"All sides, any day, before No sides!" replied Mrs. Ferret. "As Susan Barndollar says, stick to your colors and they'll carry you to sides a plenty, I'll warrant you. Don't Theodore Fog tell us the Democracy's a trying of experiments—and, Lord bless us! ef they haint carried you on sides enough, then you are an unreasonable man. Principle isn't principle—it's following of your party:—you change when it changes, whereby you are always right. Now, these here True Grits is two to one to the Mandarins and Middlings both, and they devour, yes, ten times as much liquor. Ef you had an eye in your head, you'd come out a True Grit—it's a naiteral tavern-keeper's politics."
"'Spose, my dear," said Jesse, waxing warm, "things takes a turn off hand. 'Spose these True Grits are upset—as I shouldn't wonder they would be, as soon as Middleton Flam comes home from Congress, and winds up the people right again—as he has often done before—am I going to run my head against a post by offending the whole New-Light Club, which meets at our house, and make enemies by having sentiments of my own? You don't know me, Polly Ferret."
"Well, and ef things does take a turn?" replied the wife, "is there anythink new in that, in this Borough? Haint we had turns before? Theodore Fog will turn with 'em—that's his principle—that's my principle, and it ought, by rights, to be yourn. Doesn't the schoolmaster tell you to stick to the upper side? Doesn't our member, Middleton Flam, tell you the same thing, and Nicodemus Handy, and Liphlet Fox? There's your own barkeeper, Nim Porter, that's asleep in yander winder, who's got more sense than you have; he knows what side his bread's buttered—and even your own child, Susan Barndollar, though she stuck out for the nomination, isn't such a ninny as to have no principles. We're Dimmycrats, and always counts with the majority; and that's safe whichever way it goes; and, as I said before, no mortal man can find out a better side than that for a tavern-keeper. But it's the Whigs your're a courting, Jesse Ferret—the Whigs, neither more nor less—and it's pitiful in you to be so sneaking."
"Polly, if you aint got no better language than that to use to me," exclaimed Ferret, under considerable excitement, "I'd advise you to hold your tongue."
"My tongue's my own, Mr. Ferret," replied the landlady, "and I don't want none of your advice what I'm to do with it. I have used it long enough to know how to keep it a running, and how to stop it, without being taught by you."
"I've got no right to listen to you, if I don't choose," retorted the landlord. "Women has their milking and churning to look after, and, to my thinking, they'd best attend to that, instead of skreiking out politics in public bar-rooms—that's my opinion, Mrs. Ferret."
"Women, indeed!—for you to talk about women!—You're the laughing-stock of all the petticoats of our Borough," said the wife, in a high key of exacerbation. "Mrs. Younghusband, and Mrs. Snuffers, and Mrs. Doubleday makes you a continual banter, and it hurts my feelings as the mother of your children, it does."
"Seize Mrs. Younghusband, and Mrs. Snuffers, and Mrs. Doubleday, all three!" exclaimed Ferret in a sort of demi-oath.
"What's that you said, Mr. Ferret?"