“All is lost, all is lost!” The piteous look
and tone with which the old man had uttered
these words, lingered in the ear of Puffer Hopkins,
long after they had parted, and came up
in every interval of business and labor, to fill
the pause and excite in his mind a vague wonder
as to what they might refer. Some deep
trouble, some profound grief, reaching through
years, and embracing the whole hope of the
old man's life, they seemed to point at. He resumed
the pursuit in which the messenger had
found him engaged, but every now and then
there started out of the papers before him the
wo-stricken face of Hobbleshank and he heard
his voice, repeating again and again, that all
was lost, lost. Wavering in this way between
idleness and toil, night drew on; a dark stormy
and troubled night; winds howling about the
Fork, clamoring at the chamber-windows,
where he lay, as if demanding entrance; subsiding,
springing up afresh, and suggesting to
the watcher, to whom the turmoil would not allow
sleep, thoughts of poor sailors far abroad,
sailing on the wide ocean, reefing and gathering
canvass, or lying-to, for shelter's sake, in cold
harbors, or drifting along on the pitiless tide.

Perplexed by thought of storm and tempest,
in the midst of all which his mind had recurred
to the subject of yesterday, Puffer awoke, and
after in vain endeavoring to shake off the
gloomy shadow of the old man that still haunted
his chamber, he resolved to call at the lodgings
of Hobbleshank and seek there further
confirmation of the good or evil of his thoughts.

Making good speed for the fulfilment of his
purpose, he was soon apparelled and in the
open air. The sky was clear as if no cloud
had ever crossed it; the house-tops lay basking
in the early sun, and the streets, half shadow,
half light, were filled with a throng of people
come forth to enjoy the tranquillity of the
morning. The distance was not great, and he
found the place he sought at once, and in a moment
was directly at the entrance of the chamber,
where he knew by his description, Hobbleshank
lodged.

The door was ajar, and Puffer entered without
notice. On either side of the hearth the
two old women were seated, discoursing in a
whisper. A night taper flickered in its socket
on the shelf; the fire was smouldering and expiring
in its own ashes, and the sunlight, as it
streamed through the small window in the wall,
showed the features of the two women, haggard,
care-worn, and anxious. The elder was
speaking as he came in.

“Why do you say me nay, when I tell you
it must have tumbled in such a night; I'm not
deaf, good woman, though seventy and past—
Heaven save us! Do you think I did not hear
the storm, howling and raging? Your own
eyes saw the chimney fall, and the same wind
that blows down chimney-stacks must overturn
steeples and church-tops. Let me see—it was
built before the war, so it had lived to a good
old age, and was cut down not a minute before
its time.”

“Why do you vex yourself with thinking in
this way, Aunt Gatty?” asked the other, laying
her hand gently in her arm and looking her
anxiously in the face. “The storm was heavy.
God help our poor old friend that was abroad
in it; but the city still stands!”

“Be not too sure of that!” answered the other.
“Have a care! Are you quite clear that
the fire-bell was not ringing all through the
night? I heard it in every pause of the storm;

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

and what is not blown over you may be sure
was burnt up.”

“Grant it so,” said Dorothy. “Grant, as
you say, that the city was ravaged and torn
from end to end by fire and tempest, it was no
fault of ours!”

“No fault of ours, do you say?” cried Aunt
Gatty, turning suddenly about, and laughing
hysterically in her face. “Then all that hawling
of winds meant nothing? All the ships
that went ashore or were dashed against piers
and wharves, did it in mere sport! Ha! ha!
Children that perished in the streets, or in
dwellings drearier than the open street, and
beasts frozen in the field, were all in a frolic?—
Ha! ha! No, no,” she continued, dropping
her voice to a fearful whisper, “these were judgments—
come near to me and I'll tell you how.”

Dorothy, at this bidding, drew close to her
side, and watched for what she said.

“Where was the old man last night?” she
asked, “can you tell me that?”

“Heaven knows!” echoed the other. “It's
morning, and he has not come.”

“Did we go search for him?—did we awaken
neighbors, and raise the cry that a good
old man was perishing somewhere, and hurry
off in hunt for him? Did we ring bells and
alarm all sleepers through the town—that we
do when even a worthless old building of boards
is burning—why not for a dear old friend? No,
no—he's dead,” she cried, in a voice that
pierced the ear to the quick. “Dead, somewhere,
and his blood is on our old idle heads!
Dead! dead!”

