mants of unlawful millions.

But, like many another man who has the Devil in him, Mr. Pullwool ran
his luck until he ran himself into trouble. An investigating committee
pounced upon him; he was put in confinement for refusing to answer
questions; his filchings were held up to the execration of the envious
both by virtuous members and a virtuous press; and when he at last got
out of durance he found it good to quit the District of Columbia for a
season. Thus it happened that Mr. Pullwool and his eminent lodger took
the cars and went to and fro upon the earth seeking what they might
devour.

In the course of their travels they arrived in a little State, which
may have been Rhode Island, or may have been Connecticut, or may have
been one of the Pleiades, but which at all events had two capitals.
Without regard to Morse's Gazetteer, or to whatever other Gazetteer may
now be in currency, we shall affirm that one of these capitals was
called Slowburg and the other Fastburg. For some hundreds of years (let
us say five hundred, in order to be sure and get it high enough)
Slowburg and Fastburg had shared between them, turn and turn about,
year on and year off, all the gubernatorial and legislative pomps and
emoluments that the said State had to bestow. On the 1st of April of
every odd year the governor, preceded by citizen soldiers, straddling
or curvetting through the mud--the governor, followed by twenty
barouches full of eminent citizens, who were not known to be eminent at
any other time, but who made a rush for a ride on this occasion as
certain old ladies do at funerals--the governor, taking off his hat to
pavements full of citizens of all ages, sizes, and colors, who did not
pretend to be eminent--the governor, catching a fresh cold at every
corner, and wishing the whole thing were passing at the equator,--the
governor triumphantly entered Slowburg,--observe, Slowburg,--read his
always enormously long message there, and convened the legislature
there. On the 1st of April of every even year the same governor, or a
better one who had succeeded him, went through the same ceremonies in
Fastburg. Each of these capitals boasted, or rather blushed over, a
shabby old barn of a State-House, and each of them maintained a company
of foot-guards and ditto of horse-guards, the latter very loose in
their saddles. In each the hotels and boarding-houses had a full year
and a lean year, according as the legislature sat in the one or in