The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth | Page 6

most anything,--hang
up on a pin if it be necessary to accommodate, but don't just like the
moon for a bedfellow.'
"'Won't trouble you with a bedfellow, Mr. Smooth,' he, grinned out,
shaking all over his broad sides.
"It being well understood in Washington that great men were most
condescending, while little men, with large expectations, were most
aspiring, there was nothing left but to cut a course between the two. As
for the latter quality of gentlemen, they never stood at trifles, and when
they failed to get the big business, had not the slightest objection to the
small,--which was the doing all Mr. President Pierce's thinking.
Therefore, be it known that, with a full knowledge of this sad state of

affairs, did I write down:--'Mr. Solomon Smooth, from Cape Cod:'
which, when down, looked like the footprints of a hen that, having
dipped her claws in an inkstand, had waddled across the page. Thus
ended my induction at the National.
CHAPTER II.
MR. SMOOTH SUPS, AND GOES TO BED.
"At length, Uncle Sam, I found myself somebody; and while looking
about me on the many well-dressed and very good-natured gentlemen
who subsisted on the hope of your generosity, could not avoid the
contemplation of what a glorious world this of ours must be, possessing
as it does so many good hearted souls like yourself, so rich--but as
indifferent to their own best interests. 'You will take supper, Mr.
Smooth?' inquired the man behind the mahogany. Before I had time to
speak, he pulled a bell that jingled like Jehu. And then there came
scampering in a school of negroes, so tidy, trim, and intelligent. One
bowed--another smiled--a third waited with a salutation my commands.
'Take care of Mister Smooth!' again spoke the man behind the
mahogany, as with an effort to be commanding in accent. That they
might know more emphatically (as Uncle Tom Benton says) that Mr.
Smooth was none of your common citizen, I turned my eyes on the
darkies, and stared at them until they turned pale. Then one possessed
himself of my bundle: moving off with a scientific motion, and a bow a
la cabinet, he bid me follow. Obeying his summons, onward we went,
through a long, dark passage, and into a spacious hall up stairs, where
he said they eat their people. No sooner was I bowed to a seat than a
dozen gentlemen darkies set upon me in good earnest; so fast did they
beset me with eatables that I begun to think they had mistaken me for a
thanksgiving turkey about to be fatted for the table of the secretary of
the treasury. The fixins, as Mr. Samuel Slick would say, made one feel
quite at home; not so with the darkies: they recognizing my home spun,
soon became sassy; whereupon I turned round and set upon them with
the broadest grin I could summon. Nor could I withhold a laugh at
seeing them laugh. 'Reckon how mas'r's on big business to Washington
wid Mr. General Pierce,' says one, whose face was black, and bright,

and full of the quizzical; while another, with a flat crooked nose gave a
cunning wink out of his left eye. This being detected by a superior, in
the brisk person of a son of the Emerald Isle, who stood well six feet in
his boots, a 'soucer' with the broad front of his knuckle bones, between
the colored gentleman's two eyes, was the rejoinder--a most striking
remonstrance, that laid him measuring the floor. Troth! an' it's myself 'd
stop yer botheration. Sure, ye dark spalpeens, is it by the same token
ye'd trate the gintleman? (Here the honest son of sweet Erin showed
signs of his Doneybrook getting the better of him.) 'Myself 'll take care
of Mr. Smooth--doesn't he belong to the self same party, the
know-nothings? The divil a such a country, as Hamirike: an' it's the
boys from Donegal that 'ud be taking her dignity in care.' Saying this,
Mr. Patrick (for such was his name) stretched the whole length of his
important self over the table, and says:--I'm yers to the buckle of my
shoe, Mr. Smooth! It's a divil a one but yerself I'll vote for at the next
helection. Sure, an' didn't mysel jine the native Hamerikan party, with
Tom Connolly, afore we'd been two months on the beloved soil an',
sure, it's Tom and myself that's goin to put through the nonothin for ye.'
Here Mr. Patrick anxiously paused for a reply. To never say a bad thing
when I could not think of a good, ever has been my motto; so I returned
his good nature with saying:--'Give us yer hand, Mr. Patrick--we will
forget the two, and yet be one! and that our faith may be made