rned if I don't.
I'll tell you what I know about it, and you can have a little fun while
you're here, lookin' on, only it won't do to write about it to the
Newcastle Guardian. Guess Willard wouldn't publish it, anyhow. I suppose
you know that Jethro pulls the strings, end we little railroad presidents
dance. We're the puppets now, but after a while, when I'm crowded out,
all these little railroads will get together and there'll be a row worth
looking at, or I'm mistaken. But to go back to Worthington," continued
Mr. Merrill, "he made a little mistake with his bill in the beginning.
Instead of going to Jethro, he went to Heth Sutton, and Heth got the bill
as far as the Committee on Corporations, and there she's been ever since,
with our friend Chauncey Weed, who's whispering over there."

"Mr. Sutton couldn't even get it out of the Committee!" exclaimed
Wetherell.

"Not an inch. Jethro saw this thing coming about a year ago, and he took
the precaution to have Chauncey Weed and the rest of the Committee in his
pocket--and of course Heth Sutton's always been there."

William Wetherell thought of that imposing and manly personage, the
Honorable Heth Sutton, being in Jethro's pocket, and marvelled. Mr.
Chauncey Weed seemed of a species better able to thrive in the atmosphere
of pockets.

"Well, as I say, there was the Truro Franchise Bill sound asleep in the
Committee, and when Isaac D. Worthington saw that his little arrangement
with Heth Sutton wasn't any good, and that the people of the state didn't
have anything more to say about it than the Crow Indians, and that the
end of the session was getting nearer and nearer, he got desperate and
went to Jethro, I suppose. You know as well as I do that Jethro has
agreed to put the bill through."

"Then why doesn't he get the Committee to report it and put it through?"
asked Wetherell.

"Bless your simple literary nature," exclaimed Mr Merrill, "Jethro's got
more power than any man in the state, but that isn't saying that he
doesn't have to fight occasionally. He has to fight now. He has seven of
the twelve senators hitched, and the governor. But Duncan and Lovejoy
have bought up all the loose blocks of representatives, and it is
supposed that the franchise forces only control a quorum. The end of the
session is a week off, and never in all my experience have I seen a more
praiseworthy attendance on the part of members."

"Do you mean that they are being paid to remain in