"If you'll just look there, you'll see some of the blocks."
"Why," says I, "those are army biscuit for the men."
"Biscuit!" says he, rubbing his stomach, and turning up his eyes like a cat with the apoplexy—"if them's biscuit, Bunker Hill Monument must be built of flour—that's all."
And he went out and took the Oath.
On arriving at Accomac, my boy, I asked a blue-and-gold picket where Villiam Brown was, and he said that he was in the library.
The library was used by the former occupants of the residence as a hen-house, and contains two volumes—Hardee abridged, and "Every Man His Own Letter-Writer," Seward's edition.
I found Captain Villiam Brown seated on what was formerly a Shanghai's nest, my boy, with his feet out of the window, and his head against a roost. He was studying the last-named book, and sipping Old Bourbon the Oath, in the intervals. The intervals were numerous.
"Son of the Eagle," says I, "you remind me of Sir Walter Scott, at Abbotsford."
Villiam looked abstractedly at me, at the same time moving the tumbler a little further from my hand, and says he:
"I've been in the agonies of diplomacy, but feel much better." "Ha!" says Villiam, beaming like a new comet, "I've preserved our foreign relations peaceful, without humbling the United States of America."