"One great goggle-eyed fellow, who sat at my right hand, informed a lady near him 'that he'd got-ter go over to Agoria before dinner, and get his sun-dial fixed; but his wings were down at the shop being fixed, and he couldn't start this hour yet."
"'Agoria! Where's that?' asked I.
"'Don't know where Agoria is—ha, ha! On the River Amazon, a trip of a couple of thousand of miles.' And so he took out a little eye-glass, and looked at me for a long time, and, putting it back in his pocket, said 'he thought I was a North Pole-ander, or a ghost; he didn't know which.
"'Dear me! you will be keerful, now won't you?' said the lady. Two hundred collisions in the air last night, among the winged men; almost as many the night afore—awful!'
"The goggle-eyed man said he would.
"'Did you hear President Jones lecter last night,' said a spectacled critter, at the upper end of the table, sticking his fore-finger out to me.
"'No, sir-ee!' I hollered back to him, as I was some little frustrated by this time.
"'He showed,' said the man, 'that one Tom Jefferson prob'bly did write the Declaration of Independence that the ancients made.'
"'You don't say so, though, do you?' said I. 'You're a bright set of chaps the whole on you, President Jones and all.'
"There was a mighty deal said about the Persian war with America; what somebody said who came from Africa last night—what this man and that man done in Congress; but getting out of patience at last, I jumped up, and left the whole on 'em; and as I passed out of the room, told 'em 'they might all go to grass.'