“Well, au ’evoi’.” He paused an instant with an earnest face. “Pehchance I’ll meet you this evening, Mistoo Itchlin? Faw doubtless, like myseff, you will assist at the gweat a-ally faw the Union, the Const’ution, and the enfo’cemen’ of the law. Dr. Seveeah will addwess.”
“I don’t know that I care to hear him,” replied Richling.
“Goin’ to be a gwan’ out-po’-ing, Mistoo Itchlin. Citizens of Noo ’Leans without the leas’ ’espec’ faw fawmeh polly-tickle diff’ence. Also fiah-works. ‘Come one, come all,’ as says the gweat Scott—includin’ yo’seff, Mistoo Itchlin. No? Well, au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
A PRISON MEMENTO.
The political pot began to seethe. Many yet will remember how its smoke went up. The summer—summer of 1860—grew fervent. Its breath became hot and dry. All observation—all thought—turned upon the fierce campaign. Discussion dropped as to whether Heenan would ever get that champion’s belt, which even the little rector believed he had fairly won in the international prize-ring. The news brought by each succeeding European steamer of Garibaldi’s splendid triumphs in the cause of a new Italy, the fierce rattle of partisan warfare in Mexico, that seemed almost within hearing, so nearly was New Orleans concerned in some of its movements,—all things became secondary and trivial beside the developments of a political canvass in which the long-foreseen, long-dreaded issues between two parts of the nation were at length to be made final. The conventions had met, the nominations were complete, and the clans of four parties and fractions of parties were “meeting,” and “rallying,” and “uprising,” and “outpouring.”
All life was strung to one high pitch. This contest was everything,—nay, everybody,—men, women, and children. They were all for the Constitution; they were all for the Union; and each, even Richling, for the enforcement of—his own ideas. On every bosom, “no matteh the sex,” and no matter the age, hung one of those little round, ribbanded medals, with a presidential candidate on one side and his vice-presidential man Friday on the other. Needless to say that Ristofalo’s Kate, instructed by her husband, imported the earliest and many a later invoice of them, and distributing her peddlers at choice thronging-places, “everlastin’ly,” as she laughingly and confidentially informed Dr. Sevier, “raked in the sponjewlicks.” They were exposed for sale on little stalls on populous sidewalks and places of much entry and exit.
The post-office in those days was still on Royal street, in the old Merchants’ Exchange. The small hand-holes of the box-delivery were in the wide tessellated passage that still runs through the building from Royal street to Exchange alley. A keeper of one of these little stalls established himself against a pillar just where men turned into and out of Royal street, out of or into this passage. One day, in this place, just as Richling turned from a delivery window to tear the envelope of a letter bearing the Milwaukee stamp, his attention was arrested by a man running by him toward Exchange alley, pale as death, and followed by a crowd that suddenly broke into a cry, a howl, a roar: “Hang him! Hang him!”