sked when I
intended to sail; and the answer was, the instant the wind hauled, so we
could lay out of the harbor. It might be within half an hour. Hereupon
Judge People's Friend begged I would have the goodness to wait until he
could hunt up a charge d'affaires. His instructions were most peremptory
never to leave the legation without a charge d'affaires; but he would
just brush his bob, and run into the street, and look up one in five
minutes, if I would promise to wait so long. It would have been unkind
to refuse so trifling a favor, and the promise was given. The judge must
have run as fast as his legs would carry him; for, in about ten minutes,
he was back again, with a diplomatic recruit. He told me his heart had
misgiven him sadly. The three first to whom he offered the place had
plumply refused it, and, indeed, he did not know but he should have a
quarrel or two on his hands; but, at last, he had luckily found one who
could get nothing else to do, and he pinned him on the spot.

So far everything had gone on swimmingly; but the new charge had,
most unfortunately, a very long cauda, a fashion that was inexorably
proscribed by the Leaplow usages, except in cases when the
representative went to court; for it seems the Leaplow political ethics,
like your country buck, has two dresses--one for every-day wear, and one
for Sundays. The judge intimated to his intended substitute, that it was
absolutely indispensable he should submit to an amputation, or he could
not possibly confer the appointment, queues being proscribed at home by
both public opinions, the horizontal and the perpendicular. To this the
candidate objected, that he very well knew the Leaplow usages on this
head, but that he had seen his excellency himself going to court with
a singularly apparent brush; and he had supposed from that, and from
sundry other little occurrences he did not care to particularize, that
the Leaplowers were not so bigoted in their notions but they could act
on the principle of doing at Rome as is done by the Romans. To this
the judge replied, that this principle was certainly recognized in all
things that were agreeable, and that he knew, from experience, how hard
it was to go in a bob, when all around him went in cauda; but that tails
were essentially anti-republican, and, as such, had been formally voted
down in Leaplow, where even the Great Sachem did not dare to wear one,
let him long for it as much as he would; and if it were