“Trade! yes,” replied Brush, contemptuously; “but what’s a trade, when a feller’s got a soul! I love my country, and I want an office—I don’t care what, so it’s fat and easy. I’ve a genus for governing—for telling people what to do, and looking at ’em do it. I want to take care of my country, and I want my country to take care of me. Head work is the trade I’m made for—talking—that’s my line—talking in the streets, talking in the bar rooms, talking in the oyster cellars. Talking is the grease for the waggon wheels of the body politic and the body corpulent, and nothing will go on well till I’ve got my say in the matter; for I can talk all day, and most of the night, only stopping to wet my whistle. But parties is all alike—all ungrateful; no respect for genus—no respect for me. I’ve tried both sides, got nothing, and I’ve a great mind to knock off and call it half a day. I would, if my genus didn’t make me talk, and think, and sleep so much I can’t find time to work.”
“Well,” said the stranger, “you must find time to go away. You’re too noisy. How would you like to go before the Mayor?”
“No, I’d rather not. Stop—now I think of it, I’ve asked him before; but perhaps if you’d speak a good word, he’d give me the first vacancy. Introduce me properly, and say that I want something to do shocking—no, not something to do—I want something to get; my genus won’t let me work. I’d like to have a fat salary, and to be general superintendent of things in general and nothing in particular, so I could walk about the streets, and see what is going on. Now, put my best leg foremost—say how I can make speeches, and how I can hurray at elections.”
“Away with you,” said the stranger, as he ran up the steps, and opened the door. “Make no noise in this neighbourhood, or you’ll be taken care of soon enough.”
“Well, now, if that isn’t ungrateful,” soliloquized Brush; “keep me here talking, and then slap the door right in my face. That’s the way politicianers serve me, and it’s about all I’d a right to expect. Oh, pshaw! sich a world—sich a people!”
Peter rolled up his “circular recommend” put it in his hat, and slowly sauntered away. As he is not yet provided for, he should receive the earliest attention of parties, or disappointment may induce him to abandon both, take the field “upon his own hook,” and constitute an independent faction under the name of the “Brush party,” the cardinal principle of which will be that peculiarly novel impulse to action, hostility to all “politicianers” who are not on the same side.
| [7] | By Neal. |
IV.
COUSIN SALLY DILLIARD.
A LEGAL SKETCH IN THE “OLD NORTH STATE.”
Scene: A Court of Justice in North Carolina.