With this she turned away, and, heeding no
further any speech that was addressed to her,
sat in the corner of the hearth, mumping, and
muttering unintelligibly to herself. At this
moment Puffer Hopkins came forward, and
made inquiry for Hobbleshank.

“Good Lord! you did not know then that
the old man has been absent all night long!”
she answered, sighing; “she knows it, she
knows it too well! All night in the rough
weather; Heaven send that he has found shelter
in some shed, or under some poor roof, although
it's not to be hoped. Have you seen
the old man of late? you are his friend.”

“I am, and saw him but yesterday morning,”
answered Puffer. “I expected, from what
passed then, to find him downcast, but safe at
home at least.”

“Good angels help us all!” cried Dorothy,
fixing her eyes upon the ceiling; “was he calm
when you left him, or was he stirred with a
passion?”

“Greatly moved, I must confess; cut to the
very heart, if I may judge by what fell from
him,” answered Puffer. “He was in despair,
and left me weeping, hurrying swiftly away!”

“I knew it would be so!” exclaimed Dorothy—
“I knew it would be so! Arouse! Aunt
Gatty, arouse!” she continued, bending down
to the ear of her companion, and crying at the
top of her voice. “This gentleman has seen
Hobbleshank, and has seen him fly away from
him like one distracted! Do you hear me?”

“Did you say Joe was dead?” answered
Aunt Gatty, gazing at the other like one in a
dream. “I thought such a storm was too much
for him.” And she relapsed again into silence,
or mumbled in confused and broken words.

“Poor thing! she thinks of her Joe that was
drowned half a lifetime since; watching all
night through, with age and infirmity, have bewildered
her brain. She thinks, sorrowful creature,
that St. Paul's steeple, too, fell in the
storm last night; nothing can drive it from her
mind; and, because a neighbor's chimney was
overturned and a few tiles blown through the
street, she will have it that the storm has made
a wreck of the city, leaving no stone upon
another—poor thing!”

“Then you have no tidings of Hobbleshank,
and can not tell where he passed the night?”
asked Puffer.

“None whatever. He left us,” said Dorothy,
“yesterday, a little after noon, in cheerful
spirits, for he had learned, by a poor stranger
that came in from the country, something
relating to his child that was lost many years
ago. He said that a few hours would bring
him back a happy man; it will be happiness
enough for us, alas!—for this poor old woman,
that has been his friend and companion for fifteen
years—if he come back alive.”

“Who was this poor stranger that you speak
of?” continued Puffer. “Is he known to any
one here, or did he utter his news aloud?”

“The stranger,” answered Dorothy, “was
stained with travel, and bore with him a parcel,
which he did not open in our presence. Aunt
Gatty thought it might be some garment of the
child's that was lost. They spake apart, the
stranger pointing often to the parcel under his
arm; something was said of a bed-ridden man—
whom, we could not guess; and then they
went forth together. Since then the old man
has not returned.”

“What noise was that?” cried Aunt Gatty,
starting up at this moment, and looking up earnestly
into the face of Puffer Hopkins. “A
heavy wall has fallen; you heard the bell jingle
as it fell? It tolls for him!”

“For Heaven's sake give her comfort,” said
Dorothy, appealing to Puffer, who stood aside,
not knowing how to answer this sudden question;
“tell her the city is not in ruins, that no
church-steeple is cast down.”

“St. Paul's stands this morning,” answered
Puffer, “where it has stood many thousand
mornings; the sun shines upon its weathercock
as high in air as ever. Would that Hobbleshank
could be found as securely as that!”

“Hobbleshank!” echoed Aunt Gatty, “I
knew him in his lifetime; he was an excellent
old man, and sorely tried; let me see, where
was he laid? In Trinity yard; oh, no, no, that
was too full. In the middle burying-ground.
He had no right there, poor man; he was not
stout enough to fill a grave. Ha! ha! I have

p265-218 [figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

it, it was in the old brewery well, where
Tom was drowned; they buried him there because
he knew Tom, when the poor boy was
alive.”

“Does she indeed think her old friend to be
dead?” asked Puffer, looking from one to the
other.

