ts at Cincinnati of a pale, sallow liar,
who is just beginning to work his way up to the forty-ninth degree in
the Order of Ananias_ (Page 222)]
The hair-cloth lounge, in various conditions of decrepitude, maybe found
all through this region. Its true inwardness is composed of spiral
springs which have gnawed through the cloth in many instances. These
springs have lost none of their old elasticity of spirits, and cordially
corkscrew themselves into the affections of the man who sits down on
them. If anything could make me thoroughly attached to the South it
would be one of these spiral springs bored into my person about a foot.
But that is the only way to remain on a hair-cloth chair or sofa. No man
ever successfully sat on one of them for any length of time unless he
had a strong pair of pantaloons and a spiral spring twisted into him for
some distance.
In private houses hair-cloth sofas may be found in a domesticated state,
with a pair of dark, reserved chairs, waiting for some one to come and
fall off them. In hotels they go in larger flocks, and graze together in
the parlor.
THE THOUGHT CLOTHIER
XXV
General Dado has been sharply criticised--roundly abused, even--for
making a claim against the Grant estate for alleged assistance in
preparing the "Memoirs" that have added to that estate some half-million
of dollars. The Philadelphia _Bulletin_ says:--"There is no mark of
contempt so strong that it ought not to be fixed on so shameless and
unblushing an ingrate." And it is this--the man's ingratitude--that most
offends. General Grant's unswerving loyalty to Dado, his zeal in giving
places to him so long as he had them to give, and in soliciting others
to give them when it was no longer in his own power to do so, was an
offense in the nostrils of most Americans. His intimacy with Dado was
one of the causes of Grant's being in bad odor, as it were, at a certain
period of his career; and the present unpleasantness is a part of the
penalty for taking such a man into his bosom. The claimant is getting
the worst of it, however, and we are tempted to overlook his ingratitude
for the sake of the following skit called forth by his appearance as a
thinker and clothier of thoughts.--_The Critic_.
There is something slightly pathetic in the delayed statement that some
of General Grant's best thoughts were supplied by General Adam Dado.
While it is a great credit to any man to do the meditating, pondering,
and
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