“The expression is unladylike and coarse. Then, again, it is mean—despicably mean!—to be saucy to one who has no right to answer in the same way. If you must be sharp in your talk, quarrel with your equals, not with servants, who cannot meet you on your own ground.”
The admonition has stuck fast in my mind to this day.
By the time we turned the corner in the direction of Jordan’s Creek, my father and I were deep in politics. He was the stanchest of Whigs, and the ancient and honorable party had for leader, in this year’s fight, one whom my instructor held to be the wisest statesman and purest patriot in the land. The ticket, “Clay and Frelinghuysen,” was a beloved household word with us; talk of the tariff, protection and the national debt, which Henry Clay’s policy would wipe out, and forever, if opportunity were granted to him, ran as glibly from our childish tongues as dissertations upon the Catholic bill and parliamentary action thereupon dropped from the lips of the Brontë boy and girls. There was not a shadow of doubt in our minds as to the result of the November fight.
“It seems a pity”—I observed, as we looked across the creek down into the distant meadow, where men and boys were moving to and fro, and smoke was rising from fires that had been kindled overnight—“that the Democrats should go to so much expense and trouble only to be defeated at last.”
“They may not be so sure as you are that they are working for nothing,” answered my father, smiling good-humoredly. “They have had some victories to boast of in the past.”
“Yes!” I assented, reluctantly. “As, for instance, when Colonel Hopkins was sent to the Legislature! Father, I wish you had agreed to go when they begged you to let them elect you!”
The smile was now a laugh.
“To nominate me, you mean. A very different matter from election, my daughter. Not that I cared for either. If I may be instrumental in the hands of Providence in helping to put the right man into the right place, my political ambitions will be satisfied.”
“I do hope that Powhatan will go for Clay!” ejaculated I, fervently. “And I think it an outrage that the Richmond voters cannot come up to the help of the right, at the presidential election.”
“The law holds that the real strength of the several states would not be properly represented if this were allowed,” was the reply.