“She does, and its that that has unsettled her
mind,” answered Dorothy; “Her life seems to
hang by some strange link, an invisible thread,
on that of the old man; with him she seems to
think the sun is blotted out and all things fallen
into decay, like herself. For her sake, I would
that Hobbleshank might return.”

“There was no mark, then, by which you
could guess his purpose, or the course he might
take to bring it about?” said Puffer Hopkins;
“nothing by which you could judge, further
than it involved a thought of the lost child—on
what his mind is fixed?”

“Did I say there was nothing more? I was
wrong. He wore with him when he left, he
came back for it, a woman's likeness, painted
in a breast pin; the pin was a great square one,
and the lady, a mild lovely creature, with
gentle eyes. He took it from the closet, and
fixed it in his breast, where it had not been
in my knowledge, ever before. His look softened
when his eye fell on it; and his step was
slower, it seemed to me, and more thoughtful,
when he left, than it had been when he came
in. I thought the lady's face had touched his
heart.”

“It's all darkness and shadow to me now,”
said Puffer, pondering and fixing his eyes upon
the ground, “darkness, with a single ray of
light: you have told me all?”

“All! But do, I pray you, bring back the
old man; seek for him, as you would for your
own father! Spare no time, night or day to
track his steps. There is some deep trust rests
upon him, some great wrong to be avenged. If
he die in the streets, with sealed lips; if his old
life should be taken by wicked hands, and such
may be watching for him, who shall answer?
Will you try, will you seek him out? Promise
me on your truth!”

As the woman spake she raised both her
hands, and letting them fall, as in benediction,
on the person of him she addressed, she watched
him silently for an answer.

“I am but poor and helpless myself,” answered
Puffer, “with few friends and narrow
means; I know not what I can do, but, in
God's name, I will do what I can; what a
friendless and fatherless young man may hope
to do.”

“For his sake, for hers, for your own humanity's
sake, be true to what you would do!”
exclaimed Dorothy, glancing from the helpless
old creature at the hearth toward Puffer, who
stood, glowing with his good resolution, by the
door.

She had uttered the entreaty; turned to the
old woman, who began to speak again, and,
when she had turned again, Puffer was gone.

To what purpose had Puffer Hopkins pledged
his efforts in tracing and recovering Hobbleshank?
What clew, what single clew remained
in his hand, now that he reviewed all that had
fallen within his knowledge, relating to the old
man?

At one time it had occurred to him that light
shone through upon his fortunes, from the
chance discourse of the tailor; that hope was
at an end, for, on a requestioning he extracted
no more than he knew already, and that was
nothing to the purpose.

Any hope that had arisen from the wish to
enlist the personal services of his poor neighbor
in a further search, was idle; for Fob, from
overwork, feebleness of body, and, as it seemed
to Puffer, some secret care that was preying
upon him, was failing every day. To be sure, Fob
dwelt upon the incident he had first recited the
same as ever; spoke of the look and voice of
the old man; his wild talk with the billows and
breakers, and his final act in rending the parchment
in pieces. Of what avail was this? It
might be a mere fantasy, a useless humor of both,
that this man was Hobbleshank, this paper, the
bond and tenure by which he held or relinquished
his rights. Then Fob would pass from this
topic to talk of the old subjects, the country, the
wood, the field; dwelling upon them with more
enthusiasm than ever, and pausing at times, to
bedew their memory with a tear. While his
strength lasted, the little tailor performed his
daily tasks manfully, murmuring not once, repining
not at all, save over the remembrance
of his country life.

Any hope, therefore, built by Puffer on the
services of Fob dwindled day by day. To what
purpose, then, had Puffer Hopkins proffered aid
in tracing and recovering Hobbleshank? To
none whatever! Feeling this, and admitting
to himself how completely darkness hedged
him in on every side, he determined—as most
people do in such emergencies—to let the world
take its course, but at the same time was ready
to seize promptly on the first opportunity that
offered, and, to do him justice, fervently hoping
it might be near at hand, to execute his trust.
In the meantime, and while the fortunes of
Hobbleshank were so full of shifting currents
that hurried onward, or eddies that tarried and
were lost in themselves, the tide of public life
rushed on, swelling steadily. Puffer had learned
by this time that pausing is to a politician,
ruin; and so he kept himself abroad in the
stream. He was now known as an active and
zealous partisan; was regarded as a promising
and rising young man; and somehow or other
had found himself, by some secret agency,
which he could not guess (it was the kind old
man toiling for him in silence), pushed forward
steadily, and appointed to offices of confidence

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

and trust, as they arose in the due progress of
his career. A convention to nominate a mayor
for the city of New York, was soon to be held
and assembled at Fogfire hall; a delegate to this
he was likewise appointed. Prompt in the performance
of all his duties of this nature, Puffer
only waited for the evening of its gathering to
make his way to the hall. The night was
somewhat stormy, and the streets were muffled
and shrouded in mist, but this did not prevent
its being quite apparent that something more
than usual was afoot at Fogfire hall.

