The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth | Page 7

Mr. Patrick the reader will easily detect, had the crude idea of right in his head; but, unfortunately, he could only get it out in these simple and sideling insinuations. The negro, whom we have before described as being knocked down, picked himself up and had nothing to say.
"'There may be much in what you say, friend Patrick,' said I: 'The boys from Donegal do with the elective franchise much that _native-Homers_ in their carelessness leave undone. Mr. Patrick acknowledged this, shook his head, and said the fact, though deplorable, was preeminently established.
"'Like every one who visits Washington these times, yer a friend of the Gineral's, and have fit with him in the Mexican war?' again he inquired, seeming to anticipate my answer. Of the Mexicans I know little--of the war less: it were well our country made peace its friend, war its enemy. As to the General and his fighting in Mexico, that was a matter that best affected himself; through it he became a great potentate, but not so great a man; but, I accept the general idea that he is now become troubled of a short memory. During this time I had not forgotten number one--my supper! Having stowed it well away under my lining, I felt very much like a man who had just turned away his back on Secretary Marcy, having through personal friendship received the country's best collectorship. Seeing the point of good-nature to which my feelings had arrived through the strong argument of meats, Mr. Patrick proffered his services to navigate me out of the place where he ate his people--through entries, corridors, passages, halls, and down stairways, along which we were ever encountering persons who, like Mr. Pierce, were groping their way in the dark. In the course of time, and after much feeling and fumbling, I again encountered the light of the mahogany counter, behind which stood the same individual I have before described--his person so formidable, his face so full and fat, his hair so sleek and smooth.
"'Had a good supper, Squire Smooth?' says he, a broad smile spreading over his broader face. On answering in the affirmative, he introduced me to numerous unsatisfied politicians. One of this very numerous gentry, and of whom I had, unfortunately, occasion to know more at a subsequent period, (he was a man of grief from South Carolina), swore, by his knowledge of southern rights and secession, that his State, so neglected, would certainly go out of the Union. She had not a minister abroad--only Consul General at Alexandria, which was said by the knowing ones to be somewhere in Egypt; and where, to prove his strong faith in southern principles, and his independent indifference to the feelings of thin-skin northerners, he had purchased two very handsome Nubian slaves of the feminine gender. This was merely to illustrate the truly American spirit of our institutions: perchance it might arouse from his stupor the Viceroy, who not fully cognizant of the height of civilization to which America had arrived, was making singular, and to me very praiseworthy efforts, to free his people from the curse of enslaving men. To our patriotic Consul General we say--go it!--a few more such examples will give the Egyptian an impression of our liberty and christian love most strange: the brilliant light of our western star will, I fear, have much in it to remind him of those darker days when his forefathers built pyramids.
"'Come to see the Gineral, I s'pose, stranger?' our Carolinian inquired, with a suspicious look, touching a companion beside him on the arm. To his inquiry I returned--nothing shorter! 'Cape Cod,' he followed with a respectful bow, 'did noble work for the true democracy; she is great in sands, shoals, and cod-fish; she will send General Pierce a chowder, as emblematic of his foreign policy--' Here I interrupted by assuring him that Cape Cod could stand anything to the stomach digestible; But whether she could digest the General was a doubtful question. Cape Cod, be it known over the broad acres of this land, I added, has a spirit above living on government: she turned disdainfully from the means that were fast turning the functions of government into a machine for grinding out patronage--she never sacrificed Uncle Sam for the sake of what is in his tin-trunk. At this, which he was pleased to call an expletive, he begun to summon his dignity: at once he stiffened in a manner that proved how much superior to me he considered himself, and how much more of Uncle Sam's shiners were necessary to his conceived maintenance. 'Cape Cod is the place,' says he folding his arms, moving to a more piquant position, giving his person a little more importance, and making a target of the brightly polished stove,