"As for that, ladies," said Miss Hardbottle, "if you speak of goodness or beauty, Andy Grant can beat either, though he is a Whig."
"Hester Hardbottle!" shouted Mrs. Ferret.
"Hester Hardbottle!" shouted Mrs. Snuffers.
"Hester Hardbottle!" shouted Mrs. Younghusband.
"Hester Hardbottle!" shouted Mrs. Barndollar--all four at once.
"I do think so," said Miss Hardbottle, sharply, "and what I do think, I say."
"You have no right to say it, madam," said Mrs. Barndollar.
"Free country," said Miss Hardbottle.
"No such a thing for Whigs," quickly returned Mrs. Barndollar.
"Ladies! ladies! ladies!" said I, "peace, if you please:" but there was no peace, for these excellent females soon got into such a state of confusion in the attack and defense of Andy Grant, that I believe the tea-party would have broken up in a state of rebellion, if it had not been for the entrance of Mr. Ferret in the very height of the tumult.
His appearance gave another turn to the conversation, for it all turned upon him.
"And so you are not going to the Sycamore Spring to-morrow," cried one.
"And I 'spose you won't vote for Theodore Fog," said Number Two.
"Nor for Ag Flag," said Number Three.
"But you will drop in a sly ticket for Andy Grant, may be, at last, ef no one should find you out," said Mrs. Ferret, who in this series counted Number Four. "Oh Jesse Ferret, ef you had a drop of blood in you that wasn't milk-and-water, you would be ashamed of sich shilly-shally conduct, that even the women makes you a laughing-stock!"
"Wife," said Jesse, taking a fierce stand in self-defense, "drop it! If my blood was milk-and-water, it would be curds-and-whey before this time. I tell you again, old lady, a Publican's got no right to have sentiments. The party's double splitted, and no man knows which way to turn himself. There's that cursed Iron Railing; and there's that infernal Suspension; and there's the Divorce of the Government from bed and board with the banks, that everybody's talking about; and there's Purse and Sword, and Specie Circlar, and Mint Drops, and the Lord knows what; that a poor, sinful, infallible tavern keeper doesn't know who's who, and what's what. I'm sure I can't tell whether I'm on my head or my heels; and if I was to go down yonder to the Sycamore Spring and hear all the palavering there, I should get so flustrated I wouldn't know which eend of me went foremost. So, I tell you I'll stay at home and stick to my motto:--that's as good as if I swore to it. Solomon Secondthoughts, ain't I right?"
"Jesse," said I, mildly, "have you any respect for the opinion of our distinguished representative, my former pupil, Middleton Flam?"
"Well, I voted for him," replied Jesse.
"Then," said I, "I admit there is a great perplexity about all these public measures and men, just at this time; and I am willing to allow that the New-Light Democracy do not as yet exactly understand their own minds; and therefore it is quite lawful to pause and look about you before you take your stand. This thing is certain, that the New-Light Democracy will undoubtedly go with the government, whatever line it chalks out for following the footsteps of its illustrious predecessor.
Whether that line shall lead us North or South, East or West, my poor skill is not able to instruct you. Whether we are _for_ the banks or _against_ them, is yet undecided, since we are pledged at least in favor of our own. In a Quodlibetarian sense, I do not scruple to affirm that we are _against_ the banks and _for_ the divorce; but in a private sense that opinion will require some reflection. Mr. Flam will be home from Congress before long, and until then we shall suspend our opinion. We are, at all hazards, real Flam men. Flam--I drop the mister when I speak of him as a principle--is our polar star--our cynosure in politics--our Pisgah, which gives us a view of the Promised Land. As a principle, our New-Light Democracy is all out-and-out Flam. Flam is our father, our guide, our Pillar of Cloud. Wait till Middleton Flam comes home."
Having thrown out these well-weighed and sententious remarks, both for the women and for Jesse, I was inwardly delighted to see how soothing was the effect upon my auditory; and as it is a precept inculcated by some sage observer of mankind, I forget his name, to leave your company when you have made an agreeable impression upon them, I did not tarry for further converse, but took up my hat and stick, and bade my worthy friends "good night."
Upon my return to my lodgings, I sat down and made the foregoing narration of what had passed in my presence, and I have incorporated the same into this history, with no little mortification; feeling myself compelled thereto by the consideration that the scene I have described, being, as it were, the first fruits of that unhappy dissension which grew up among the New Lights, and a significant commentary thereon, it may serve in the way of warning to all good Quodlibetarian Democrats who may chance to peruse these pages, against the folly of ever allowing themselves to have any individual opinions, when the leaders and marshals of the party shall have taken the trouble off their hands of thinking and determining for them. And, indeed, the moral may be carried further. For it is obvious, if Jesse Ferret had acted in the spirit and the intelligence of a true Quod, he would have ascertained the majority and gone with it; instead of which, he intrenched himself behind this fortress of neutrality, comprehended in the absurd dogma that a Publican ought to have no sides. Undoubtedly, the true precept should be in all cases of public servants, "Take the upper side." Thereon chiefly hangs the Quodlibetarian theory.
