Chapter Sixteen

Martin Chuzzlewit

by Charles Dickens

MARTIN DISEMBARKS FROM THAT NOBLE AND FAST-SAILING LINE-OF-PACKET
SHIP, 'THE SCREW', AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK, IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA. HE MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCES, AND DINES AT A BOARDING-
HOUSE. THE PARTICULARS OF THOSE TRANSACTIONS

Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and
margin of the land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the
day before; and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such
an exciting occasion, the friends of the disappointed candidate had
found it necessary to assert the great principles of Purity of
Election and Freedom of opinion by breaking a few legs and arms, and
furthermore pursuing one obnoxious gentleman through the streets with
the design of hitting his nose. These good-humoured little outbursts
of the popular fancy were not in themselves sufficiently remarkable
to create any great stir, after the lapse of a whole night; but they
found fresh life and notoriety in the breath of the newsboys, who not
only proclaimed them with shrill yells in all the highways and byways
of the town, upon the wharves and among the shipping, but on the deck
and down in the cabins of the steamboat; which, before she touched
the shore, was boarded and overrun by a legion of those young
citizens.

'Here's this morning's New York Sewer!' cried one. 'Here's this
morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's
the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's
the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter!
Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers!
Here's full particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday,
in which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging
case; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all
the Political, Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are!
Here they are! Here's the papers, here's the papers!'

'Here's the Sewer!' cried another. 'Here's the New York Sewer!
Here's some of the twelfth thousand of to-day's Sewer, with the best
accounts of the markets, and all the shipping news, and four whole
columns of country correspondence, and a full account of the Ball at
Mrs White's last night, where all the beauty and fashion of New York
was assembled; with the Sewer's own particulars of the private lives
of all the ladies that was there! Here's the Sewer! Here's some of
the twelfth thousand of the New York Sewer! Here's the Sewer's
exposure of the Wall Street Gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the
Washington Gang, and the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act
of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight
years old; now communicated, at a great expense, by his own nurse.
Here's the Sewer! Here's the New York Sewer, in its twelfth
thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all
their names printed! Here's the Sewer's article upon the Judge that
tried him, day afore yesterday, for libel, and the Sewer's tribute to
the independent Jury that didn't convict him, and the Sewer's account
of what they might have expected if they had! Here's the Sewer,
here's the Sewer! Here's the wide-awake Sewer; always on the
lookout; the leading Journal of the United States, now in its twelfth
thousand, and still a-printing off:--Here's the New York Sewer!'

'It is in such enlightened means,' said a voice almost in
Martin's ear, 'that the bubbling passions of my country find a
vent.'

Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing close at his
side, a sallow gentleman, with sunken cheeks, black hair, small
twinkling eyes, and a singular expression hovering about that region
of his face, which was not a frown, nor a leer, and yet might have
been mistaken at the first glance for either. Indeed it would have
been difficult, on a much closer acquaintance, to describe it in any
more satisfactory terms than as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning
and conceit. This gentleman wore a rather broad-brimmed hat for the
greater wisdom of his appearance; and had his arms folded for the
greater impressiveness of his attitude. He was somewhat shabbily
dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short loose
trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff waistcoat, through
which a discoloured shirt-frill struggled to force itself into
notice, as asserting an equality of civil rights with the other
portions of his dress, and maintaining a declaration of Independence
on its own account. His feet, which were of unusually large
proportions, were leisurely crossed before him as he half leaned
against, half sat upon, the steamboat's bulwark; and his thick cane,
shod with a mighty ferule at one end and armed with a great metal
knob at the other, depended from a line-and-tassel on his wrist. Thus
attired, and thus composed into an aspect of great profundity, the
gentleman twitched up the right-hand corner of his mouth and his
right eye simultaneously, and said, once more:

'It is in such enlightened means that the bubbling passions of
my country find a vent.'

As he looked at Martin, and nobody else was by, Martin inclined
his head, and said:

'You allude to--?'

'To the Palladium of rational Liberty at home, sir, and the
dread of Foreign oppression abroad,' returned the gentleman, as he
pointed with his cane to an uncommonly dirty newsboy with one eye.
'To the Envy of the world, sir, and the leaders of Human
Civilization. Let me ask you sir,' he added, bringing the ferule of
his stick heavily upon the deck with the air of a man who must not be
equivocated with, 'how do you like my Country?'

'I am hardly prepared to answer that question yet,' said Martin
'seeing that I have not been ashore.'

'Well, I should expect you were not prepared, sir,' said the
gentleman, 'to behold such signs of National Prosperity as those?'

He pointed to the vessels lying at the wharves; and then gave a
vague flourish with his stick, as if he would include the air and
water, generally, in this remark.

'Really,' said Martin, 'I don't know. Yes. I think I was.'

The gentleman glanced at him with a knowing look, and said he
liked his policy. It was natural, he said, and it pleased him as a
philosopher to observe the prejudices of human nature.

