said the stupid, significantly canting
his head, and giving a queer look out of the corner of his right
eye. 'You fellows don't seem to know me,' I interpolated, 'Citizen
Smooth--they call me Solomon Smooth, Esq., that is my name.' A door
now opened near where I was standing, and in I walked--right among the
Dukes and dough-heads. It only wanted a bold push, in the right
go-ahead sort of way, to make myself respected. Dukes were not only
flesh and blood, but owed much of their importance to the ignorance of
the people they aspired to frown upon. Dukes, Earls, and Lords, were,
at this moment, playing at very un-English games for England. They
affected to believe it right that the loyal people (I mean the simple
and vulgar, who have hitherto proved mean the simple and vulgar) who
have hitherto proved true to their noble traditions, should remain
ignorant of the game played at their expense. This, Mr. Smooth thought
too bad; however, his friend Urquhart was devising a scheme for
remedying the evil, which, did he not himself fall into evil, might do
great good to the nation in general. But Urquhart was so modest that
he never accused Lord Palmerston of anything worse than bringing about
the potato rot in Ireland. 'Hallo hallo!' a dozen voices echoed from
the table around which the all-accomplished sat:--'A rustic intruder
is upon us!' half muttered the man who followed me in. 'It's only
Solomon Smooth, Esq., from the Cape,' returned I, with a good,
wholesome laugh. Believe me, Uncle Sam, there sat round a table ten of
the most solemn-looking fellows, with faces as dreary as a wet moon in
November. Some of this unique body looked as if they had seen hard
usage and lean pay. Others were grey with thinking, instead of
moving. Be not surprised either when I say that the gravity of their
countenance left no visible room for anything else. Hard at it were
they, straining their antiquated imaginations over a secret game of
thimble-rig, which seemed of momentous importance. Only five, however,
could play at the game; and Sawny Dablerdeen, who always played on two
small pipes, and paid sundry small pipers to do a deal of blowing,
seemed in the greatest fuddle. And then there was my Lord John
Littlejohn, as crusty a little snap as ever declaimed against tyrant
in one breath, or turned a political summersault in another;--bricks
to the back-bone was he, and all for old England, though he was not
bigger than one of Betsy Perkin's well-g