Brighter lights streamed through the tap-room
windows as he approached; a din of
voices was heard issuing forth and silencing
the turmoil of the street, whenever the door
opened; and quick feet hurried in and out, and
kept up a constant commotion at the door. The
tap-room—at all times a resort of gossips and
talkers—swarmed with politicians and quidnuncs,
some of whom were gathered in knots,
from which a gusty voice would spring up every
now and then above all others, and then subside
again; some walking the room in couples, arm-in-arm
at a hurried pace; some lounging about
easily, with sticks in their hands from group to
group, and others, dropping off from the knots
of loud talkers, would saunter to the bar, and
arraying themselves in front of a long round
pole—a liberty-pole shaved down and shod at
either end with brass—replenished the thirsty
spirit without stint. The air of the place was
close and odorous, and every man's face was
flushed and wore a burnt and heated look, as if
the tap-room lay directly in the fiery zone.
Through this torrid region Puffer passed, recognising
a friend or two by the way, and pausing
for a grasp; and emerging at a side door upon
the hall, ascended a flight of stairs and was
presently in the committee-room.

The delegates there assembled in great numbers,
stood about the floor talking in groups,
and growing red and excited as they plunged,
by degrees, deeper and deeper into the topics of
discourse. In a few minutes, when the room
was quite full and the hubbub at its height, a
pale man in whiskers stood up at the other end
of the apartment, holding his hat in one hand
and knocking with the knuckes of the other,
with great vehemence, on a table at his side.
This sound caused a sudden silence, and the
members wheeling about in a body, contemplated
any further movement on the part of the
pale man in whiskers, with great interest;
which united gaze the pale man met with another
quite as bold and decided, and, drawing a
deep breath, he nominated, in a loud voice, Mr.
Epaminondas Cobb, as chairman of the committee;
which was unanimously acceded to;
then a couple of secretaries; then a door-keeper;
all of whom with due ceremony assumed
their respective stations, and the committee
was organized and in session.

Then Mr. Epaminondas Cobb, who was a
short brick-complexioned gentleman, with dim
eyes, and a pair of stout silver spectacles
astride a dignified, but by no means massive
nose—stood up and asked them if it was their
further pleasure to proceed to the nomination
of a mayor for the city and county of New
York? To which question no response being
given, it was concluded (the chief wisdom of
public bodies in such cases lying in the observance
of profound silence) it was; and they
accordingly entered at once upon the exciting
and engrossing business of nomination.

Candidates were forthwith put in nomination
by members with great rapidity; some were
merely named; others proclaimed and sustained
and advocated at length, in formal harangnes.
There was one committee-man, a little shrunken
dried-up gentleman, who was up and
down every five minutes, with a speech in advocacy
of the extraordinary and unquestionable
claims of Thomas Cutbill, butcher; the said
Thomas Cutbill being the great man of his
neighborhood, the good Samaritan of his ward;
and, furthermore, a luminous expounder to the
delight of the little committee-man and a knot
of cronies, of profound political doctrine, at a
familiar bar or coffee-room, where Mr. Cutbill
condescended to be present of a Wednesday
night and take a hand in backgammon or other
intricate games, there going forward.

“I knows Thomas Cutbill,” said his champion,
“and his claims is decided; pig lead isn't
surer. A benevolenter gentleman and a more
popular one was never known. To Mr. Cutbill
the people was indebted for the new fish-market;
and asking who it was that invented the
mode of ringing alarms by districts, he'd beg
leave of the committee to say Cutbill was the
man! Cutbill had been vilified, but there never
was a nicer man to the poor, a more lovely
friend of the pauper, than that aggravated individual.
He was proud of Mr. Cutbill. Mr.
Cutbill should have his vote!”

