And they all responded, of course, to this eloquent sentiment.
"Here's to Jabe's buttons, coat, hat, and breeches."
"Excuse me," continued the first operator, after the toast was wet down, "you'll please excuse me, in behalf of some of my friends here; as you've been down in that dratted place, and must know a good deal of the goings on there, I'd like to inquire about a few things we Western folks don't more than get an inkling of, through the papers."
"Certainly; go on, sir," says the victim, assuming all the dignity and depth of a man that's appealed to to settle a ponderous matter.
"I'd like to inquire if those Kitchen Cabinet disclosures of the Pennsylvania Senator, were true. Had you ever any means of satisfying yourself that there is, or was, a real service of gold in the President's house?"
"Aye! that's what we'd all like to know," says another.
"How many pieces were there?"
"What were they?"
"Aye, and what their heft was?"
"Mum, gentlemen; let's drink – no tales out of school, ha, ha! No, no – mum's the word." And looking funny and deep, merry and wise, all at one and the same time, the man of all talk proposed to drink and keep – mum.
But they wouldn't drink, and insisted on the secret being let out – they wanted a decided and positive answer, from a man who knew the ropes.
"Gentlemen," said the victim, dropping his voice into a sort of melo-dramatic stage whisper, and stooping quite over the table, so as to collect the several heads and ears as close into a phalanx as possible: "gentlemen, it's a fact!"
"What?" says the party.
"All gold!" says the victim.
"A gold service?" inquires the party.
"Thirty-eight pieces!" continued the victim.
"Solid gold?" chimed the rest.
"Just half a ton in heft!"
"You don't tell us that?"
"Know it; eat out of 'em, then weighed 'em all!"
"P-h-e-w!" whistled some, while others went into stronger exclamations.
"Fact, by the great – "
"Oh, it's all right, sir; no doubt of it now, sir," said the mover of the business, grasping the victim's upraised arm.
"Then, of course, sir, you're well acquainted with Matty Van; on good terms with the little Magician," continued the leading wag.
"Me? me on good terms with Matty? Ha, ha! that is a good joke; never go to Washington without cracking a bottle with the little fox, and staying over night with him. Me on good terms with Matty? We've had many a spree together! Yes, sir!" and the knowing one winked right and left.
"Well, there's old Bullion," continued one of the interrogators, a fine portly old gent, "you know him, of course?"
"What, Tom Benton? Bless your souls, I don't know my letters half as well as I know old Tom."
"And Bill Allen, of Ohio?" asked another. "What sort of a fellow is Bill?"
"Bill Allen? Lord O! isn't he a coon? Bill Allen? I wish I had a dime for every horn, and game of bluff, we've had together."
"Well, there's another of 'em," inquiringly asked a fat, farmer-looking old codger: "Dr. Duncan, how's he stand down there about Washington?"
"Oh, well, he's a pretty good sort of an old chap, but, gents, between you and I, (with another whisper,) there is a good deal of the 'old fogie' senna and salts about him. But then he's death and the pale hoss on poker."
"What, Doctor Duncan?" says they.
"Why, y-e-e-s, of course. Didn't he skin me out of my watch last winter, playing poker, at Willard's?"
"Well," continued the fat farmer-looking man, "I didn't know Duncan gambled?"
"Mum, not a word out of school; ha, ha! Let's drink, gents. Gamble? Lord bless you, it's common as dish-water down there – I've played euchre for hours with old Tom Benton, Harry Clay and Gen. Scott, right behind the speaker's chair!"
Then they all drank, of course, and some of the party liked to have choked. The company now proposed to adjourn to the smoking room, and they arose and left the table accordingly. The man of all talk promenaded out on to the steps, and in course of half an hour, says the leading spirit of the late dinner, or wine party, to him: —
"Mr. – a – a – ?"
"Ferguson, sir; George Adolphus Ferguson is my address, sir," responded the victim.
"Mr. Ferguson, did you know that your friend Benton was in town?" inquired the wag.
"What, Tom Benton here?"
"And Allen," continued the wag.
"What, Bill Allen, too?" says the victim.
"And Doctor Duncan."
"You don't tell me all them fellows are here?"
"Yes, sir, your friends are all here. Come in and see them; your friends will be delighted," says the wag, taking Mister Ferguson by the arm, to lead him in.
"Ha, ha! I'm a – a – ha, ha! won't we have a time? But you just step in – I a – I'll be in in one moment," but in less than half the time, Mr. Ferguson mizzled, no one knew whither!
The gentlemen at the table, it is almost needless to say, were no others than Benton, Allen, Duncan, and some three or four other arbiters of the fate of our immense and glorious nation, in her councils, and fresh from the capital.
Ferguson has not been heard of since.
A Severe Spell of Sickness
It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it. What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep all the children in "a poor neighborhood" in "vittels" and clothes the year round. When old Cauliflower took sick, once in a long life-time, he was prevailed upon to send for Dr. Borax, and it was some weeks before Cauliflower got down stairs again. At the end of the year Dr. Borax sent in his bill; the amount gave Cauliflower spasms in his pocket-book, and threatened a whole year's profits with strangulation.
"Doctor," says Cauliflower, "that bill of yours is all-fired steep, isn't it?"
"No, sir," says Borax; "your case was a dangerous case – I never raised a man from the grave with such difficulty, in all my practice!"
"But, fifty-three calls, doctor, one hundred and six dollars."
"Exactly – two dollars a visit, sir," said the urbane doctor.
"And twenty-seven prescriptions, four plasters, &c. – eighty-one dollars!"
"One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, sir."
"Well," says Cauliflower, "this may be all very well for people who can af-ford it, but I can't; there's your money, doctor, but I'll bet you won't catch me sick as that again —soon!"
The Race of the Aldermen
In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect were a sort of tie; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy. They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed their favors among their partizans accordingly. The whigs at length tied them, and the locos, beholding with horror and misgivings, the new order of things which was destined to turn out many a holder of fat office, many a pat-riot overflowing with democratic patriotism, whose devotion to the cause of the country was manifest in the tenacity with which he clung to his place, were extremely anxious to devise ways and means to keep the whigs at bay; and as the day drew near, when the assembled Board of Aldermen