e old Whigs now long hungry, the old
Federalists in disguise, the old plotters and schemers long defeated,
were here. The motley elements that Douglas had derided as
anti-Masonics, Know-nothings, Abolitionists, Spiritualists, where were
they? Sunk in silence, out shouted, out talked, outnumbered by office
seekers and monopolists. Tom Hyer was bawling, Garrison could not be
heard. The New England manufacturers were here. Whittier was singing
their songs and did not know it. I began to think of Rabelais, and of
life as gluttony, eating and drinking, digestion and evacuation. I had a
vision of all these hordes of men dead at last, their buttocks exposed
to driving rains, upturned to a dark sky which breathed futility and
contempt upon ended plots and hungers!

That night I started out again with Abigail and Aldington. There had not
been anything like the same amount of drinking at Charleston. Harlots
staggered through the streets, their arms interlocked with those of
howling men. Tom Hyer passed, leading his gang of toughs, the gayly
liveried band swelling the air with great horns and drums. Again the
rails and banners for "Honest Old Abe." Rumors caught us as we passed:
the Germans were for Lincoln; Greeley wanted Douglas elected President
and was scheming to defeat Seward for the nomination. We went to the
Richmond House. I wanted Abigail and Aldington to see the smoking,
drinking, gabbling delegates from New York. We ran into Yarnell. He was
preoccupied, and was a little in drink. He stood with us for a moment,
and then was buttonholed and taken away. We returned to the streets to
watch the marchers.

Yarnell was good enough to get tickets for Abigail, Aldington, and me,
asking us with a half smile not to cheer for any one unless we cheered
for Seward.

It was in the air that Seward would be nominated. Greeley said so, but
he was really fighting Seward. We spied the bald head and bespectacled
eyes of the great editor moving about the Oregon delegates. The tumult
and the passion of the Charleston convention were not as dramatic as
this. These men were here to destroy the Democratic party, to take
control of the government. The air was of concentrated passion and will.
There was a declaration of principles to be formulated out of sagacity
and dramaturgy. Principles were to be observed but baits to be dangled;
factions were to be conciliated, relative claims adjusted; the higher
thought of the nation respected; radicali