When the little champion had uttered this
vindication something like half-a-dozen times,
a very mild gentleman remarked, that what the
gentleman opposite had said was true enough;
Mr. Cutbill was a very benevolent and worthy
individual, for he had to his knowledge, on
several occasions arrested lads, ragged and unclean
lads, in the street, and advised them—in
good faith advised them, laying his hand kindly
upon their heads—to go home and wash their
faces, and put on clean clothes! What had
the gentlemen of the committee to say to that?

On another occasion he had known Mr. Cutbill
lift a poor woman out of the gutter, take
her by the arm and lead her directly into a respectable
neighboring house, seat her on a sofa
in the front parlor, and call out, with a vehemence
worthy of himself and the charitable object
he had in view, for a jug of hot negus immediately,
and if that couldn't be had, for half
a dozen of Seville oranges, for the poor lady.
Wasn't that man worthy of their suffrages, he
would like to know?

Just as this speaker was concluding there
entered the committee-room in great state, a

[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]

gentleman enveloped in a long brown overcoat,
buttoned to the chin; an ample bandanna
muffling his lower features, and his head carried
erect. He entered in a straight line, aimed for
a blank corner of the room, looking about as if
surprised that the committee could be in session
and he not there—attaining which, he cast off
his over-coat, unmuffled his chin, and rising at
once bolt-upright in his place, proceeded to deliver
himself of his sentiments, first taking his
hat by either rim and fixing it on more firmly
than ever.

“A single case was nothing this way or that,”
said the new comer, “did Mr. Cutbill make it
a habit, he would like to know, to send ragged
boys home for clean clothes? Did he go about
encouraging them to dismiss their broken garments?
that was the point. Was or was not
Mr. Cutbill privately associated, in interest, in
some clothing or ready-made linen establishment?
Was Mr. Cutbill a tall man or a short
man? Did he wear red vestings or white?
Was he lean-featured or rubicund? He would
not vote for any man as candidate for the
mayoralty of this great city until he knew his
person, his principles, his private habits, to a
hair—to an inch! He might as well tell the
committee at once that he had his eye on a
gentleman that would make the very candidate
they wanted. On reflection, the gentleman alluded
to had differed from the community in
some slight particulars; he was a man in years,
of a very venerable appearance, but somehow
or other had fancied that all his grand-children
were vinegar-cruets, and tried to unstoppel
them by screwing their heads off. This had occasioned
his going into the country for a time,
and this would, perhaps, prevent his running at
the approaching election.”

Opposite this speaker sat a thin, thoughtful
gentleman, rather grotesquely habited in a red
vest, which wrapped him round like a great
Mohawk blanket, who watched what fell from
him, touching the eccentric candidate, with extraordinary
interest.

The other was no sooner seated, than this
individual stared to his feet, and stared wildly
about.

“The man he desired to see presiding over
the destinies of this vast metropolis, was the
very one that Mr. Fishblatt had just mentioned;
but he couldn't be had! Who then should it be?
Not the Cham of Tartary, he was quite sure:
not the Imaum of Muscat, nor the King of the
Pelew islands. He must be honest; honest by all
means. He must be in favor of the largest liberty—
boundless liberty, he might say; also opposed
to all private rights. He wanted a man
in favor of all colors—of no color himself. In a
word, he must be opposed entirely to the present
condition of things; but what condition of things
he must be in favor of he (the speaker) wouldn't
at present undertake to decide. This is no musical
forest,” concluded the gifted declaimer,
reiterating sentiments he had expressed many
times before, but more particularly to our know
ledge on Puffer's introduction to the Bottom
Club. “This is no musical forest, no Hindoo
hunter's hut, got up for effect at the amphitheatre.
We haven't trees here alive with real
birds!—the branches laden with living mon
keys!—the fountains visited by long-legged flamingoes!—
the green-sward covered with gazelles,
grazing and sporting! Oh, no! we are
a mere caucus of plain citizens, in our every-day
dresses, sitting in this small room, on rough
benches, to reorganize society by giving it a
new mayor, worthy of ourselves!” And thereupon
the illustrious chairman of the Bottom
Club sat down.

At the conclusion of this powerful and majestic
effort, the committee might have laughed,
had they not reflected that the speaker controlled
a couple of hundred votes or so—the
disciples and dependants of the Bottom Club—
and they, therefore, on the contrary, looked extremely
grave and respectful.

