It would be a great wrong to Puffer—colored as were
all his acts by some hue of his trade—to suppose that the
death of his poor neighbor had not touched him nearly.
The genial spirit of the Fork was gone; the kindly sunshine
which had flowed from that little dormer through all
its chambers, was darkened. Puffer felt that a dear friend
was dead. He would have helped, with other ready
hands, to lay him in a quiet grave; but when he would
have offered aid, the body—which Martha had watched
alone, refusing, even angrily, all aid or company—was
gone, no one could tell whither. It had been borne forth
secretly at dusk; and one of the children, who had been
out at play upon the Meadows, brought news that he had
seen it upon the shoulders of two men, in the suburbs,
gliding toward the country, with Martha watching and
following it alone.

With the kindliest remembrance of his poor friend,
Puffer was not permitted long to rest; the pressure from
without forced upon him other thoughts. His fortunes
were on the advance, and he would set apart a quiet hour,
at some better day, to think of the little tailor and his
virtues.

[figure description] Page 252.[end figure description]

An unlucky accident at the Capitol required that an
election should be held for a single member of Congress.
The late city representative—the lamented Slocum, he
was entitled in the newspapers—had lost his invaluable
life under a surfeit of Potomac oysters and long speeches,
and his place was now to be supplied. To carry on the
contest with spirit, and any chance of success, it was necessary
that an issue should be raised; it didn't matter
greatly what or which side either espoused. The Upper
Wabash presented itself, and was adopted. The excitement
rose to an unexampled pitch. The orators of Puffer's
party—the Bottomites—having mastered their cue—
went all lengths in denouncing it as an infraction of the
rights of citizens—an invasion of the Constitution—an act
of the most high-handed despotism; and foremost and
conspicuous among these was Puffer himself. He was
the very embodiment of the Anti-Upper-Wabash feeling;
and he was nominated to the vacancy. Was there ever
a more extraordinary character known—in history ancient
or modern, sacred or profane—than Puffer Hopkins, now
that he was nominated to Congress on the eve of a decisive
contest? The newspapers—morning, noon and
night—teemed with his praises. Little, obscure, out-of-the-way
circumstances in his history, were dragged forth
and made the occasion of the most flattering comment and
allusion.

Some one or other had discovered his habit of visiting
the city cellars in quest of oysters; he was immediately
styled the Patriot of the Pie-houses. He had caught, one
afternoon, in company with a crew of political cronies, a
small car-full of striped bass and Lafayette fish, in the
East river, and was declared the Hero of Kipp's Bay.
He had saved an omnibus-driver from being beaten to
death by a crowd, for riding over the legs of a boy—and
he was the Champion of Conveyance. His very head
was taken off of his shoulders and put in plaster; delegations
of tradesmen were constantly waiting upon him,
or writing complimentary letters, humbly soliciting the
honor of crowning him with a new hat, or arraying him
in a clean dickey. The Bottomites—being staunch friends
of free trade—insisted on clapping him in a coat of Thibet's
wool, fancy pants of French jean, boots of Poughkeepsie

[figure description] Page 253.[end figure description]

leather, and a Panama hat, so that he should be a representative
of the unrestricted fabrics of the four quarters of
the earth.

On the other side, the illustrious Insurance President,
Mr. Blinker, being a bitter foe to fire, and quite as close a
friend to the opposite element, and having recovered his
popularity in the interval since his defeat, by insuring two
poor cartmen's sheds at his own risk, and adopting the
son of a disabled sailor as one of the secretaries of the
company, (though the young gentleman was as innocent
of pot-hooks and ledgers as a Kamschatkan,) Mr. Blinker
was nominated by the advocates of the Upper Wabash.

To carry out his principles, Mr. Blinker—having discovered
that a second-hand senatorial coat and a green
and white neck-cloth were not always triumphant—assumed
a round-crowned hat, and a homespun coat and
breeches of the plainest texture; in which array he went
about diligently, drinking incessant glasses of gratuitous
water at the grocers' in furtherance of his Upper Wabash
principles.

He also proceeded to an active canvass of the churches
by attending a new one every Sunday, and rattling in a
donation of half a dollar at least, at each.

Puffer, not to be outdone by Mr. John Blinker, canvassed
the markets in opposition to the churches; and having drilled
a small company of young vagabonds, he made a circuit
of the market-places on Saturday nights with these—
their rags flying to the wind, and an expression of doleful
gratitude in their faces—running at his heels; Puffer keeping
in the advance, and from time to time ordering a cutlet,
or steak, or tender-loin to be cast in. This was so well
enacted that he had not made a tour of the markets more
than twice, before he had the butchers in tears, and swearing
by liver-and-lights, their own tender-loins, and all that
they hold holiest, that Puffer was an angel, with a heart
as big as an ox.

Every thing gave token of a close and furious contest.
Appeals, fresh and frequent, were made to every possible
interest and every possible voter. It was shown conclusively,
in more than one harangue, and a hundred leaders,
that every trade and denomination in business—laity,
clergy, law, medicine, merchandize—were particularly

[figure description] Page 254.[end figure description]

and vitally affected in the questions presented at the
coming election. And, as the time drew nearer, a forcible
address was made to that one voter in particular, by whose
deportment, as is well known, the fate of every contest is
determined. There was not a device for creating or
securing electors that was not brought to bear; and the
one party or the other was constantly startled into unheardof
exertions by learning that its opposite was strengthening
itself with fresh recruits from quarters that could have
never been dreamed of.