CHAPTER IX.
GREAT MEETING AT THE SYCAMORE SPRING--SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE ARRANGEMENTS--NICODEMUS HANDY CHOSEN TO PRESIDE ON THIS OCCASION--MOTION TO THAT EFFECT BY MR. SNUFFERS--THIS WORTHY GENTLEMAN'S MISFORTUNE--HIS ESCAPE--SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION OF THE MEETING.
The morning of the 8th of September, Anno Domini 1837, was cloudless and cool. The dust had been laid by a shower of rain a little before daylight, and the day therefore was auspicious to the wishes of all who proposed to assemble at the Sycamore Spring. By eight o'clock Ante Meridiem, Nicodemus Handy's barouche, with two beautiful bays, stood upon the gravel before Handy House on Copperplate Ridge. Agamemnon Flag, attired in a new blue coat with figured gilt buttons, white waistcoat, india-rubber watch-guard, snowy pantaloons of very fine drilling, and boots of drab prunelle, tipped at the toes with polished French leather, a watered-silk cravat, and gold spectacles, sat at the breakfast-table with Mrs. Handy and Henrietta, her daughter--the smallest, the neatest, and the best-shaped female, it is said by those who pretend to be judges, in Quodlibet.
Nicodemus was in a flurry. He had swallowed his breakfast with great dispatch, and four servants were busily in attendance upon him. Sam, the waiter, was beating time in the hall with a corn whisk alternately upon the person of his master and his left hand, after a very favorite and ingenious fashion of dusting a gentleman's coat, only known to and practiced by that musical race of colored dandies, of which Sam was a first-rate specimen. Sarah, a lady of Sam's complexion, Mrs. Handy's maid, was running up stairs to sprinkle some verbena perfume on Mr.
Handy's cambric handkerchief; William was smoothing the nap of his glossy-black Brewster with a brush as soft as silk; and Mrs. Trotter, the housekeeper, was arranging a basket of sandwiches and a bottle of Rudesheimer to be stowed away in the box of the back seat of the barouche. The coachman, in a sky-blue frock, and hat with gold band secured by a huge buckle, was in his seat holding the reins, every moment speaking to the horses to make them restive, and then whipping them for not standing still. The whole scene was one eminently calculated to disprove that stale Whig slander which purports to affirm that "all the decency" was in their ranks:--nothing could be more striking than this refutation of it. And as I was myself present--having called in at that moment to deliver a message from the New-Light Club to Mr. Handy, apprising him of their intention to move that he should act as chairman of the meeting to be held at the Sycamore Spring--I witnessed with lively satisfaction the very decided impression of pleasure made upon an assemblage of New Lights, who stood looking on outside of the front gate, by this triumphant vindication of our party from the malevolent insinuations of the Whig press.
Agamemnon Flag seemed to be very much at his ease, and to be thinking but little about the meeting, while he sat uttering some pleasant things to Miss Handy;--at least I suppose they must have been pleasant to her, as she and her mother both laughed a good deal at what he said.
By-the-by, there is a report in the Borough, that Ag is making up to this young lady, which will be a grand thing for him if she favors him, since she is an only child, and Nicodemus is amazingly rich.
"God bless me, my dear!" said Mr. Handy, breaking away from Sam's whisk, and speaking after the manner of a table of contents, (a habit which he has acquired since he has grown rich,) "past eight o'clock--I'm to be the chairman of that meeting--ought to be early on the ground--five miles off--no time for nonsense now--you and Henrietta and Ag--have to drive like lightning--barbacue, my dear--want to see the arrangements before the voters arrive--the schoolmaster will take a seat along side of Nace."
"Thank you kindly," said I; "I accept your offer with great pleasure."
"Shan't want William," he added, referring to the servant who generally rode with the coachman--"upon second thoughts, will put _our_ Secondthoughts inside--ha! ha!--_must_ have William--_shall_ want him; you can sit (speaking to me) on the front seat--Ag and I behind--offer the other seat to Barndollar--want to be civil to _him_, my dear--come, hurry, hurry, hurry!--William, get on your livery and be prepared to mount beside Nace."