Candidates now began to be proclaimed by
the score; sometimes they were let slip—one
by one in quick succession—then half a dozen
propounders would rise and discharge their
names among the committee in a body. The
chairman was constantly up shouting order;
and whenever a pause occurred, some member
or other would spring to his legs and call their
attention to the undoubted claims, the unsurpassed,
unequalled, and unrivalled services of
the Smith or Brown whom he happened to advocate.

At length, after a great number of ballotings,
and a great variety of fortune, the contest was
narrowed to two candidates; upon these the
divided members of the convention pitched their
whole strength, and, stripping themselves to
a final recontre, they respectively entered
upon the public and private history of the gentlemen
in question, with a minuteness and
eagerness of biographical ardor quite astonishing.

One of these was Mr. Bluff, a wholesale
grocer; the other, Gallipot, a retail painter.
Mr. Bluff was a stout, comely gentleman; Gallipot,
thin and livid, as became his trade. Mr.
Bluff leaned toward the elegant and ornate in
dress; Gallipot to the vernacular and homespun.
Mr Egbert Bluff exercised his wholesale
ingenuity in disposing of pipes, puncheons,
casks, and merchandise in gross; while
the revenues of Gallipot accrued from the embellishment,
by retail, of the houses of the middle-class,
the adornment of tradesmen's boards,
and the displays of professional literature on
attorneys' signs. Mr. Bluff, the master of every
elegant accomplishment, from the delicate
swaying of a cane, up to the cock of a hat and
the proper wearing of a ruffle—belonged to the
Ionian order of candidates; Gallipot, rough in
dress, blunt of speech, rude of grasp, was of
the sterner Doric.

The two candidates, so contrasted, stood
palpably before the mind's eye of the committee;
and it was their present and immediate

[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]

duty to determine, not the separate value of
each of their qualities in itself; but their aggregate
influence in either candidate on the
community, and their value when translated in
good current votes.

How many streets—how many blocks,
squares, wards, could they respectively command?
All they had done through many years
of struggle and endeavor in their various callings,
for they were both men in middle-life,
was now to be nicely weighed against ballots,
little talismanic papers—the secret prescriptions
of the public acting as the physician; the
whole life of each to be tallied off against so
many of these mystic counters.

“As for Mr. Bluff,” said Mr. Fishblatt, who
was always the first to deliver his views on the
topic before the committee, “I beg to know
whether it is true, as I am informed, he is the
gentleman that wears a lepine watch with five
jewels? Before receiving an answer to this,
I would inquire whether Mr. Bluff keeps a carriage,
with a black footman in a silver-buckled
hat and white cambric pocket-handkerchief?
Also, could any member of the committee instruct
him whether Mr. Bluff's pew was lined
with red damask and fastened with copper
tacks, rotten-stoned every Saturday morning by
one of his servants, privily admitted to the
church? Mr. Bluff might dress his children
in scalloped collars and laced pantalettes—the
children of a public man did not always belong
to the public (although he sometimes made it
a present of them when he died), but what
business had Mr. Bluff to put two stone dogs
on his stoop? If they had been lions, he (Mr.
Fishblatt) might have forgiven him; two great
roaring, open-mouthed lions; even a pair of
elephants. These were noble animals. But dogs!
Had any gentleman of the committee kept a diary
of Mr. Bluff's doings for the past fifteen
years? Was any one prepared to say what
had been his private and personal habits during
that time? If not, the committee were
entering upon a most solemn and important
business, with very imperfect materials in their
hands. He had heard that there had been a
lurking committee, of five or more, to institute
a watch upon Mr. Bluff; to have an eye upon
all he did and said from the first moment he
was contemplated as a candidate. Where was
that committee? They had followed him (Mr.
Bluff), he had been informed in confidence, for
more than two weeks; knew all his opinions,
as expressed in various places of public and
private resort. Mr. Fishblatt would like to see
their minutes. He had been told that Mr. Bluff
had been measured, in all the past fortnight,
for two new coats, and a new double vest of
black velvet. What was the meaning of this?”

