“Pale face,” said the Pawnee chief, “thou hast not followed the example of the great chief of the pale faces; the string of thy latch is pulled in. Upon my word, this is certainly the attic story,” he continued in a low voice.
“I am not very well to-night, gentlemen, unless your business is pressing.”
“Pressing! Pale face, the Pawnees have lit their council fire, and invite thee to drink with them the fire-water and smoke the pipe of peace.”
“Thank you, gentlemen, I never drink,” responded Dogberry, in an impatient tone.
“Never drink! Pale face, thou liest! Who made the fire-water, and gave it to my people, but thee and thine? Lo! before it, though they once covered the land, they have melted away like snow beneath the sun.”
“I belong to the temperance society,” cried out Dogberry from within.
“Dogberry,” exclaimed Patterson—whose patience, like that of the crowd below, who were calling for the usher as if they were at a town meeting, and expected him to speak, was becoming exhausted—“Dogberry, compel me not, as your great namesake would say, to commit either ‘perjury’ or ‘burglary,’ and break your door open. You remember in Marmion, Dogberry, that the chief, speaking of the insult which had been put upon him, said,
‘I’ll right such wrongs where’er they’re given,
Though in the very court of Heaven.’
Now I will not say that I would make you drink wherever the old chief would ‘right his wrongs,’ but this I will say, that wherever I, Burbage Patterson, get drunk, I think you can come forth and take a stirrup cup with him; he leaves for the Supreme Court to-morrow.”