As it was very manifest that Mr. Handy was really in a hurry--as very opulent men are exceedingly apt to be--there was of course a great bustle to accommodate him, by getting off. Agamemnon immediately rose from the breakfast-table, and, taking up his superfine Leghorn hat, which was very chastely adorned with a light yellow ribbon band, the ends whereof hung a little over the rim, he put it gently on his head, and then standing before the ladies, asked them with very apparent complacency, whether they thought he was in good trim to appear before the Democracy--and having received answer that "he was exactly the thing," he signified his readiness to depart; whereupon we all bustled out to the barouche and took our seats. William clambered into his place, and away we went at full trot, down to The Hero to take up Jacob Barndollar.
When we arrived at the tavern door, we found there Nim Porter's trotting buggy with his stub-tailed gray. Nim himself appeared on the steps in a big broad-brimmed low-crowned Russia blue hat, set very knowingly over his right eye, with a long taper whip in his hand; and before we could take up Mr. Barndollar, this most good natured of bar-keepers, with an agility not to be expected in so fat a person, sprang up into his tub-shaped seat, which held him about as compactly as the shell of an acorn holds the nut, and spreading the skirts of his green coatee with steel buttons over the periphery of the same, darted off at a speed of about fifteen miles to the hour, down the Rumblebottom road. During this time Mrs. Ferret filled the front door, and Mrs.
Barndollar was looking over her shoulder, while they both opened their batteries upon poor Jesse Ferret, in a contemporaneous objurgation of his mean-spiritedness, addressed to Mr. Handy in the barouche, but intended for the master of the hotel, who looked rather sheepishly through the window of the bar-room. Before he could say anything in his own defense, and even before the amiable ladies of his family were done talking, Jacob Barndollar came out, and got into the barouche; and as Mr. Handy was growing more and more impatient, he ordered Nace to lose no time, and so off we started. As well as I could judge, from looking back, until we turned down by Christy M'Curdy's mill, Mrs. Ferret was still arguing her case in the front door of The Hero.
All the roads leading to the Sycamore Spring were filled with persons on horseback, on foot, in gigs, buggies, barouches, and rattle-traps of every sort. It was obvious we were going to have a great meeting. Before nine o'clock, Mr. Handy was on the ground. About a hundred persons were already there. Booths were scattered along under the huge elms and sycamores which shaded a low flat upon the margin of the Rumblebottom.
The fine, copious, old spring--where there has been many a barbacue in my time--was pouring out its crystal treasures, as some poet says, with prodigal bounty, and transferring them, as the Secretary does the deposits, by large draughts, from the living rock to the running Rumblebottom--in fact, taking them out of one bank, and distributing them between others. Not far from this spring, adumbrated by over-arching boughs--the reader will excuse this poetical orgasm--for fifteen years and upwards have I been visiting this fountain, sacred to Pan, (we used to have fish frys here,) and have ever grown poetical at the sight thereof--it is my infirmity: not far from the spring stood the tables--boards on trestles, and on the boards trenchers filled with cubic sections of beef, lamb, mutton, and ham, interspersed with pyramids of bread--a goodly sight! Upon skids, remote from the tables, stood a barrel of old Monongahela, and hard by in a cart, tumblers, pitchers, noggins, and bottles. Far off, at the opposite confine of this field of action, was a stage erected, with a chair for the President of the day, and benches of unplaned board for persons of inferior dignity.
Everything was in order; and now that Mr. Handy had arrived he had nothing to do but wait for the gathering in of the people.
Presently Mr. Grant, mounted on a large bow-necked bay, arrived, with his four sons, all men grown, of a rustic, farmer-like complexion; they were attended by Augustus Postlethwaite Tompkinson, of The Whole Team, and some dozen Whigs from Thorough Blue, who had traveled as far as Mr.
Grant's the night before, and now made a very solid and formidable troop. Andrew Grant, the candidate, a youth of good presence, and reputable, (bating his politics,) was of this party. Andy had been to college, and his father first intended to make a doctor of him, but the lad somehow took a dislike to physic, and turned in to this new business of engineering on canals and railroads, and was considered, I believe, a tolerably smart hand in that calling. But as he happened to catch a bilious fever in the Dismal Swamp, the old lady his mother, who always had made a pet of him, would not hear of his going back to that line of livelihood; and so he stayed at home helping to manage at the Hogback farm, and doing pretty much as _he_ pleased; until, about a year before he was brought out, he married Stephen P. Crabstock's daughter; and ever since that event does as his _wife_ pleases--spending his time one part of the year at the Iron Works, and the other at the old man's.
