now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen
officiate was at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and
medicines for the sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley
occupied one side of the platform on which the musicians were exalted,
and Peter Cooper the other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant
upon the two chiefs, but I have forgotten their names now. Horace
Greeley, gray-haired and beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck
pants, blue shirt, open at the breast, large neckerchief, loose as an
ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty sailor knot, broad turnover collar with
star in the corner, shiny black little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily
far back on head, and flying two gallant long ribbons. Slippers on
ample feet, round spectacles on benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand,
completed Mr. Greeley, and made him, in my boyish admiration, every inch
a sailor, and worthy to be the honored great-grandfather of the Neptune
he was so ingeniously representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper
was dressed as a general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively
warlike. I neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers
and sailors in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from
Boston--this was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception
of Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper
to the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep
of the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,
and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor
of French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here
lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down
every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and
several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"
and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic
report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other
distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,
"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these
substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone
to lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures
on stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on
miscegenation, on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary
matters, on all kinds of religion, and s