Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

A Battle! A Battle! - 5

Cock up your Hats, look fierce and trim,
Not wear the horizontal brim;
The house of prayer be made a den,
Not of vile thieves, but armed men:
Tho’ ‘tis indeed a prophanation
Which we must expiate with lustration.
But such the present time requires,
And such are all the FRIEND’s desires;
Fill bumpers then, of uum or arrack,
We’ll drink success to the new barrack;
He said, they, all approv’d the cause,
And in full concert groan’d applause.
  Now News arriv’d that Paxton men,
Were come within nine miles or ten:
The city’s fill’d with sighs and groans,
Tales of raw heads, and bloody bones;
While some take heart, and go to meet
The fiends they heard had cloven feet.
  They came, they saw, they found’ em civil,
With no intent of harm or evil,
But humbly to request redress,
For cruel Indians wickedness;
And to expose a jugler’s box,
Contriv’d by P----n and F---x,
By which, they with a magic trick
Could shew White folks as black’s Oldnick:
And what’s as wonderful agen,
Make Indian villains honest men.
  And thus they charge most wicked facts on
The worthy bleeding men of Paxton:
But with our foes hold strickt alliance,
And bid all government defiance.
For what care they? good furs and skins
Will hide a multitude of sins.
  Redress is promis’d, they content,
Paid off their hosts, and home they went.

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