'You have brought, I see, sir,' he said, turning round towards
Martin, and resting his chin on the top of his stick, 'the usual
amount of misery and poverty and ignorance and crime, to be located
in the bosom of the great Republic. Well, sir! let 'em come on in
shiploads from the old country. When vessels are about to founder,
the rats are said to leave 'em. There is considerable of truth, I
find, in that remark.'

'The old ship will keep afloat a year or two longer yet,
perhaps,' said Martin with a smile, partly occasioned by what the
gentleman said, and partly by his manner of saying it, which was odd
enough for he emphasised all the small words and syllables in his
discourse, and left the others to take care of themselves; as if he
thought the larger parts of speech could be trusted alone, but the
little ones required to be constantly looked after.

'Hope is said by the poet, sir,' observed the gentleman, 'to be
the nurse of young Desire.'

Martin signified that he had heard of the cardinal virtue in
question serving occasionally in that domestic capacity.

'She will not rear her infant in the present instance, sir,
you'll find,' observed the gentleman.

'Time will show,' said Martin.

The gentleman nodded his head gravely; and said, 'What is your
name, sir?'

Martin told him.

'How old are you, sir?'

Martin told him.

'What is your profession, sir?'

Martin told him that also.

'What is your destination, sir?' inquired the gentleman.

'Really,' said Martin laughing, 'I can't satisfy you in that
particular, for I don't know it myself.'

'Yes?' said the gentleman.

'No,' said Martin.

The gentleman adjusted his cane under his left arm, and took a
more deliberate and complete survey of Martin than he had yet had
leisure to make. When he had completed his inspection, he put out
his right hand, shook Martin's hand, and said:

'My name is Colonel Diver, sir. I am the Editor of the New York
Rowdy Journal.'

Martin received the communication with that degree of respect
which an announcement so distinguished appeared to demand.

'The New York Rowdy Journal, sir,' resumed the colonel, 'is, as
I expect you know, the organ of our aristocracy in this city.'

'Oh! there is an aristocracy here, then?' said Martin. 'Of what
is it composed?'

'Of intelligence, sir,' replied the colonel; 'of intelligence
and virtue. And of their necessary consequence in this republic--
dollars, sir.'

Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling well assured that if
intelligence and virtue led, as a matter of course, to the
acquisition of dollars, he would speedily become a great capitalist.
He was about to express the gratification such news afforded him,
when he was interrupted by the captain of the ship, who came up at
the moment to shake hands with the colonel; and who, seeing a
well-dressed stranger on the deck (for Martin had thrown aside his
cloak), shook hands with him also. This was an unspeakable relief to
Martin, who, in spite of the acknowledged supremacy of Intelligence
and virtue in that happy country, would have been deeply mortified to
appear before Colonel Diver in the poor character of a steerage
passenger.

'Well cap'en!' said the colonel.

'Well colonel,' cried the captain. 'You're looking most
uncommon bright, sir. I can hardly realise its being you, and that's
a fact.'

'A good passage, cap'en?' inquired the colonel, taking him
aside,

'Well now! It was a pretty spanking run, sir,' said, or rather
sung, the captain, who was a genuine New Englander; 'con-siderin' the
weather.'

'Yes?' said the colonel.

'Well! It was, sir,' said the captain. 'I've just now sent a
boy up to your office with the passenger-list, colonel.'

'You haven't got another boy to spare, p'raps, cap'en?' said the
colonel, in a tone almost amounting to severity.

'I guess there air a dozen if you want 'em, colonel,' said the
captain.

'One moderate big 'un could convey a dozen champagne, perhaps,'
observed the colonel, musing, 'to my office. You said a spanking
run, I think?'

'Well, so I did,' was the reply.

'It's very nigh, you know,' observed the colonel. 'I'm glad it
was a spanking run, cap'en. Don't mind about quarts if you're short
of 'em. The boy can as well bring four-and-twenty pints, and travel
twice as once.--A first-rate spanker, cap'en, was it? Yes?'

'A most e--tarnal spanker,' said the skipper.

'I admire at your good fortun, cap'en. You might loan me a
corkscrew at the same time, and half-a-dozen glasses if you liked.
However bad the elements combine against my country's noble
packet-ship, the Screw, sir,' said the colonel, turning to Martin,
and drawing a flourish on the surface of the deck with his cane, 'her
passage either way is almost certain to eventuate a spanker!'

The captain, who had the Sewer below at that moment, lunching
expensively in one cabin, while the amiable Stabber was drinking
himself into a state of blind madness in another, took a cordial
leave of his friend the colonel, and hurried away to dispatch the
champagne; well knowing (as it afterwards appeared) that if he failed
to conciliate the editor of the Rowdy Journal, that potentate would
denounce him and his ship in large capitals before he was a day
older; and would probably assault the memory of his mother also, who
had not been dead more than twenty years. The colonel being again
left alone with Martin, checked him as he was moving away, and
offered in consideration of his being an Englishman, to show him the
town and to introduce him, if such were his desire, to a genteel
boarding-house. But before they entered on these proceedings (he
said), he would beseech the honour of his company at the office of
the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a bottle of champagne of his own
importation.

