Mr. Editur, Sur: At this time I ain't as much in favor of soft money as I was. I don't want to raise no rumpus nor hurt nobody's feelings, but somehow I'm injured from pekuliar sirkumstances to express my opinyun about the way my finanses have been managed by other people.
I would hav writ something about it before, but I thought maybe Guvner Brown would think I was a leaning up to him, and he might insist on makina me one of his side.
Now I'm agin Joseph, and I'm agin all his messages, and cabbages,
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and proklamashuns, and aspirations, and abominations.
I hain't seen his last great bill of inditement, but from the sillybust of it which appeared in your paper, I'm prepared to say that I would like to experiment on him, and see if Solomon writ the truth in the 22d verse and 27th chapter of Proverbs.
I would make the juice fly till I was satisfied, sartin.
But I started to write a few paragraphs on the currency.
Mr. Trenhome, I suppose, are a mity smart man, and knows how to run the money macbeen, but shorely he don't know how the last currency bill affects me and my naburs.
I don't know nothing about bankina nor finesheering, nor the like of that, but I can't be honeyfuggled as to how my money comes and as to how it goes.
I know how proud I was of the first confederate bill that crossed the feel of my fingers.
How keerfully I put it low down in my breeches pocket, and kept my hand on it all the way home.
I felt proud bekause the Confederacy owed me. Think, says I to myself, this is a big thing sertin, and I'll invest my bottom dollar in this kind of money, and lay it away for hard times.
Well. After while, Mr. Memminger, or Congress, or somebody, got up a bill, the substance of which were about as follows: “Mr. Arp, Sur: I bought sum supplies from you for my army, and I give you my notes.
Now, if you will consolidate 'em and wait twenty years for the money, I'll pay you four per cent interest.
If you won't do it, I'll repudiate one third of the debt, and I won't take any of it for what you owe me for taxes.”
Mr. Editur, it didn't take two to make that bargain — it only took one.
I hurried off to the Agency and consolidated.
They took my money and give me a little sickly scrap of yaller printina about the size of a thumb-paper, and I kep it, ontil I was obliged to hav some change, and I sold it to a white man for fifty cents in the dollar.
I took my pay in a passel of hundred dollar bills, drawina intrust at two cents a day, and having a pickter of an ingine pullen a train of kars rite under a telegraph wire, and the steam a bilina out all over it. Think, says I to myself, this here is a big thing sartin and shore, for it's the right size, and it's drawina intrust, and it's good for taxes durina the war, for it says so on the upper left-hand corner.
Now, Mr. Trenhome, N. B., take notis.
You came into offis, and then you, or Congress, or somebody, fixed up a bill which says in substance: “Oh!
see here, Mr. Arp.
We forget about them intrust notes when we made you fund your other money.
You must come up in a few days and fund them too. If you don't you can keep 'em, but we won't pay you any more intrust after the first of January, 1865, and we will tax 'em five per sent, and we won't take 'em for any thing you owe us.”
Well, I concluded to hold on to 'em, intrust or no intrust, tax or no tax, for I've got to spend 'em very soon and they are more convenient than thum papers, I put 'em on the market, and the very best offer I could git was fifty cents on the dollar and the intrust thrown in. I thought that the merchants had combined to swindle me, but I got hold of a paper containina your last big currency bill, and its language to me are in substance as follers:
Mr. Arp, Sur: Since the seventeenth day of February, 1864, we've borrowed a heap of money, and give our notes called the new isshew. Now we want to make the holders come up and fund those notes, and we are going to mortgage cotton and corn enuf to secure 'em. As for them intrust bills of yours, we can't do any thing for 'em — the fact is, we have left 'em out in the cold. It will take all the cotton and corn to sekure the new isshew. Oh! see here, Mr Arp, you'll have to bring over your cotton and grain to help us out, for we are bound to have it. Good morning, sur.That's it, exactly, Mr. Trenhome. That's the way it works me and my naburs. We can't help ourselves, but it's a hurtina us way down in our buzzums. I had six hundred dollars of the old ishew, and I promised Mrs. Arp some of it to buy her a cow. The fundina business rejuced it to three hundred in them intrust notes. Your currency bill has put them down to one hundred and fifty, and it won't buy the hide and taller of a flatwoods heifer. I never hear my offspring cry for milk, but what I think of you affexionately, and exklaim, “Hard, hard, indeed, is the contest for freedom and the struggle for liberty,” and I hav also thought at sich times, that if a man, a living man, had treat me in that way, if I couldent whip him, I would sue him in the big cowrts, and the little cowrts, and all other cowrts. I would sue him all over with warrants, and summonses, and subpenas, and interrogatories. He could get into jail for swindlina just as the captain of the forty thieves got into the robbers' cave. Then agin I git over it, and conclude that maybe it couldent be helped, but my deliberate opinyun are, that it is just as easy for a government to be honest as it is for a man, and it's a heap more important. If Mr. Trenhome thinks so, he'll buy Mrs. Arp a cow, and show his faith by his works. In the language of Mr. Milton: “I don't want nothing but what's right.” Yours trooly, P. S.--Mr. Editur: If you think the above will be any comfort to Joe Brown, just leave all the last part out of the paper you send to him.
B. A.
