclops, and thereby to abridge his powerfor cannibal indulgence; while our modern Ulysses, perhaps, mindful ofhis classical prototype, is content to leave the new Polyphemus safely"bottled-up" under the hermetical seal of the saucy Rebel Beauregard.Although the second Cyclops is yet[Pg 4]alive, and still possesses the visual organ in a squinting degree, a regard for impartial history compels us to add, that the sword which leaptfrom its scabbard in front of Fort Fisher, has fallen from the grasp ofthe "bottled" chieftain, whether from an invincible repugnance towarlike deeds, like that which pervaded the valiant soul of the renownedFalstaff, or because an axe on the public grindstone is a more congenialweapon in the itching palm of a Knight of Spoons, has not yet beendetermined with absolute precision.
The warrior Ulysses, like his namesake of Ithaca, however widelyopinion may militate upon his other qualifications, certainly deservesthe everlasting gratitude of a spoon-desolated country for thestrategy displayed in tearing off the plumes of the AmericanPolyphemus, and fixing that precious flower of knighthood among the"bottled" curiosities of natural history.