turned pale. Then one possessed himself of my bundle: moving off with a scientific motion, and a bow

    a la cabinet

   , he bid me follow. Obeying his summons, onward we went, through a long, dark passage, and into a spacious hall up stairs, where he said they eat their people. No sooner was I bowed to a seat than a dozen gentlemen darkies set upon me in good earnest; so fast did they beset me with eatables that I begun to think they had mistaken me for a thanksgiving turkey about to be fatted for the table of the secretary of the treasury. The fixins, as Mr. Samuel Slick would say, made one feel quite at home; not so with the darkies: they recognizing my home spun, soon became sassy; whereupon I turned round and set upon

    them

   with the broadest grin I could summon. Nor could I withhold a laugh at seeing them laugh. 'Reckon how mas'r's on big business to Washington wid Mr. General Pierce,' says one, whose face was black, and bright, and full of the quizzical; while another, with a flat crooked nose gave a cunning wink out of his left eye. This being detected by a superior, in the brisk person of a son of the Emerald Isle, who stood well six feet in his boots, a 'soucer' with the broad front of his knuckle bones, between the colored gentleman's two eyes, was the rejoinder—a most striking remonstrance, that laid him measuring the floor. Troth! an' it's myself 'd stop yer botheration. Sure, ye dark spalpeens, is it by the same token ye'd trate the gintleman? (Here the honest son of sweet Erin showed signs of his Doneybrook getting the better of him.) 'Myself 'll take care of Mr. Smooth—doesn't he belong to the self same party, the know-nothings? The divil a such a country, as Hamirike: an' it's the boys from Donegal that 'ud be taking her dignity in care.' Saying this, Mr. Patrick (for such was his name) stretched the whole length of his important self over the table, and says:—I'm yers to the buckle of my shoe, Mr. Smooth! It's a divil a one but yerself I'll vote for at the next helection. Sure, an' didn't mysel jine the native Hamerikan party, with Tom Connolly, afore we'd been two months on the beloved soil an', sure, it's Tom and myself that's goin to put through the

    nonothin

   for ye.' Here Mr. Patrick anxiously paused for a reply. To never say a bad thing when I could not think of a good, ever has been my motto; so I returned his good nature with saying:—'Give us yer hand, Mr. Patrick—we will forget the two, and yet be one! and that our faith may be 

 Prev. P 10/192 next