But the tumult was not allowed to subside. My old friends of the administration, finding that their strength was dwindling away in the country, and dreading the event of the coming election, unless a reaction could be got up in their favour, suddenly burst into a fury, swore that I had been made away with by the opposition, on account of my remarkable zeal, energy, and success, as an electioneerer and political missionary; and taking my old hat and shoe, and carrying them round the village in solemn procession, they stopped in the market-place, where one of their chief orators—my faithful friend, the new postmaster—delivered a sort of funeral address, in which he compared the opponents of the administration to cut-throats and cannibals, pronounced them the enemies of liberty, swore that no honest patriot was safe among them, and declared—his declaration being illustrated by shouts, and groans, and grim faces—"that I had perished, the victim of a murderous opposition!"
But, as if that was not immortality enough for one of my humble pretensions, the opposition instantly turned the tables upon their accusers. Witnesses stepped forward to prove that, on the night when I was seen for the last time, I had, in the bar-room of the first hotel in the village, publicly denounced the hurrah party, as being based upon deception and fraud, and avowed my determination not only instantly to leave it, but to go my death thenceforth in opposition. "See the bloody vindictiveness and malice of the hurrah party!" they cried; "before the sun rose upon this unfortunate and honest man—honest, because he deserted his party the moment his eyes were opened to its corruption—he was a living man no longer. The bravoes of this horrible gang of mid-night murderers, who have trampled on our rights and liberties, and now trample on our lives, met the unlucky patriot as he returned to his lowly cot, and—just Heavens!—where was he now, save in his bloody and untimely grave? he, the humble, the unoffending, the honest, the universally-esteemed, the widely-beloved, the patriotic Sheppard Lee!—waylaid and ambushed! killed, slain, murdered, massacred! the victim of a despotic and vindictive cabal,—the martyr of liberty, the—" In short, the noblest, honestest, dearest, best, and most ill-used creature that ever dabbled in the puddle of politics. One might suppose that this outcry of the antis, backed as it was by the full proof of my change of politics, would have stopped the mouths of the hurrah-boys. But it did no such thing; they only raved the louder. As for the proof of my backsliding, they treated that with contempt; proofs being as little regarded in politics as arguments. They accused the antis more zealously than before; and the antis recriminated with equal enthusiasm.
There were some men in the village who strove to appease the ferment, by directing suspicion upon the German doctor, and divers other personages, just as the humour of suspicion seized them, furiously accusing these suspected individuals of having had some hand in the catastrophe. But the German doctor and the other persons accused had nothing to do with politics, and were therefore suffered to go their ways. It is a great protection to one's reputation to keep clear of politics. The guilt of my murder was left to be borne by the hurrah-boys and the antis, one party or the other; but as the evidence was equally strong against either party, and just as strong against any one individual of either party as another, it resulted that I was murdered not only by both parties, but by every man of both parties;—a peculiarity in my history that proved me to have possessed, though I never dreamed it before, a vaster number both of energetic friends and bloodthirsty enemies (each man being both friend and enemy) than any other man in the whole world.
How the antis and the hurrah-boys settled the affair among them, I did not care to inquire. I was engrossed by the novelties and charms of a new being, and willing to forget that such a poor devil as Sheppard Lee had ever existed.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WORD PODAGRA.
Let the reader judge of my transport, when my elegant new barouche and splendid pair of horses, that cost me a thousand dollars, drew up before my house in Chestnut-street. I stood upon the kerb-stone and surveyed it from top to bottom. The marble of the steps, basement, and window-sills was white as snow, and the bricks were redder than roses. The windows were of plate glass, and within them were curtains of crimson damask, fronted with hangings of white lace, as fine and lovely as a bride's veil of true Paris blonde; and a great bouquet of dahlias, wreathed around a blooming rose, glittered in each. It was evidently the house of a man of wealth and figure.
The neighbourhood, it was equally manifest, was of the highest vogue and distinction: on one side was the dwelling of a fashionable tailor, who built a house out of every ten coats that he cut; on the other side was the residence of a retired tavern-keeper; and right opposite, on the other side of the street, was the mansion of one of the first aristocrats in the town, who had had neither a tailor nor a tavern-keeper in the family for a space of three full generations. There was no end to the genteel people in my neighbourhood; here was the house of a firstrate lawyer, there of a shop-keeper who had not sold any thing by retail for ten years; here a Croesus of a carpenter who turned up his nose at the aristocrat, and there a Plutus of a note-shaver who looked with contempt on the gentleman of chips. In short, my house was in a highly fashionable neighbourhood; and I felt, as I mounted my marble steps, that Jack Higginson, the brewer (as my brother Tim always called me), was as genteel a fellow among them as you would find of a summer's day.