he certainly said to Mrs.
Clinton, in an aside that was perfectly audible to every one at the
table: "How brilliant! what an original mind! what a sensation he would
make abroad!" And it was quite true, apart from the mere momentary
effect of dinner-table talk, that there was a certain bigness about
the man; a keen practical sagacity; a bold freedom of self-assertion; a
broad way of dealing with what he knew.

Carrington was the only person at table who looked on with a perfectly
cool head, and who criticised in a hostile spirit. Carrington's
impression of Ratcliffe was perhaps beginning to be warped by a shade
of jealousy, for he was in a peculiarly bad temper this evening, and his
irritation was not wholly concealed.

"If one only had any confidence in the man!" he muttered to French, who
sat by him.

This unlucky remark set French to thinking how he could draw
Ratcliffe out, and accordingly, with his usual happy manner, combining
self-conceit and high principles, he began to attack the Senator with
some "badinaige" on the delicate subject of Civil Service Reform, a
subject almost as dangerous in political conversation at Washington as
slavery itself in old days before the war. French was a reformer, and
lost no occasion of impressing his views; but unluckily he was a very
light weight, and his manner was a little ridiculous, so that even Mrs.
Lee, who was herself a warm reformer, sometimes went over to the other
side when he talked. No sooner had he now shot his little arrow at the
Senator, than that astute man saw his opportunity, and promised himself
the pleasure of administering to Mr.

French punishment such as he knew would delight the company. Reformer
as Mrs. Lee was, and a little alarmed at the roughness of Ratcliffe's
treatment, she could not blame the Prairie Giant, as she ought, who,
after knocking poor French down, rolled him over and over in the mud.

"Are you financier enough, Mr. French, to know what are the most famous
products of Connecticut?"

Mr. French modestly suggested that he thought its statesmen best
answered that description.

"No, sir! even there you're wrong. The showmen beat you on your own
ground. But every child in the union knows that the most famous products
of Connecticut are Yankee notions, nutmegs made of wood and clocks that
won't go. Now, your Civil Service Reform is just such another Yankee
notion; it's a wooden nutmeg; it's a clock with a show case and sham
works. And