By eleven o'clock the company had pretty nearly got to its maximum. A large party came down in a wagon from Quodlibet with Abel Brawn--among them Neal Hopper, Sandy Buttercrop, Davy Post the wheelwright, and I can't tell how many more. Quipes, the painter, borrowed a horse out of Geoffry Wheeler's team, and was there studying human nature and the picturesque. Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben Inky, and Jeff Drinker, with a squad of regular loafers, came on foot. The Tumbledownians were there in great force under Cale Goodfellow, to help Theodore Fog; and the Bickerbrayians with Virgil Philpot, the editor of The Scrutinizer, mustered a heavy phalanx in favor of Ag Flag. To swell the assemblage to its largest compass, there were about fifty laborers from the newly-begun Bickerbray and Meltpenny Railroad, a worthy accession to the New-Light Democracy, who had about a month before this meeting come into the State.
This is a hasty glance over the field of action, and will serve to show that the country was all alive to the importance of the occasion and duly estimated the nature of the crisis. Looking over this congregation I, as one having knowledge therein, may safely affirm, that the genuine Quods present fully outnumbered the Whigs three to one. Eliphalet Fox, who has been more accustomed to measure crowds, however, after a minute inspection of the various groups, judging by that tact which he says never failed him in discriminating between what he calls a Loco Foco and a Whig, (he does not pretend to say that he is so expert in pointing out a New Light, but as to a Loco he asserts he is perfect,) set down the number at nearer ten to one; and accordingly so reported it in the account of the meeting which afterwards appeared in The Whole Hog.
Without, however, dwelling upon this topic, let us proceed to the business of the day.
At twelve o'clock dinner was announced; and this army of hungry politicians, with a unanimity of sentiment, an accord of principle, and a concert of action, which we might in vain seek for in other occupations of a political nature, combined, like a band of brothers, to devour the largest possible amount of the stores which lay before them.
With somewhat less agreement they made their advances to the Monongahela; the more shy of the assemblage being rather kept at bay by the remarkable perseverance and adhesiveness of Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben Inky, and a chosen body of troops under their command, who had constituted themselves the forlorn hope in this assault. Still, as the newspapers say when they are disposed to puff a popular play, the barrel went off very much to the satisfaction, and, indeed, the delight of the company.
These matters being dispatched, Nicodemus Handy, who during the repast had acted inimitably the part of a perfectly ravenous man, but who having an eye to the sandwiches and Rudesheimer, made his appetite rather a matter of "seems," rapped upon the table, and called upon every man to fill up his glass; which order was faithfully obeyed by Flan Sucker & Company, a firm that was in possession of all the tumblers--the remainder of the guests allowing the filling to be, as we say in grammar, "understood,"--and then offered the following toast, which, as he said, would speak for itself:--"The several candidates who are about to address the people--success to him who shall best deserve it!" Sucker & Company drained to the bottom, and then set up a shrill yell, very much in the style of the Winnebagoes, except that there was a running note of "Yip!" that was distinctively Suckerian.
"Now, gentlemen, to the stand!" cried out Mr. Handy.
But before the crowd obeyed this order, Mr. Snuffers had a motion to make. It was a matter of some importance, as the subject was considered in the New-Light Club, that our party should have the President of the day--and it was therefore determined that the moment dinner was over, and before the Whigs might be aware of it, Mr. Snuffers, the head of our club, should rise in some conspicuous place, and move that Nicodemus Handy be requested to preside over the meeting. Mr. Snuffers is a slow and nervous man, and was admonished to be on his guard, so as to make sure of getting ahead of the Whigs who we knew wanted Mr. Grant in the chair. He was in consequence very fidgety all the time of dinner; and now, when the moment for action arrived, the good old gentleman elbowed his way toward the center of the table, and without difficulty succeeded in clambering upon an inverted and empty flour-barrel, which had once been filled with bread. "I move, gentlemen," said he, with a tremulous and agitated voice--"I move, gentlemen, that Mr. Nicodemus Handy----"
Before the next word escaped from his lips, this worthy and respectable old gentleman broke in, and in an instant (I am shocked to tell it) was jammed up tight in the barrel--disappearing as a dip of twenty to the pound is apt to do when stuck into a black bottle--"be President of this meeting," said Mr. Doubleday, with a hurried utterance, taking up the word which was lost with Mr. Snuffers, and which, but for the admirable presence of mind of our Vice, might have been lost forever.
"Break the barrel to pieces!" cried out forty voices.
"Mr. Snuffers is blue in the face--he will die of apoplexy," cried out others.
"An ax!--knock the barrel to pieces!" shouted more, in great alarm at his precarious situation.
In a few moments our distressed and worthy President of the New Light was extricated from his unpleasant durance, and finding no harm done, we proceeded to take the question on the motion. Mr. Handy was thus called to the chair. Nine Vice-Presidents were appointed, and six Secretaries to record the proceedings. These matters being arranged, the whole assemblage moved toward the rostrum at the opposite end of the wood.