All this was so extremely kind and hospitable, that Martin,
though it was quite early in the morning, readily acquiesced. So,
instructing Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend and her
three children, that when he had done assisting them, and had cleared
the baggage, he was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy Journal
Office, Martin accompanied his new friend on shore.

They made their way as they best could through the melancholy
crowd of emigrants upon the wharf, who, grouped about their beds and
boxes, with the bare ground below them and the bare sky above, might
have fallen from another planet, for anything they knew of the
country; and walked for some short distance along a busy street,
bounded on one side by the quays and shipping; and on the other by a
long row of staring red-brick storehouses and offices, ornamented
with more black boards and white letters, and more white boards and
black letters, than Martin had ever seen before, in fifty times the
space. Presently they turned up a narrow street, and presently into
other narrow streets, until at last they stopped before a house
whereon was painted in great characters, 'Rowdy Journal.'

The colonel, who had walked the whole way with one hand in his
breast, his head occasionally wagging from side to side, and his hat
thrown back upon his ears, like a man who was oppressed to
inconvenience by a sense of his own greatness, led the way up a dark
and dirty flight of stairs into a room of similar character, all
littered and bestrewn with odds and ends of newspapers and other
crumpled fragments, both in proof and manuscript. Behind a mangy old
writing-table in this apartment sat a figure with a stump of a pen in
its mouth and a great pair of scissors in its right hand, clipping
and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals; and it was such a laughable
figure that Martin had some difficulty in preserving his gravity,
though conscious of the close observation of Colonel Diver.

The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the
Rowdy Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile
appearance, and unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps, from
intense thought, but partly, there is no doubt, from the excessive
use of tobacco, which he was at that moment chewing vigorously. He
wore his shirt-collar turned down over a black ribbon; and his lank
hair, a fragile crop, was not only smoothed and parted back from his
brow, that none of the Poetry of his aspect might be lost, but had,
here and there, been grubbed up by the roots; which accounted for his
loftiest developments being somewhat pimply. He had that order of
nose on which the envy of mankind has bestowed the appellation
'snub,' and it was very much turned up at the end, as with a lofty
scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman were tokens of a
sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that, though encouraged
to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of gingerbread than
the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture, his apparently
tender age went far to strengthen. He was intent upon his work.
Every time he snapped the great pair of scissors, he made a
corresponding motion with his jaws, which gave him a very terrible
appearance.

Martin was not long in determining within himself that this must
be Colonel Diver's son; the hope of the family, and future mainspring
of the Rowdy Journal. Indeed he had begun to say that he presumed
this was the colonel's little boy, and that it was very pleasant to
see him playing at Editor in all the guilelessness of childhood, when
the colonel proudly interposed and said:

'My War Correspondent, sir--Mr Jefferson Brick!'

Martin could not help starting at this unexpected announcement,
and the consciousness of the irretrievable mistake he had nearly
made.

Mr Brick seemed pleased with the sensation he produced upon the
stranger, and shook hands with him, with an air of patronage designed
to reassure him, and to let him blow that there was no occasion to be
frightened, for he (Brick) wouldn't hurt him.

'You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see, sir,' quoth the
colonel, with a smile. 'England has heard of Jefferson Brick.
Europe has heard of Jefferson Brick. Let me see. When did you leave
England, sir?'

'Five weeks ago,' said Martin.

'Five weeks ago,' repeated the colonel, thoughtfully; as he took
his seat upon the table, and swung his legs. 'Now let me ask you,
sir which of Mr Brick's articles had become at that time the most
obnoxious to the British Parliament and the Court of Saint
James's?'

'Upon my word,' said Martin, 'I--'

'I have reason to know, sir,' interrupted the colonel, 'that the
aristocratic circles of your country quail before the name of
Jefferson Brick. I should like to be informed, sir, from your lips,
which of his sentiments has struck the deadliest blow--'

'At the hundred heads of the Hydra of Corruption now grovelling
in the dust beneath the lance of Reason, and spouting up to the
universal arch above us, its sanguinary gore,' said Mr Brick, putting
on a little blue cloth cap with a glazed front, and quoting his last
article.

'The libation of freedom, Brick'--hinted the colonel.

'--Must sometimes be quaffed in blood, colonel,' cried Brick.
And when he said 'blood,' he gave the great pair of scissors a sharp
snap, as if they said blood too, and were quite of his opinion.

This done, they both looked at Martin, pausing for a reply.

