“He's pervadin' about d'big Eas' Room,” returned Jim, “when I 'bandons him.”
Duff Green extended his fishy hand; but I did not see it, my eyes being employed upon his face; and that with so cold an industry it served to turn the violin red of it to apoplectic purple for uneasiness and rage.
“I offer you my hand, sir,” cried Duff.
“Sir,” said I, “in requital, I offer you a sentence of counsel. Be out of that door, and do not enter it again until your friend Calhoun is master in this house. But stay; I have another order for your ear. Do not, by word or look or act, whether to me or to any man, make claim on my acquaintance. I will not agree as to the measure of my resentment in case you do.”
“Sir, is this an insult?”
“Sir, you will please yourself for a term.”
“And, sir,”—Duff Green's voice quavered a trifle—“am I to consider this the action of the president?”
“I think it would be wise to do so,” I retorted, “since you would seem to stand even lower in his graces than you do in mine. I argue this from a comparison of our remarks upon you.” I was enough the savage to delight in harassing the pursy Duff and in diminishing his brow of consequence. “I did but casually describe you—being idle at the time—as a bloated spider, sucking patronage, and with a newspaper to be your web, when he would correct me. 'You do the dog a compliment,' said he. 'Now, one might conceive of a spider that should be of some moment. He whom we call Duff Green is no such thing. He is nothing; or at most a vacuum, which is nothingness given a name—as it were, an im-ponderous absence of overpowering unimportance.'”
“Them's mighty fine words, Marse Major, you-all flings loose,” said Jim, when Duff Green quit the field. Jim, whose care concerning me was only equaled by his curiosity, stood, of course, in close attendance upon the colloquy. “Yas-sir,” he continued, “them's what Jim calls langwidge of d'good ol' Cumberland kind. That Duff Green gentleman shore misses it a mile when he comes pawin' 'round for to 'spute with you. Yes, indeed, Marse Major, that's whar he drap his water-million!”
When I repeated my interview with Duff to the General, together with Jim's comments of admiration, and we had had our laugh, the General turned serious: