ire.
Rising up or sitting down, coming or going, week-day or Sabbath-day,
eating or drinking, marrying or burying, the talk was all of slavery,
abolition, and a disrupted country.

Dr. Sevier became totally absorbed in the issue. He was too
unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the
declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to
be in the _melee_. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar
deductions; his own special charges of iniquity against this party and
of criminal forbearance against that; his own startling political
economy; his own theory of rights; his own interpretations of the
Constitution; his own threats and warnings; his own exhortations, and
his own prophecies, of which one cannot say all have come true. But he
poured them forth from the mighty heart of one who loved his country,
and sat down with a sense of duty fulfilled and wiped his pale forehead
while the band played a polka.

It hardly need be added that he proposed to dispense with politicians,
or that, when "the boys" presently counted him into their party team for
campaign haranguing, he let them clap the harness upon him and splashed
along in the mud with an intention as pure as snow.

"Hurrah for"--

Whom it is no matter now. It was not Fremont. Buchanan won the race. Out
went the lights, down came the platforms, rockets ceased to burst; it
was of no use longer to "Wait for the wagon"; "Old Dan Tucker" got "out
of the way," small boys were no longer fellow-citizens, dissolution was
postponed, and men began to have an eye single to the getting of money.

A mercantile friend of Dr. Sevier had a vacant clerkship which it was
necessary to fill. A bright recollection flashed across the Doctor's
memory.

"Narcisse!"

"Yesseh!"

"Go to Number 40 Custom-house street and inquire for Mr. Fledgeling; or,
if he isn't in, for Mrs. Fledge--humph! Richling, I mean; I"--

Narcisse laughed aloud.

"Ha-ha-ha! daz de way, sometime'! My hant she got a honcl'--he says,
once 'pon a time"--

"Never mind! Go at once!"

"All a-ight, seh!"

"Give him this card"--

"Yesseh!"

"These people"--

"Yesseh!"

"Well, wait till you get your errand, can't you? These"--

"Yesseh!"

"These people want to see him."

"All a-ight, seh!"

Narcisse threw open and jerked off a worsted jacket, took his coat down
from a peg, transferred a snowy handkerchief from the breast-pocket of
the jacket to that