'Upon my life,' said Martin, who had by this time quite
recovered his usual coolness, 'I can't give you any satisfactory
information about it; for the truth is that I--'

'Stop!' cried the colonel, glancing sternly at his war
correspondent and giving his head one shake after every sentence.
'That you never heard of Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never read
Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never saw the Rowdy Journal, sir.
That you never knew, sir, of its mighty influence upon the cabinets
of Europe. Yes?'

'That's what I was about to observe, certainly,' said Martin.

'Keep cool, Jefferson,' said the colonel gravely. 'Don't bust!
oh you Europeans! After that, let's have a glass of wine!' So
saying, he got down from the table, and produced, from a basket
outside the door, a bottle of champagne, and three glasses.

'Mr Jefferson Brick, sir,' said the colonel, filling Martin's
glass and his own, and pushing the bottle to that gentleman, 'will
give us a sentiment.'

'Well, sir!' cried the war correspondent, 'Since you have
concluded to call upon me, I will respond. I will give you, sir, The
Rowdy Journal and its brethren; the well of Truth, whose waters are
black from being composed of printers' ink, but are quite clear
enough for my country to behold the shadow of her Destiny reflected
in.'

'Hear, hear!' cried the colonel, with great complacency. 'There
are flowery components, sir, in the language of my friend?'

'Very much so, indeed,' said Martin.

'There is to-day's Rowdy, sir,' observed the colonel, handing
him a paper. 'You'll find Jefferson Brick at his usual post in the
van of human civilization and moral purity.'

The colonel was by this time seated on the table again. Mr
Brick also took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and
they fell to drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he
read the paper, and then at each other. When he laid it down, which
was not until they had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked
him what he thought of it.

'Why, it's horribly personal,' said Martin.

The colonel seemed much flattered by this remark; and said he
hoped it was.

'We are independent here, sir,' said Mr Jefferson Brick. 'We do
as we like.'

'If I may judge from this specimen,' returned Martin, 'there
must be a few thousands here, rather the reverse of independent, who
do as they don't like.'

'Well! They yield to the popular mind of the Popular
Instructor, sir,' said the colonel. 'They rile up, sometimes; but in
general we have a hold upon our citizens, both in public and in
private life, which is as much one of the ennobling institutions of
our happy country as--'

'As nigger slavery itself,' suggested Mr Brick.

'En--tirely so,' remarked the colonel.

'Pray,' said Martin, after some hesitation, 'may I venture to
ask, with reference to a case I observe in this paper of yours,
whether the Popular Instructor often deals in--I am at a loss to
express it without giving you offence--in forgery? In forged
letters, for instance,' he pursued, for the colonel was perfectly
calm and quite at his ease, 'solemnly purporting to have been written
at recent periods by living men?'

'Well, sir!' replied the colonel. 'It does, now and then.'

'And the popular instructed--what do they do?' asked Martin.

'Buy 'em:' said the colonel.

Mr Jefferson Brick expectorated and laughed; the former
copiously, the latter approvingly.

'Buy 'em by hundreds of thousands,' resumed the colonel. 'We
are a smart people here, and can appreciate smartness.'

'Is smartness American for forgery?' asked Martin.

'Well!' said the colonel, 'I expect it's American for a good
many things that you call by other names. But you can't help
yourself in Europe. We can.'

'And do, sometimes,' thought Martin. 'You help yourselves with
very little ceremony, too!'

'At all events, whatever name we choose to employ,' said the
colonel, stooping down to roll the third empty bottle into a corner
after the other two, 'I suppose the art of forgery was not invented
here sir?'

'I suppose not,' replied Martin.

'Nor any other kind of smartness I reckon?'

'Invented! No, I presume not.'

'Well!' said the colonel; 'then we got it all from the old
country, and the old country's to blame for it, and not the new 'un.
There's an end of that. Now, if Mr Jefferson Brick and you will be
so good as to clear, I'll come out last, and lock the door.'

Rightly interpreting this as the signal for their departure,
Martin walked downstairs after the war correspondent, who preceded
him with great majesty. The colonel following, they left the Rowdy
Journal Office and walked forth into the streets; Martin feeling
doubtful whether he ought to kick the colonel for having presumed to
speak to him, or whether it came within the bounds of possibility
that he and his establishment could be among the boasted usages of
that regenerated land.

It was clear that Colonel Diver, in the security of his strong
position, and in his perfect understanding of the public sentiment,
cared very little what Martin or anybody else thought about him. His
high-spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands
of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon
him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his
beastly excess. Nothing would have delighted the colonel more than
to be told that no such man as he could walk in high success the
streets of any other country in the world; for that would only have
been a logical assurance to him of the correct adaptation of his
labours to the prevailing taste, and of his being strictly and
peculiarly a national feature of America.

They walked a mile or more along a handsome street which the
colonel said was called Broadway, and which Mr Jefferson Brick said
'whipped the universe.' Turning, at length, into one of the numerous
streets which branched from this main thoroughfare, they stopped
before a rather mean-looking house with jalousie blinds to every
window; a flight of steps before the green street-door; a shining
white ornament on the rails on either side like a petrified
pineapple, polished; a little oblong plate of the same material over
the knocker whereon the name of 'Pawkins' was engraved; and four
accidental pigs looking down the area.

The colonel knocked at this house with the air of a man who
lived there; and an Irish girl popped her head out of one of the top
windows to see who it was. Pending her journey downstairs, the pigs
were joined by two or three friends from the next street, in company
with whom they lay down sociably in the gutter.

'Is the major indoors?' inquired the colonel, as he entered.

'Is it the master, sir?' returned the girl, with a hesitation
which seemed to imply that they were rather flush of majors in that
establishment.

'The master!' said Colonel Diver, stopping short and looking
round at his war correspondent.

'Oh! The depressing institutions of that British empire,
colonel!' said Jefferson Brick. 'Master!'

'What's the matter with the word?' asked Martin.

'I should hope it was never heard in our country, sir; that's
all,' said Jefferson Brick; 'except when it is used by some degraded
Help, as new to the blessings of our form of government, as this Help
is. There are no masters here.'

'All "owners," are they?' said Martin.

Mr Jefferson Brick followed in the Rowdy Journal's footsteps
without returning any answer. Martin took the same course, thinking
as he went, that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in
their moral elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might
render better homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon
the oven of a Russian Serf.

The colonel led the way into a room at the back of the house
upon the ground-floor, light, and of fair dimensions, but exquisitely
uncomfortable; having nothing in it but the four cold white walls and
ceiling, a mean carpet, a dreary waste of dining-table reaching from
end to end, and a bewildering collection of cane-bottomed chairs. In
the further region of this banqueting-hall was a stove, garnished on
either side with a great brass spittoon, and shaped in itself like
three little iron barrels set up on end in a fender, and joined
together on the principle of the Siamese Twins. Before it, swinging
himself in a rocking-chair, lounged a large gentleman with his hat
on, who amused himself by spitting alternately into the spittoon on
the right hand of the stove, and the spittoon on the left, and then
working his way back again in the same order. A negro lad in a
soiled white jacket was busily engaged in placing on the table two
long rows of knives and forks, relieved at intervals by jugs of
water; and as he travelled down one side of this festive board, he
straightened with his dirty hands the dirtier cloth, which was all
askew, and had not been removed since breakfast. The atmosphere of
this room was rendered intensely hot and stifling by the stove; but
being further flavoured by a sickly gush of soup from the kitchen,
and by such remote suggestions of tobacco as lingered within the
brazen receptacles already mentioned, it became, to a stranger's
senses, almost insupportable.

The gentleman in the rocking-chair having his back towards them,
and being much engaged in his intellectual pastime, was not aware of
their approach until the colonel, walking up to the stove,
contributed his mite towards the support of the left-hand spittoon,
just as the major--for it was the major--bore down upon it. Major
Pawkins then reserved his fire, and looking upward, said, with a
peculiar air of quiet weariness, like a man who had been up all
night--an air which Martin had already observed both in the colonel
and Mr Jefferson Brick--

'Well, colonel!'

'Here is a gentleman from England, major,' the colonel replied,
'who has concluded to locate himself here if the amount of
compensation suits him.'

'I am glad to see you, sir,' observed the major, shaking hands
with Martin, and not moving a muscle of his face. 'You are pretty
bright, I hope?'

'Never better,' said Martin.

'You are never likely to be,' returned the major. 'You will see
the sun shine here.'

'I think I remember to have seen it shine at home sometimes,'
said Martin, smiling.

'I think not,' replied the major. He said so with a stoical
indifference certainly, but still in a tone of firmness which
admitted of no further dispute on that point. When he had thus
settled the question, he put his hat a little on one side for the
greater convenience of scratching his head, and saluted Mr Jefferson
Brick with a lazy nod.

Major Pawkins (a gentleman of Pennsylvanian origin) was
distinguished by a very large skull, and a great mass of yellow
forehead; in deference to which commodities it was currently held in
bar-rooms and other such places of resort that the major was a man of
huge sagacity. He was further to be known by a heavy eye and a dull
slow manner; and for being a man of that kind who--mentally
speaking--requires a deal of room to turn himself in. But, in
trading on his stock of wisdom, he invariably proceeded on the
principle of putting all the goods he had (and more) into his window;
and that went a great way with his constituency of admirers. It went
a great way, perhaps, with Mr Jefferson Brick, who took occasion to
whisper in Martin's ear:

'One of the most remarkable men in our country, sir!'

It must not be supposed, however, that the perpetual exhibition
in the market-place of all his stock-in-trade for sale or hire, was
the major's sole claim to a very large share of sympathy and support.
He was a great politician; and the one article of his creed, in
reference to all public obligations involving the good faith and
integrity of his country, was, 'run a moist pen slick through
everything, and start fresh.' This made him a patriot. In
commercial affairs he was a bold speculator. In plainer words he had
a most distinguished genius for swindling, and could start a bank, or
negotiate a loan, or form a land-jobbing company (entailing ruin,
pestilence, and death, on hundreds of families), with any gifted
creature in the Union. This made him an admirable man of business.
He could hang about a bar-room, discussing the affairs of the nation,
for twelve hours together; and in that time could hold forth with
more intolerable dulness, chew more tobacco, smoke more tobacco,
drink more rum-toddy, mint-julep, gin-sling, and cocktail, than any
private gentleman of his acquaintance. This made him an orator and a
man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising character, and
a popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent by the popular
party to the State House of New York, if not in the end to Washington
itself. But as a man's private prosperity does not always keep pace
with his patriotic devotion to public affairs; and as fraudulent
transactions have their downs as well as ups, the major was
occasionally under a cloud. Hence, just now Mrs Pawkins kept a
boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather 'loafed' his time away than
otherwise.

'You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great
commercial depression,' said the major.

'At an alarming crisis,' said the colonel.

'At a period of unprecedented stagnation,' said Mr Jefferson
Brick.

'I am sorry to hear that,' returned Martin. 'It's not likely to
last, I hope?'

Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known
perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be
believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always
is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body
they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the
day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all
countries on the habitable globe.

'It's not likely to last, I hope?' said Martin.

'Well!' returned the major, 'I expect we shall get along
somehow, and come right in the end.'

'We are an elastic country,' said the Rowdy Journal.

'We are a young lion,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.

'We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,'
observed the major. 'Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner,
colonel?'

The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity,
Major Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring bar-room,
which, as he observed, was 'only in the next block.' He then
referred Martin to Mrs Pawkins for all particulars connected with the
rate of board and lodging, and informed him that he would have the
pleasure of seeing that lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as
the dinner hour was two o'clock, and it only wanted a quarter now.
This reminded him that if the bitter were to be taken at all, there
was no time to lose; so he walked off without more ado, and left them
to follow if they thought proper.

When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove, and
so disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their
brows, the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as to
leave no doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman's attire.
Indeed, as Martin walked behind him to the bar-room, he could not
help thinking that the great square major, in his listlessness and
langour, looked very much like a stale weed himself; such as might be
hoed out of the public garden, with great advantage to the decent
growth of that preserve, and tossed on some congenial dunghill.

They encountered more weeds in the bar-room, some of whom (being
thirsty souls as well as dirty) were pretty stale in one sense, and
pretty fresh in another. Among them was a gentleman who, as Martin
gathered from the conversation that took place over the bitter,
started that afternoon for the Far West on a six months' business
tour, and who, as his outfit and equipment for this journey, had just
such another shiny hat and just such another little pale valise as
had composed the luggage of the gentleman who came from England in
the Screw.

They were walking back very leisurely; Martin arm-in-arm with Mr
Jefferson Brick, and the major and the colonel side-by-side before
them; when, as they came within a house or two of the major's
residence, they heard a bell ringing violently. The instant this
sound struck upon their ears, the colonel and the major darted off,
dashed up the steps and in at the street-door (which stood ajar) like
lunatics; while Mr Jefferson Brick, detaching his arm from Martin's,
made a precipitate dive in the same direction, and vanished also.

'Good Heaven!' thought Martin. 'The premises are on fire! It
was an alarm bell!'

But there was no smoke to be seen, nor any flame, nor was there
any smell of fire. As Martin faltered on the pavement, three more
gentlemen, with horror and agitation depicted in their faces, came
plunging wildly round the street corner; jostled each other on the
steps; struggled for an instant; and rushed into the house, a
confused heap of arms and legs. Unable to bear it any longer, Martin
followed. Even in his rapid progress he was run down, thrust aside,
and passed, by two more gentlemen, stark mad, as it appeared, with
fierce excitement.

'Where is it?' cried Martin, breathlessly, to a negro whom he
encountered in the passage.

'In a eatin room, sa. Kernell, sa, him kep a seat 'side
himself, sa.'

'A seat!' cried Martin.

'For a dinnar, sa.'

Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty
laugh; to which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire
to please, so heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam
of light. 'You're the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,' said
Martin clapping him on the back, 'and give me a better appetite than
bitters.'

With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped
into a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time
nearly through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with
its back against the table.

It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these
some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little
phalanx by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at
a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and
everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine
were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and
it had become high time to assert the first law of nature. The
poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of
the entertainment--for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks
at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle--disappeared as rapidly as
if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in
desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled,
leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the
mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole
cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye.
Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun.
It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals
bolted their food in wedges; feeding, not themselves, but broods of
nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them.
Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the
destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the
pastry. What Mrs Pawkins felt each day at dinner-time is hidden from
all human knowledge. But she had one comfort. It was very soon
over.

