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Rogers, hayr, just offered to gin me thirty thousand dollars for our old mountain home which we bought two year ago from old man Roberts for five thousand. I told him we would trade her off for fifty thousand; not such bad intrust for a mountain yahoo and his old woman, He! Mandy!
The Yahoos, in their total depravity, are not human; they represent, and that with a terrible truthfulness, the condition into which men may fall when their animal instincts and baser passions are allowed to subvert their reason and their noble qualities. The more a man suffers his better nature to yield to his lower, the more he resembles the detestable Yahoo.
Perhaps no reader will fail to recognise his hand in the beautiful blank verse of many passages. I am not familiar enough with the works of Dekker and Chettle to assign to them the less desirable passages. Thersites is beastly: a Yahoo of Swift's might poison with such phrases as his the name and nature of love, loyalty, and military courage.
As I was looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, I was in some doubt whether I should wait for them or not; but at last my detestation of the Yahoo race prevailed: and turning my canoe, I sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek whence I set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians, than live with European Yahoos.
To return from this digression. When I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know, “whether we had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment?” I told him, “we had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds.” “I understand you well,” said my master: “it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable.” I begged “his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing.” But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst.
"I don't see, though, what the young rascal has got to laugh at in that way, like a regular young yahoo." "Please, sir, pray excuse him," pleaded Nellie on behalf of Bob. "It is only a way he has got. He cannot help laughing for the life of him when the fit is on. He really does not mean to be rude, sir, I assure you."
And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.
In reading the following passage, it is impossible not to be reminded of the treatment of Sir Robert Walpole by his former flatterers and sycophants when his power seemed at an end: Some curious Houyhnhnms observe that in most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo, * who was always more deformed in body and mischievous in disposition than any of the rest; that this leader had usually a favorite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet * and drive the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh.
I understood that language very well, and getting upon my feet, said, “I was a poor Yahoo banished from the Houyhnhnms, and desired they would please to let me depart.” They admired to hear me answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be a European; but were at a loss to know what I meant by Yahoos and Houyhnhnms; and at the same time fell a-laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse.
"Oh, let him shoot a Yahoo or two if he must, but I think you ought to tell him he's committing a criminal folly in asking that young Yankee, Mr. Fair, to stop with him at Widewood when he comes here next week!" "Why, Brother Garnet! Why, supposin' that young stranger should get shot!" "Yes, or if he should no more than see March shot or shot at! What an impression he'd carry back North with him!
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