There was one that toiled in Puffer's behalf more like a
spirit than a man; a little shrunken figure, that was
every where, for days before the canvass—an universal
presence breathing in every ear the name of Puffer. There
was not a tap-room that he did not haunt; no obscure
alley into which he did not penetrate, and make its reeking
atmosphere vocal with his praises. Wherever a group
of talkers or citizens were gathered, the little old man
glided in and dropped a word that might bear fruit at the
ballot-box. At night-fall he would mix with crowds of
ship-wright's prentices and laborers, and kindle their
rugged hearts with the thought of the young candidate.

He stopped not with grown men and voters, but seizing
moments when he could, he whispered the name in children's
ears, that being borne to parents by gentle lips, it
might be mixed with kindly recollections, and so be made
triumphant.

It was given out that the Blinkerites had established or
discovered, in some under-ground tenements that never
saw light of day, a great warren of voters. When the
toilsome old man learned of this burrow that was to be
sprung against his favorite, he looked about for an equal
mine, whence voters might be dug in scores, at a moment's
notice, should occasion demand. With this in
view, one afternoon he entered Water-street, at Peck Slip,
like a skilful miner, as though a great shaft had been sunk
just there.

And a strange climate it was that he was entering;
one where the reek and soil are so thick and fertile, that
they seem to breed endless flights of great white overcoats,
and red-breasted shirts and flying blue trowsers,

[figure description] Page 255.[end figure description]

that swarm in the air, and fix, like so many bats, against
the house-sides.

Tropical, too, for there's not a gaudy color, green or
red or orange-yellow, that the sun, shining through the
smoky atmosphere does not bring out upon the house-fronts;
and for inhabitants of the region, there are countless
broad-backed gentlemen, who, plucking from some
one of the neighboring depositories a cloth roundabout, a
black tarpaulin and white slops, sit in the doorways
launching their cigars upon the street, or gather within.

Hobbleshank, a resident of the inland quarter of the
city, certainly came upon these, with his frock and eye-glass,
as a traveler and landsman from far in the interior;
and when he first made his appearance in their thoroughfare,
looking hard about with his single eye, it could not
be cause of surprise that they wondered aloud, as he
passed where the little old lubber had come from, and
that more than one of them invited him to a drink of
sheep's milk, or a collop of a young zebra, that one
avowed they were chasing in the back yard for supper, at
that moment.

But when, as he got accustomed to the place, he accosted
them with a gentle voice, said a complimentary word
for their sign-board, with its full-length sailor's lass—
Hope upon her anchor, or sturdy Strength, standing
square upon his pins, they began at once to have a fancy
for the old man.

He passed from house to house, making friends in
each. Sometimes he made his way into the bar-room,
where, seated against the wall, on benches all around the
sanded floor, with dusky bamboo-rods, alligator skins,
outlandish eggs, and sea-weeds plucked among the Caribees
or the Pacific islands, or some far-off shore—he
would linger by the hour, listening with all the wondering
patience of a child, to their ocean-talk. And when they
were through, he would draw a homely similitude between
their story—the perils their ship had crossed—with
the good ship of state; and then tell them of a young
friend of his, who was on trial before the ship's crew
for a master's place. Before he left, in nine cases of
ten, they gave their hands for Puffer, sometimes even
rising and confirming it with a cheer that shook the house,

[figure description] Page 256.[end figure description]

and brought their messmates thronging in from the neighborhood,
when the story would be recited to them by a
dozen voices, and new recruits to Puffer's side enrolled.

Then, again, he would be told of an old sick sailor in
an upper chamber—tied there by racking pains in his joints,
answering, they would say, each wrench to the trials
his old ship's timbers were passing through on the voyage
she was now out upon—and mounting up, he would
find him busy in his painful leisure, building a seventy-six,
razeed to the size of a cock-boat, for the landlord's mantle.
Gaining upon him by degrees, Hobbleshank would sit at
his side; and by-and-by, when he saw it would be kindly
taken, gathering up a thread of twine or two, and helping
to form a length of cable or rigging. By the time a dozen
ropes were fashioned he would have a promise from the
old sea-dog that he would show his teeth at the polls when
roll-call came.

There were some, too, engaged in boisterous mirth and
jollity in back-parlors, just behind the bar; where a
plump little fellow, in his blue roundabout, duck trowsers
supported by the hips, and tarpaulin hat, with a flying
ribband that touched the floor, and shortened him in appearance
by a foot, broke down in a hornpipe to the sound
of an ancient fiddle, that broke down quite as fast as he
did. In the enthusiasm that held him Hobbleshank even
joined in, and with some comic motions and strange contortions
of the visage, carried the day so well that he won
the back-parlor's heart at once; and they promised him
whatever he asked.

The little old man—true to the interest he had first
shown—bent himself with such hearty good will to his
task, that when, after many days' labor, he left Water-street
at its other extremity, there was not a ripe old salt
that was not gathered nor a tall young sailor that was not
harvested for the cause. And so he pursued the task he
had set to himself without faltering, without a moment's
pause. For days before the contest came on, he was out
at sunrise moving about wherever a vote could be found;
nursing and maturing it for the polling-day, as a gardener
would a tender plant; watching and tending many in out-of-the-way
places, and by skilful discourse, a chance

p264-268 [figure description] Page 257.[end figure description]

word, an apt story, ripening it against the time when
it was to be gathered.

Late at night, when others, who might have been expected
to be stirring and making interest for themselves,
slumbered, Hobbleshank, taking his rounds through the
city with the watchmen, with more than the pains of
an industrious clear-starcher, smoothed the placards on
the fences; jumping up where they were beyond his
height, as was often the case, and brushing them down,
both ways, with outspread hands, so that they should read
plain and free to the simplest passer-by. Was there ever
one that toiled so, with the faith and heart of an angel,
in the dusty road that time-servers use to travel!