When the colonel had finished his dinner, which event took place
while Martin, who had sent his plate for some turkey, was waiting to
begin, he asked him what he thought of the boarders, who were from
all parts of the Union, and whether he would like to know any
particulars concerning them.

'Pray,' said Martin, 'who is that sickly little girl opposite,
with the tight round eyes? I don't see anybody here, who looks like
her mother, or who seems to have charge of her.'

'Do you mean the matron in blue, sir?' asked the colonel, with
emphasis. 'That is Mrs Jefferson Brick, sir.'

'No, no,' said Martin, 'I mean the little girl, like a doll;
directly opposite.'

'Well, sir!' cried the colonel. 'That is Mrs Jefferson
Brick.'

Martin glanced at the colonel's face, but he was quite
serious.

'Bless my soul! I suppose there will be a young Brick then, one
of these days?' said Martin.

'There are two young Bricks already, sir,' returned the
colonel.

The matron looked so uncommonly like a child herself, that
Martin could not help saying as much. 'Yes, sir,' returned the
colonel, 'but some institutions develop human natur; others re--tard
it.'

'Jefferson Brick,' he observed after a short silence, in
commendation of his correspondent, 'is one of the most remarkable men
in our country, sir!'

This had passed almost in a whisper, for the distinguished
gentleman alluded to sat on Martin's other hand.

'Pray, Mr Brick,' said Martin, turning to him, and asking a
question more for conversation's sake than from any feeling of
interest in its subject, 'who is that;' he was going to say 'young'
but thought it prudent to eschew the word--'that very short gentleman
yonder, with the red nose?'

'That is Pro--fessor Mullit, sir,' replied Jefferson.

'May I ask what he is professor of?' asked Martin.

'Of education, sir,' said Jefferson Brick.

'A sort of schoolmaster, possibly?' Martin ventured to
observe.

'He is a man of fine moral elements, sir, and not commonly
endowed,' said the war correspondent. 'He felt it necessary, at the
last election for President, to repudiate and denounce his father,
who voted on the wrong interest. He has since written some powerful
pamphlets, under the signature of "Suturb," or Brutus reversed. He
is one of the most remarkable men in our country, sir.'

'There seem to be plenty of 'em,' thought Martin, 'at any
rate.'

Pursuing his inquiries Martin found that there were no fewer
than four majors present, two colonels, one general, and a captain,
so that he could not help thinking how strongly officered the
American militia must be; and wondering very much whether the
officers commanded each other; or if they did not, where on earth the
privates came from. There seemed to be no man there without a title;
for those who had not attained to military honours were either
doctors, professors, or reverends. Three very hard and disagreeable
gentlemen were on missions from neighbouring States; one on monetary
affairs, one on political, one on sectarian. Among the ladies, there
were Mrs Pawkins, who was very straight, bony, and silent; and a
wiry-faced old damsel, who held strong sentiments touching the rights
of women, and had diffused the same in lectures; but the rest were
strangely devoid of individual traits of character, insomuch that any
one of them might have changed minds with the other, and nobody would
have found it out. These, by the way, were the only members of the
party who did not appear to be among the most remarkable people in
the country.

Several of the gentlemen got up, one by one, and walked off as
they swallowed their last morsel; pausing generally by the stove for
a minute or so to refresh themselves at the brass spittoons. A few
sedentary characters, however, remained at table full a quarter of an
hour, and did not rise until the ladies rose, when all stood up.

'Where are they going?' asked Martin, in the ear of Mr Jefferson
Brick.

'To their bedrooms, sir.'

'Is there no dessert, or other interval of conversation?' asked
Martin, who was disposed to enjoy himself after his long voyage.

'We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that,' was
the reply.

So the ladies passed out in single file; Mr Jefferson Brick and
such other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the
departure of their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of
them. Martin thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his
opinion to himself for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform
himself by, the conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged
about the stove as if a great weight had been taken off their minds
by the withdrawal of the other sex; and who made a plentiful use of
the spittoons and their toothpicks.

It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the
greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their
cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to
be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that
fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick
and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures
gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up,
and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to
dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The
more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any
man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent,
the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one
huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an
idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as
from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What
is a flag to them!

One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a
fox, will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with
these gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who
brawled the loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was
their champion who, in the brutal fury of his own pursuit, could cast
no stigma upon them for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin
learned in the five minutes' straggling talk about the stove, that to
carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and
other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs
or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal
assailment; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at Freedom,
striking far deeper into her House of Life than any sultan's scimitar
could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful scent
in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh heaven of
Fame.

Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such
questions as naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the
national poets, the theatre, literature, and the arts. But the
information which these gentlemen were in a condition to give him on
such topics, did not extend beyond the effusions of such
master-spirits of the time as Colonel Diver, Mr Jefferson Brick, and
others; renowned, as it appeared, for excellence in the achievement
of a peculiar style of broadside essay called 'a screamer.'

