into the
schoolmaster again here,--"I had two cabinet ministers, two judges, and
a general at my table last night."

"On YOUR invitation?"

"Dear, no! all I did was to pay for it. Tom Soufflet gave the dinner
and invited the people. Everybody knows Tom. You see, a friend of
mine put me up to it, and said that Soufflet had fixed up no end of
appointments and jobs in that way. You see, when these gentlemen get
sociable over their wine, he says carelessly, 'By the way, there's
So-and-so--a good fellow--wants something; give it to him.' And the
first thing you know, or they know, he gets a promise from them. They
get a dinner--and a good one--and he gets an appointment."

"But where did you get the money?"

"Oh,"--he hesitated,--"I wrote home, and Fanny's father raised fifteen
hundred dollars some way, and sent it to me. I put it down to
political expenses." He laughed a weak, foolish laugh here, and added,
"As the old man don't drink nor smoke, he'd lift his eyebrows to know
how the money goes. But I'll make it all right when the office
comes--and she's coming, sure pop."

His slang fitted as poorly on him as his clothes, and his familiarity
was worse than his former awkward shyness. But I could not help asking
him what had been the result of this expenditure.

"Nothing just yet. But the Secretary of Tape and the man at the head
of the Inferior Department, both spoke to me, and one of them said he
thought he'd heard my name before. He might," he added, with a forced
laugh, "for I've written him fifteen letters."

Three months passed. A heavy snow-storm stayed my chariot wheels on a
Western railroad, ten miles from a nervous lecture committee and a
waiting audience; there was nothing to do but to make the attempt to
reach them in a sleigh. But the way was long and the drifts deep, and
when at last four miles out we reached a little village, the driver
declared his cattle could hold out no longer, and we must stop there.
Bribes and threats were equally of no avail. I had to accept the fact.

"What place is this?"

"Remus."

"Remus, Remus," where had I heard that name before? But while I was
reflecting he drove up before the door of the tavern. It was a dismal,
sleep-forbidding place, and only nine o'clock, and here was the long
winter's night before me. Failing to get the landlord to give me a
team to go further, I resigned myself to my fate and a cigar, behind
the red-hot stove. In a few mom