CHAPTER II.
Now Jefferson, whose surname should have been Brick, but that it was not, seeing that it was Davis.
Saw the counsel that it was good.
And having seen it, and set his eyes upon the egg which their wisdom had hatched, and pronounced it a good egg;
Chose him of his chief men two, whereof the like were not to be found—no, not in all the North, and in the South was not their equal.
Whereof the first was a Mason, the like of whom was not known, not in the land of Huram of old, nor among the Hittites or the dwellers by the sea.
For he was like unto a turkey-cock, stuck up and of excessive pride, spreading himself and strutting vehemently from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same; ineffably great in his own conceit, swelling in vanity, puffed up like a bladder even nigh unto bursting;
So that the little ones in the market-place cried after him, 'Big Injiun, heap big!'
And the other was a 'little' New Yorker, even a renegade of the North, one who had backslidden from the ways of his fathers, and that right ill. Wherefore he was called Slide-ill. Howbeit some termed him Sly-deal, from his dealings both with cards and with men.
But it came to pass that they called him Slidell, forasmuch as that he was one who naturally took the whole ell, whether one gave him an inch or no.