uley and
the Chevalier Belmont. In addition to these welcoming spirits, there
came also a Dutch band, which, ere we had made fast alongside, struck
up something they intended for _Hail, Columbia!_ The reader will
please appeal to his imagination as to what our reception must have
been, when I tell him that shouts and huzzas, interspersed with this
discordant 'Hail Columbia!' rent the very air, and made faint the
roaring of the steam from the funnel of our little craft. Boxes one,
two, and three, were now sent forward under an escort to the hotel,
while a triumphal chair secured to two long poles was placed in proper
order for the reception of my friend Buck. Rather against his
inclination, and not without expressing some doubt as to the propriety
of displaying so much pageantry in a foreign country, was he packed
into it by Monsieurs Souley and Belmont. Corporal Noggs now formed in
order the procession, which moved in state through the city, headed by
the band playing the 'Rogue's March,' which it mistook for 'Yankee
Doodle.' Such a funny procession! The reader may imagine the figure
cut by my venerable friend, when I tell him that the triumphal chair
was borne on the shoulders of Monsieurs Souley, Belmont, Daniels, and
O'Sullivan--the two former being in the lead. Close in the rear of
the chair, your humble servant, Smooth, took up his position, riding a
female jackass, an animal domesticated by Monsieur Souley, under whose
saddle she had borne up until the flesh was nearly off her bones. This
was tapered off with an everlasting string of seedy citizens, for whom
an innumerable quantity of goats seemed to have a fellow sympathy, so
close did they follow. At the hotel, from the balcony of which
streamed the stars and stripes, the uproar and confusion was beyond
description. Could some of the old burghers have risen from the tomb,
they might have imagined a modern siege of that city they so nobly
defended in times gone by. Staggering and sweating, the four envoys
bore their precious burden to the great porch, whence he was escorted
to the balcony, upon which he stood, like a Roman of old, and, by the
advice of Monsieur Souley, delivered a stunning speech, that versatile
functionary translating it into Dutch. It will scarcely be necessary
to add that the speech proved a decided hit, and was received with
shouts and acclamations. Not a little done over, the old statesman was
now regaled on delicious krout and gin-slings, an