'Wise, that carriage of yours looks like a candle-box on wheels; why don't you get a more genteel one?'
'Why, Mr. President, it is a much more genteel one than yours. You keep four horses, which you don't drive more than once a month; and when you do, you hitch them to a second-hand carriage.'
'Why, Wise, how did you find that out?'
'Find it out? Didn't you drive it about for a month, with the coat of arms of Mr. Paulding, late Secretary of the Navy upon it?'
'What of that? Is not Paulding the real Simon Pure of the democracy?'
'Democracy blazoning its coat of arms!' replied Wise. 'I was really glad one day when I stopped at the carriage-maker's to get my truly republican vehicle mended, to see the ex-secretary's carriage there, and a workman employed erasing the coat of arms; making a plain pannel for your excellency.'
'Well,' replied the President, 'I claim to be descended from Wat Tyler, the blacksmith, and I had better have a good stout arm grasping an uplifted hammer, blazoned on my pannel; don't you think so? It would be a real democratic knock-down to Paulding's heraldry.'
Speaking of the President's carriage, reminds me of an anecdote of his coachman, Burrell. Somebody asked Burrell which he liked best, Virginia or Washington?
'Virginia,' replied Burrell. 'I think there are more gentlemen in Virginia, Sir, than there are about Congress. In Virginia, Sir, if a gentleman wanted to abuse the President, he wouldn't come right by his carriage, where I, his coachman, am sitting, to talk it out so as I can hear it. I, Sir, I've waited on him ever since he was first married; I ought to know what kind of a man he is; and the way they lie about him makes me so savage sometimes, that I feel as if I'd like to have some on 'em tied to a tree, and have fair play at 'em with this horse-whip.'
This anecdote is enough to show what kind of a master the President is.