[LETTER IV.]
The Political Meeting and its Disasters.
Dear Par:
Wal, a few nights ago, I thought I'd try one of them political meetings the Editor's wanted me to attend and see how they carried on there. So Captain Doolittle and I went to one of the great halls hired for caucuses and crowded in by degrees, for the hull building was jammed full of human live stock long afore we got there. Arter a good deal of scuffling, we got up by one of the winders where we could see purty much all that was going on. I never in all my born days saw such a lot of horned cattle together. Some on 'em was barefooted, and a good many hadn't more than a coat and a pair of trousers among four or five on 'em. One feller close by me had the rim of his hat ripped off till it hung down on his shoulders: the top was stove in, and he had a black eye, besides another that wouldn't see straight. "Look a here," sez he, to me, "why don't you shout when we du?"
"Because I aint a mind tu," sez I; "how are you going to help yourself?" Jest then a leetle pussy lawyer cum a crowding through the gang, and at the sight of him they all sot up a noise that made my hair stand on eend.
I never heard anything like it; they yelled and hollered enough to split the ruff of the house. The chunked feller, with his hat knocked into the middle of next week, poked about with his elbows till he got room to draw his fiddle bow across a rickety fiddle, that had two of the strings broke off and was cracked from eend to eend. Squeak, squeak, went the fiddle close to my ear, like a pig when he's being yoked. With that, a lot of fellers, some with their coat tails tore off, and some with their trousers held up with a piece of list instead of galluses, and every one on 'em as ragged as year old colts, begun to dance up and down the room, but such double shuffles and pigeon wings was enough to make a feller die a larfin. Our old white cow used to dance twice as well when she got into one of her tantrums. "Hurra for our side! hurra! hurra!" yelled out a tall feller close by the fiddler, with a mouth that twisted one way and his nose curling off on t'other side, as if they hated each other like cats and dogs; and with that he took off his old straw hat and shied it off into the middle of the dancers. It lodged on the top of a feller's head that was jest then trying to cut a pigeon wing over one of the benches.
"Helloa, you feller you, jest toss back that hat, will you?" sung out the tall feller, a pitching for'ard head over heels arter his hat.
"No I wont, I'll be rumbusticated if I du;" sez the t'other chap, a pushing toward the door, holding the hat down with both hands, as if he warn't used to them kind o' things; "all fair in 'lection time. Hurra for equal rights!"
Jest then there cum in a grist of fellers a yelling and a kicking up their heels like all possessed. They'd brought in some more 'lection news.
"Who on arth can these critters be?" sez I to Captin Doolittle.