own estimation, and certainly in ours, no more important or honored
individual in all that multitude!

In such scenes as these, he was, indeed, without a rival; but there were
others, also, in which he was quite as useful, if not so conspicuous. On
election days, for instance, when a free people assembled to exercise
their "inestimable privilege," to choose their own rulers--he was as
busy as a witch in a tempest. His talents shone forth with especial and
peculiar lustre--for, with him, this was "the day for which all other
days were made." He marshalled his retainers, and led them to "the
polls"--not as an inexperienced tactician would have done, with much
waste of time, in seeking every private voter, but after the manner of
feudal times--by calling upon his immediate dependants, captains over
tens and twenties, through whom he managed the more numerous masses.
These were the "file-leaders," the "fugle-men," and "heads of messes;"
and it was by a judicious management of these, that he was able to
acquire and retain an extensive influence.

The first article of his electioneering creed was, that every voter was
controlled by somebody; and that the only way to sway the privates was,
to govern the officers: and, whether true or not, it must be admitted
that his theory worked well in practice. He affected to entertain a high
respect for those whom he described as "the boys from the heads of the
hollows"--men who were never seen beyond the precincts of their own
little "clearings," except upon the Fourth of July and election day,
from one end of the year to the other. With these he drank bad whiskey,
made stale jokes, and affected a flattering condescension. With others,
more important or less easily imposed upon, he "whittled" sociably in
the fence-corners, talked solemnly in conspicuous places, and always
looked confidential and mysterious.

But, however earnestly engaged, he never forgot the warfare in which he
was chief combatant. Like a general upon a field of battle, with his
staff about him, he had sundry of his friends always near, to undertake
any commission, or convey any order, which he desired to have executed;
and not a voter could come upon the ground, whom there was the remotest
chance to influence, that his vigilance did not at once discover and
seize upon, through some one of these lieutenants. He resorted to every
conceivable art, to induce the freemen to vote _properly_; and, when he
could not succeed