“I mean precisely what I say,” replied he. “We have all more or less passed the age in which respectable Americans take an interest in politics; and are, thank God! not yet sufficiently old and decrepit to recur to it once more because we are unfit for everything else.”
“Yes, yes!” interrupted a highly respectable gentleman, whom I had known in Boston, and who had a high reputation for being fond of cards; “a man never takes to politics in this country unless he is ruined in business. I have seen a hundred instances of it in my own city. Let a man have a falling-out with work, and he is sure to turn patriot.”
“Because patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Johnson said,” remarked a young barrister, visibly contented with having had an opportunity of exhibiting his erudition.
“Happy country this!” observed one of my companions, “in which every scoundrel turns patriot!”
“Say, rather, in which every patriot is a scoundrel,” rejoined the lawyer.
“Why, Tom!” exclaimed the Bostonian, “you have broken out in a new place!”
“Why, a man will say a good thing now and then,” replied the professional man. “But where the d—l is that nigger with the juleps? I’ll be hanged if a person can get waited upon in New York without bribing the servants!”
Here the waiter entered.
“What have you been about, sirrah? It’s more than a quarter of an hour since that gentleman” (pointing to the Baltimorian) “asked for some juleps. Can’t you move quicker?”
“I goin’ as fast as I kin,” grinned the negro; “but dere are too many gem’men at de bar.”