The Dickens eagle

Last night’s Democratic debate from Las Vegas left me not just with excitement about my party, but with pride in my country which I’ve not felt throughout the Bush administration.

I owe it to my readers, I thought, to put my feelings into words. To convey emotions is the greatest challenge for a writer, so I thought it best to get a good night’s sleep and compose this important post over morning coffee.

To quell the thrill, to bring the calm that induces sleep, I listened to my book on tape. And, there it was, the promise of the debate, put in simplest terms by one of the world’s most gifted wordsmiths:

In Charles Dickens’ “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit,” the title character and his servant, the ever-jolly Mark Tapley, had suffered grave illness, a bad land deal and a host of unsavory citizens in America and had just boarded ship to return home to England.

“What are you thinking of so steadily,” Martin asked Mark.

“Well, I was a-thinking, Sir,” returned Mark, “that if I was a painter and was called upon to paint the American eagle, how should I do it?”

“Paint it as like an eagle as you could, I suppose.”

“No,” said Mark, “that wouldn’t do it for me, Sir. I should want to draw it like a bat for its shortsightedness, like a bantam for its bragging, like a magpie for its honesty, like a peacock for its vanity, like an ostrich for its putting its head in the mud and thinking nobody sees it.”

“And like a phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices and soaring up anew into the sky,” said Martin. “Well, Mark, let us hope so.”