"Hem!" says the Democratic chap, with a severe aspect, "I don't know that it is. Really," says the Democratic chap, hastily picking up his umbrella and moving away, "really, I don't know that it is."
Mistakes, my boy, will happen in the best-regulated organizations; and, if we construe them maliciously, we deserve, like a parcel of scandal-mongering old Bohea-mians, to be confined all our lives to small coupsof Phineas T.
It was during my illness that the adoring citizens of Mugville discovered that the Venerable Gammon had been defeated ten times in the election for County Clerk in his youth, and frantically instigated an overflowing ovation therefore to that venerable man. I know not, my boy, what this aged and shirt-collared picture of perpetual beneficence had done to be such an idol. I cannot conceive why repeated defeats in his youth should entitle him to the adoration of a fond populace at the present exciting period; but the leading citizens presented him with a silver butter-knife and a serenade, my boy; and he made a benignant speech to show that he and Providence desired only the applause of their own consciences.
"My children," says the Venerable Gammon, waving benefactions in his fat and heartfelt manner, "I accept this butter-knife,—not for my own merits, but because it symbolizes the only true means of restoring that Union of which I am a part. This knife," says the Venerable Gammon, eying the costly gift with oily and benignant satisfaction,—"this knife teaches us that only fiendish Abolitionism would think of using the Sword of Radicalism to conquer the erring Confederacy which is still our sister, when the Butter-knife of Conservatism was to be had."
Then all the leading citizens of Mugville observed joyfully to each other that the country was redeemed at last, and four-and-twenty reliable morning journals published six columns each about the triumphant progress of the Venerable Gammon in the affections of the people.
Among those present at this sublime ovation was an aged chap selling apples, who immediately burst into tears when the voice of the venerable man fell upon his ears. On being asked to explain his emotions, he cast his dim eyes upward toward an American flag which was being used by a merchant near by to advertise some patent pills, and says he, brokenly:
"When I hear that woice, and see that flag, all my manhood crumbles into scalding tears."
He was an apple-seller of fine feelings, and had once served as a deserter in the Army of the Potomac.
Pathetic little incidents like these, my boy, humble though they may be, are pregnant with a deep and touching meaning, of which I have not the remotest conception.
There is a new Mackerel Hotel recently erected on the borders of Duck Lake, near Strategy Hall, for the benefit of Brigadiers who have not been accustomed to doing without a bar; and it was in one of the rooms thereof that the Conservative Kentucky Chap recently fell a victim to the most remarkable optical illusion of this distracted century. He was sitting with his back to a window, my boy, his head drooped upon his breast beneath the weight of the Emancipation Proclamation, and, with arms folded and legs screwed awry on his chair, he was contemplating the opposite wall from under his Conservative hat.