And so it wuz with every animal from a elephant down, wild or tame. And I should have took a sight of comfort here if I had had a pair of iron ear pans, or even gutty-perchy. But bein’ but flesh and blood, them pans ached with the fearful noise the animals made.
Josiah wanted the worst way to go to the Parliament of Cogers, which wuz established over two hundred years ago, and still meets in Fleet Street.
Sez Josiah, “A public man in America naterly depends on cogers and sech for his election.”
“Yes,” sez I; “Heaven knows that is so. Saloon-keepers and whiskey and beer and cider manafacturers, and whiskey drinkers, and the raw foreign element, and other cogers, elect more politicians to office, specially in our big towns, than any other element; and pure men and Christian wimmen have to stand back and be ruled by ’em.”
“Yes,” sez he, blandly; “and so it stands anybody in hand who has political aspirations and wants to be popular with the masses to ingrashiate himself with all the cogers he can. I would love to see what means these men take to endear themselves to the cogers, besides buyin’ ’em, and makin’ ’em drunk, and sech other ways as I’m familar with.”
“Wall,” sez I, “you’ll go alone for all of me; I see cogers enough in my own country without huntin’ ’em up here, and I’d advise you to keep away from ’em.” Sez I, “Your head hain’t strong enough, Josiah, to hold only jest so much, and I’d advise you to fill it up with the noble and grand objects we see here on every side, and let cogers alone.”
“But,” sez he, “my futer depends on ’em; I must keep up with other statesmen if I’m ever to amount to anything.”
But I wouldn’t listen to any more of his arguments, and waved off the subject almost hautily.
But I found out afterwards that the Parliament wuzn’t cogers as Josiah looked on ’em, and they wuz particular to be called cogers, with the emphasis on the co. I found they wuz a sort of mock debates—patronized by lawyers, political men, newspaper men, clerks, etc., where they debate on every subject, and drink beer and smoke pipes and talk, talk, talk.
Daniel O’Connell and Curran and John Wilkes and many others eminent in debate wuz members of this club.