"'I can't conceive what station he is to fill,' said one of the members of Congress, 'unless it is that of old Tobias, the black man, who kindles fires, and carries messages.'"
"'That is it I dare say,' said the other member."
"'We must cut him,' said the naval officer."
"'To be sure.'" "'To be sure.'"
"So it was settled by all present that you were to be cut without benefit of clergy."
"I should not have consented to place myself under your protection, continued Mrs. M., but that I had no choice. Knowing no other person with whom I could travel, I reluctantly accompanied you; and I trust," said she, laughing, "that on the road, I shewed a very laudable aversion to the contaminating society of a Porter and his wife."
"No one can deny you that merit," said my wife.
"Well, I cannot ask your pardon for it. There was no malice in the mistake, and I am almost as much annoyed at it as you can be. After you arrived here last night, the landlady insisted on knowing what business brought your husband to Washington; and I reluctantly told her what I had heard. At the bare idea of lodging a Porter, her feathers bristled up like those of a Barbary hen. Her yellow turban looked blue at the idea of such an indignity. She protested that she would have no Porters in her house, nor no such rapscallions as had the impudence to go about dressed like decent people, to take in the flats. And so, my dear madam, you were turned out without much ceremony, and might have spent the night in the street, but for the information obtained by the boy at the office of the N—— I——, which, by giving another syllable to the profession of your husband, shewed beyond a doubt that you were entitled to christian treatment. You know the rest, and I trust we shall all of us when we remember these blunders, acknowledge the IMPORTANCE OF A SINGLE SYLLABLE."
S.