"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!"