'We are a busy people, sir,' said one of the captains, who was
from the West, 'and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't
mind 'em if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong
stuff of another sort, but darn your books.'

Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare
thought of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor
political, and was not in a newspaper, inquired 'if any gentleman
would drink some?' Most of the company, considering this a very
choice and seasonable idea, lounged out, one by one, to the bar-room
in the next block. Thence they probably went to their stores and
counting-houses; thence to the bar-room again, to talk once more of
dollars, and enlarge their minds with the perusal and discussion of
screamers; and thence each man to snore in the bosom of his own
family.

'Which would seem,' said Martin, pursuing the current of his own
thoughts, 'to be the principal recreation they enjoy in common.' With
that, he fell a-musing again on dollars, demagogues, and bar- rooms;
debating within himself whether busy people of this class were really
as busy as they claimed to be, or only had an inaptitude for social
and domestic pleasure.

It was a difficult question to solve; and the mere fact of its
being strongly presented to his mind by all that he had seen and
heard, was not encouraging. He sat down at the deserted board, and
becoming more and more despondent, as he thought of all the
uncertainties and difficulties of his precarious situation, sighed
heavily.

Now, there had been at the dinner-table a middle-aged man with a
dark eye and a sunburnt face, who had attracted Martin's attention by
having something very engaging and honest in the expression of his
features; but of whom he could learn nothing from either of his
neighbours, who seemed to consider him quite beneath their notice. He
had taken no part in the conversation round the stove, nor had he
gone forth with the rest; and now, when he heard Martin sigh for the
third or fourth time, he interposed with some casual remark, as if he
desired, without obtruding himself upon a stranger's notice, to
engage him in cheerful conversation if he could. His motive was so
obvious, and yet so delicately expressed, that Martin felt really
grateful to him, and showed him so in the manner of his reply.

'I will not ask you,' said this gentleman with a smile, as he
rose and moved towards him, 'how you like my country, for I can quite
anticipate your feeling on that point. But, as I am an American, and
consequently bound to begin with a question, I'll ask you how you
like the colonel?'

'You are so very frank,' returned Martin, 'that I have no
hesitation in saying I don't like him at all. Though I must add that
I am beholden to him for his civility in bringing me here--and
arranging for my stay, on pretty reasonable terms, by the way,' he
added, remembering that the colonel had whispered him to that effect,
before going out.

'Not much beholden,' said the stranger drily. 'The colonel
occasionally boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest
information for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to
board here, I believe, with a view to the little percentage which
attaches to those good offices; and which the hostess deducts from
his weekly bill. I don't offend you, I hope?' he added, seeing that
Martin reddened.

'My dear sir,' returned Martin, as they shook hands, 'how is
that possible! to tell you the truth, I--am--'

'Yes?' said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.

'I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,' said
Martin, getting the better of his hesitation, 'to know how this
colonel escapes being beaten.'

'Well! He has been beaten once or twice,' remarked the
gentleman quietly. 'He is one of a class of men, in whom our own
Franklin, so long ago as ten years before the close of the last
century, foresaw our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don't know
that Franklin, in very severe terms, published his opinion that those
who were slandered by such fellows as this colonel, having no
sufficient remedy in the administration of this country's laws or in
the decent and right-minded feeling of its people, were justified in
retorting on such public nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?'

'I was not aware of that,' said Martin, 'but I am very glad to
know it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially'--here he
hesitated again.

'Go on,' said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in
Martin's throat.

'Especially,' pursued Martin, 'as I can already understand that
it may have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely
on any question which was not a party one in this very free
country.'

'Some courage, no doubt,' returned his new friend. 'Do you
think it would require any to do so, now?'

'Indeed I think it would; and not a little,' said Martin.

'You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could
breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us
to-morrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our
literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and
bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or
that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander,
the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a
strange name in my ears, believe me. In some cases I could name to
you, where a native writer has ventured on the most harmless and
good-humoured illustrations of our vices or defects, it has been
found necessary to announce, that in a second edition the passage has
been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched into
praise.'

'And how has this been brought about?' asked Martin, in
dismay.

'Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with
the colonel,' said his friend, 'and ask yourself. How they came
about, is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be
samples of the intelligence and virtue of America, but they come
uppermost, and in great numbers, and too often represent it. Will
you walk?'

There was a cordial candour in his manner, and an engaging
confidence that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own
part, and a simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger; which
Martin had never seen before. He linked his arm readily in that of
the American gentleman, and they walked out together.

It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a
traveller of honoured name, who trod those shores now nearly forty
years ago, and woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots
and stains upon its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his
distant dreams were lost to view, appealed in these words--

'Oh, but for such, Columbia's days were done; Rank
without ripeness, quickened without sun, Crude at the surface,
rotten at the core, Her fruits would fall before her spring were
o'er!'