The drunken legislator! (Legislator, n. One who makes laws for a state: vide dictionary) believing at last that his face must in fact be swollen, since several other travellers, who were in the plot, also spoke to him of his shocking appearance, got up from the table and went out to the barroom to consult the looking glass, such luxuries not being placed in the chambers. But there was no glass there. After some time he found the landlady, and she told him that the barroom glass was broken, but she could lend him a small one; which she at once gave him.
The poor sot, with trembling hand, held it in front of his face, and looked in.
'Well,' said he, 'if that ain't a swelled head I hope I may never be a senator! or sell my vote again at Harrisburg.'
'Poor man!' exclaimed the bystanders.
'Fellers,' said the legislator, 'wot d'ye think I'd better do?' Here he gave another hard look in the glass. 'I ought to be back in Harrisburg right off, but I cant go with a head like that onto me. Nobody'd give me ten cents to vote for 'em with such a head as that. It's a'—
'Big thing,' interrupted a bystander.
'Fellers,' said the blackguard, 'I'll kill a feller any day of the week, with old rye, if he'll only tell er feller how to cure this head of mine.'
'Have it shaved, sir, by all means,' spoke the landlady: 'shaved at once, and then a mild fly blister will draw out the inflammation, and the swelling will go down. Don't you think so, doctor?'
The doctor thus addressed was a cow doctor, but, accustomed to attending brutes, his advice was worth something in the present case; so he also recommended shaving and blistering.
'I'll go git the barber right off the reel, sha'n't I?' asked the doctor, to which the legislator assenting, it chanced that in fifteen minutes his head was as bald as a billiard ball, and in a few more was covered with a good-sized fly blister.