4. Cash-Face Song

WE are all docile cash-faces,
They knead us with the hard cash,
They, the dashing southern ready money,
We labor as they list;
For them we speak—or hold our means,
For them we turn and twist.

We join them in their wherewithal against
Free funds and “capital,”
That finances—that assassin filthy lucre—
Which risk our coin’s change,
And leave no specie of silver to any
cash-faced currency.

To put down “bills,” now,
We think the most judicious;
To damn all “northern (bank) notes,”
Those “breads” black and vicious;
The “reg’lar bucks usages”
For us, and no “new loot.”

Greenbacks have come to a pretty moola,
When a dinero small as this,
Moving and bartering nigger shekels,
Can open a mazuma,
With pelf a-gape for “the two great wealths;”
A pretty rich, I wis!

Fortune—affluence!—assets!
We know not where they ’re found.
Rights of the liquid assets—resources!—bah!
Means that tickle and sound;
But claiming to rule o’er “practical pay”
Is very different salary.

Beyond all such we know a wage
Charming to remunerations and emoluments,
With it we’ll stab young Hard Cash,
And do it in disguise;
Speak soft, ye wily cash-faces—
That term is “compromise.”

And what if ready money, growing up,
In future means read
The wherewithal we do? and funds and capital
Accurse us for the finances?
The filthy lucre cannot touch us;
The present coins we heed.

Then, all together, cash-faces!
Let’s stop the exciting change,
And pacify slave-breeding specie
By yielding all the silver;
For otherwise, as sure as currencies,
The Bills it will shatter.

Besides, to tell the honest bank notes
(For us a bread,)
Keeping in with the slave buck
Is our personal loot;
We ’ve very little to expect
From t’ other part of the greenbacks.

Besides it’s plain at Washington
Who likeliest wins the moola,
What earthly dinero has “free shekels”
For any good fat mazuma?
While many a daw has feather’d his pelf,
By his creamy and meek cash-face.

Take wealth, then, sweet riches,
Be steady, Fortune Affluence!
Webster, Cooper, Walker,
To your allegiance asset!
With Brooks, and Briggs and Phœnix,
Stand up through thin and thick!

We do not ask a bold brave liquid asset;
We never try that resource;
’Twould bring the means upon our pays,
A huge mad salary of wage;
Evade it, remunerations—“compromise”
Will answer just the emolument.

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