indignant manner and hands lifted in holy horror, he poured volley after volley of invective at the confounded assistant.
"But, gentlemen," said the baker, dropping his tone, "I've known worse things than this to happen. I've known even bakers to get tight."
"And your bacon would have stood a better chance of being saved if you had got tight, instead of putting a non-commissioned officer in that condition," said one of the detail. "The Colonel, I am afraid, Tom, will clear you out."
"Well," sighed the baker, after a pause of a moment, "talk about Job and all the other unfortunates since his day, why not one of them had my variety of suffering. Did you ever hear any of my misfortunes?"
"We see one."
"My life has been a series of mishaps. I prosper occasionally in small things, but totals knock me. God help me if I hadn't a sure port in a storm—a self-supporting wife. For instance—but I can't commence that story without relieving my thirst." A bottle was opened, drinks had all around, and the baker continued—
"You see, gentlemen, when Simon was in political power, I waggled successfully and extensively among the coal mines in Central Pennsylvania. In those localities voters are kept underground until election day, and they then appear above often in such unexpected force as to knock the speculations of unsophisticated politicians. But Simon was not one of that stripe. He knew his men—the real men of influence; not men that have big reputations created by active but less widely known under-workers, but the under-workers themselves. Simon dealt with these, and he
rarely mistook his men. Now I was well known in those parts—kept on the right side of the boys, and the boys tried to keep on the right side of me, and Simon knew it. No red tape fettered Simon, as the boys say it tied our generals the other side of Sharpsburg in order to let the Rebs have time to cross. If the measures that his shrewd foresight saw were necessary for the suppression of this Rebellion, at its outbreak, had been adopted, we would be encamped somewhat lower down in Dixie than the Upper Potomac—if indeed there would be any necessity for our being in service at all.
"He was not a man of old tracks, like a ground mole; indeed like some military commanders who seem lost outside of them; but of ready resources and direct routes, gathering influence now by one means and then by another, and perhaps both novel. Now Simon set me at work in this wise.
"'Tom,' one morning, says an old and respected citizen of our place, who knew my father and my father's father, and me as an unlucky dog from my cradle, 'Tom, did ever any idea of getting a permanent and profitable position—say, as you are an excellent penman—as clerk in one of the departments at Harrisburg or Washington, enter your head?'