Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.

The Ghost of Continental Money

THOUGH I’m dead and forgotten,

Though my carcase is rotten,

And my honours are sleeping in dust,

Yet my visage, so hoary,

Now rises before you,

To warn you, my friend, of the worst.

I advise you to lie

Where you are, and to die—

O!—ne’er to remove any farther:

Should you come from the womb,

You would wish it a tomb—

You’d curse both the midwife and mother.

Why need I relate

That series of fate

Which plunged me in wo and disaster—

How I first was respected

And then was rejected,

And, last, dwindled down to a plaster.

The states, they united,

Their honour they plighted,

But all was a whim and a sham:

But before my escape, sir,

Not all I could scrape, sir,

Would buy the poor soldier a dram.

I have lived, to be sure,

A while, to secure

The rights of a much-injured nation:

But I got all my living

By a course of deceiving,

That has sunk me in utter damnation.

I’m dead and departed—

But quickly I started

To hear of your sudden conception:

Old Tenor and I

Did sit down and cry

When we thought of your future deception.

Enough we have done

Without you, my son,

To turn the whole state topsy-turvy:

Let our troubles, then, teach you,

We humbly beseech you,

To fly from a treatment so scurvy.

But your mother will say

She “will dress you up gay,

With garments all wrought from her spinning.”

You had better, I vags,

Live still in your rags—

In fragments of cotton and linen.

For your mother is weak:

She’s lame and she’s sick,

And quite in a helpless condition:

Not able, I’ve said it,

To keep up your credit,

Or save your poor soul from perdition.

She will try (but in vain)

Your faith to maintain

By a tender on suits and contentions;

But no one will sue;

What then will you do?

You surely will make feuds and dissensions.

How will you contrive

My fate to survive?

Your emblems are not worth a farthing:

The merchant will spite you,

The lawyer will slight you,

And priests will not care for your starving.

There’s a foe in disguise

That will pick out your eyes,

And all your fine garments bespatter:

He is hard—you are soft—

Such struggles too oft

Turn out to the loss of the latter.

You may strive and may tease,

But never will please—

You never will suit and content all:

So stay where you are:

Or, alas! you will share

The fortune of old Continental.