[CHAPTER XIII.]
A POLITICAL DISCUSSION AT ABEL BRAWN'S SHOP—ABEL'S VIEWS OF THE SUB-TREASURY—IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION MADE BY THEODORE FOG—THE NEW LIGHTS TAKE GROUND AGAINST THE BANKS—THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM RESIGNS THE PRESIDENCY OF THE COPPERPLATE BANK—SNUFFERS ASPIRES TO THE SUCCESSION.
Toward the latter end of August, in the year referred to in the last chapter, about five o'clock in the afternoon, a much larger collection than usual of work horses were seen around Abel Brawn's shop, waiting to be shod. The shop stands a few rods below Christy M'Curdy's mill, and immediately upon the bank of the Rumblebottom. The mill is just outside of the compactly-built portion of the Borough; and from the door, Neal Hopper, the miller, could see along the road, on his left hand, into the principal cross street of Quodlibet, and on his right, directly into Abel Brawn's smith-shop. This advantage of position was much prized by Neal, because it enabled him to observe everybody going either from the town-side or the country-side to the blacksmith's. And as the shop was a famous ground for political discussion and newsmongering; and as Neal had an insaturable stomach (insaturabile abdomen) for that sort of gossip, a glance from the mill door gave him the means of knowing who was either at or on the way to the shop. Then, if the company suited him, he was in the habit of confiding the temporary government of the mill to a mealy-headed negro called Cicero, who could turn out a grist as well as himself, and so allow himself the chance of a brush at argument with Abel Brawn's customers.
On this evening in August, as I said, there were more horses than usual at the smithy. Six or seven men were lounging about the door or in the shop, talking very loud, with every now and then a word from Abel, who was busily employed alternately hammering out shoes on the anvil, and fitting them to the horses' feet; while squinting Billy Spike, a rather ungainly lad, an apprentice to the smith, was keeping off the flies with a horsetail fastened to the end of a stick. I had been taking a walk that evening with some of my boys to look at the ruins of the old school-house, and, seeing this little gathering about Abel Brawn's, I stopped to hear what was going on. Being somewhat fatigued by my exercitation, I sat down on the bench under the shed, having sent my boys home by themselves, and remained here a quiet though not an inattentive spectator of the scene before me. It is by cultivating such opportunities that I have been enabled to impart that interest to these pages which, without vanity, I may say my reader cannot fail to discover in them. Such have ever been my choicest and most profitable moments of observation—subseciva quædam tempora, quæ ego perire non patiar.
Neal Hopper was engaged in repairing a bolting-cloth up stairs in the mill, and, for some time after this assemblage had gathered about the smith's shop, did not hear or seem to know what was going forward, until there came a loud, sharp laugh and a whoop which aroused his attention. As soon as he heard this, he pricked up his ears, listened a moment, and upon a repetition of the laugh, stepped to the window, looked down toward the shop and saw who were there, then called Cicero to finish the repair of the bolting-cloth—and went straight to the blacksmith's.
"Well, what's the fraction," said Neal, "that you're all a busting out in such a spell of a laugh about?"
Hearing Neal's voice, Abel Brawn put down the horse's foot which he was then shoeing, from his lap, and standing upright, replied,—
"There seems to be a sort of a snarl here among these brother Democrats of yours, concerning of this here Sub-Treasury. Some of them say it's against the banks, and some of them say it's for the banks. They have got it that Cambreling should have give out in Congress that it was going to help the banks and keep them up; and others, on the contrary, say that Old Tom Benton swears that it won't leave so much as the skin of a corporated company 'twixt Down East and the Mississippi. And they say, moreover, that little Martin lays dark about it."
"What does the Globe give out concerning of it?" inquired Neal.
"Well, the Globe," replied Sam Pivot, the assessor of our county, who was out for sheriff, and who was very cautious in all his opinions, "is, as I take it, a little dubious. Sometimes he makes this Sub-Treasury a smasher to all banks; and then again he fetches it up as a sort of staff to prop the good ones and to knock down the cripples. Last fall, just before the New York election, he rather buttered the banks, seeing that the Democracy in that quarter hadn't made up their minds to run as strong against the laboring people as they are willing to do over here in the South. But in April, when the Virginny elections was up, he was as savage as a meat-ax;—and I rather expect, from what I see in the President's message, that it isn't yet fairly understood whether the Sub-Treasury is to kill or cure the banking system."