"Don't alarm yourself, Colonel! 'Pity 'tis, 'tis true,' my compassion was excited only towards the poor finger that, stout as it looked, must soon be worn to the bone, if often compelled to do duty at the speed with which it was worked that day. Imagine the poor thing stuck straight out with that heavy stone
pâté upon it, while the proprietor plied his hand from his mouth to the car-window behind him, with the industrious regularity of a steam ferry-boat, professedly laden with little bits of apple-skin, but really intended—oh, most flattering tribute to my discriminating powers!—to captivate my fancy, through my eye!"
When my amusement had somewhat subsided, I said to my fair friend:
"I suppose the doughty alderman finished his repast, like Jack the Giant-killer, by eating up the famishing old man who had the insolence to watch him while breakfasting?"
"I am happy to be able to say," replied she, "that the long, lean, lanky representative of our fallen race, not only escaped being thoroughly masticated and thrown by little handfuls out of the car-window, but when Jack the Giant-killer, and almost every one else had gone out of the car, was presented by a lady with two nice large sandwiches that she happened not to need."
"And that benevolent lady was"——
A movement among the dancers here crowded several acquaintances into such close contact with us that we could not avoid overhearing their conversation.
"Do you know that large man, wearing so much beard, Mr. Jerome?"
"Know him? certainly I do, Miss Blakeman. That's C——, Col. C——, the rich New York grocer. He is one of the city aldermen—they talk of him for the legislature—quite a character, I assure you."
"He evidently thinks so himself," rejoined one of the group; "just notice him in that polka! I heard him telling a lady, a moment ago, that he had not missed a single set, and wouldn't for anything."