Mr. Fishblatt had spoken in his hat, which
he insisted on in despite the remonstrance of
the brick-complexioned chairman, as being
more formidable, and more according to strict
congressional method, when, at this juncture,
occasioned by the loud and peremptory character
of his oratory or from some other adequate cause,
a brass trumpet, fixed against the ceiling, was
dislodged, and striking Mr. Fishblatt on the
crown, buried him to the eyes. Before he could
fairly emerge from this sudden midnight and
renew his appeal, another speaker had possession
of the floor.

“He had satisfied himself,” this was a gentleman
of a very nice and accurate turn of mind—
“of the exact number of three-story brick tenements
in the city and county of New York.
He wouldn't say how many there were, because
he knew, and that was enough. Every brick
tenement had its own voters—say three to each:
very good. Around these were scattered a
great many low-roofed wooden buildings.
Three-stories was always commanding. Every
three-story, that was his view, would carry
three frame-houses with it to the polls. There
was a calculation, and if Mr. Bluff wasn't the
man, he had no more to say!”

And so this calculating prodigy sat down.

“Will the committee be cautious,” followed
a dark-looking member, with a low forehead,
from which a shock of jet-black hair bristled
and stood straight up, and a very harsh voice,
“will they look out what they're at? Gallipot's
a painter; there's no objection to that. He's
a working man, and rolls back his sleeves when
he's on a job. He has a right. Peleg Gallipot's
a popular man—who says he isn't? What's
the matter then? I know what's the matter—
Gallipot, this Peleg Gallipot afore the committee,
had lately painted a Presbyterian church!
There was a snag; get over it if you can!”

To tell the truth, this was a snag; the friends
of Gallipot felt that it was, and, for a time, the
Bluffites had it all their own way. Here were
the religious prejudices of the community, by a
single act of the unfortunate Gallipot, arrayed
in deadly hostility against him; all the other
sects would go against him to a man. Gallipot
had, in some unhappy moment of professional
hallucination, painted a Presbyterian
church. In this state of affairs the question
was about to be put.

“Hold a minute, my excellent friends,” said
the very mild gentleman who had spoken once
before. “Mr. Gallipot wishes to get upon his
legs, and I hope you will allow him a chance.
They need have no fears—they might put their
minds at rest at once about a religious antipathy
to Mr. Gallipot. It was true, and he felt
it his duty to confess it, Mr. G. had painted a
Presbyterian church a short time ago; it was
also true, and he felt great pleasure in being
able to make the statement, Mr. G. was now
also under contract to paint an Episcopal
church, also a Quaker meeting-house, also a
Unitarian chapel. There was an antidote; and
now, the sooner they went into an election, the
better he and other friends of the poor man's
candidate (as he would venture to call his
worthy friend) would like it!”

Notwithstanding another last desperate attempt
on the part of Mr. Cutbill's champion to

p265-222 [figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]

press the claims of that philanthropist on their
attention, they did go into an election, and
Gallipot was the man. The announcement of
this result was hailed by the friends of Gallipot
in the committee, with shouts and stamping;
and as soon as it was made known below,
where they had been kept throughout the evening
in a state of feverish excitement by the
contradictory reports of various members, who
had dropped down into the tap-room from time
to time, by similar demonstrations.

During all these deliberations, harangues,
and ballotings of the convention, Puffer, under
judicious advisement, had refrained from any
public expression of his opinions; but, as an
offset to this inactivity, had gone about the
committee-room and declared himself privately,
separately, and apart, to each member, in behalf
of his candidate, and had taken great
pains, when it came to a final and decisive ballot,
to cast his vote—and to have it so known
by his friends, in favor of Gallipot, the strongest
man. When the committee was dismissed,
to avoid troublesome questionings or reproaches,
Puffer escaped as swiftly as he could, not
even tarrying to interchange a word with Mr.
Halsey Fishblatt, who, somewhat discomfited
by the sudden rebuff he had met, pushed his
way, as stately as ever, through the crowd in
the bar-room, not deigning speech or recognition
to a solitary soul.

Did no thought of the kind old man enter
Puffer's mind as he departed from Fogfire hall?
No thought of the first strange interview, the
kind counsel, the anxious look? It did; and
Puffer dwelt upon it till it all rose up anew before
him, bright and fresh as the reality. Out
of the past—the brief but eventful interval—
the old man came shambling forth with the old
gait, the sidelong demeanor, the one eye closed
and the other fixed upon him. He walked by
Puffer's side all the way home to the Fork;
and when sleep and darkness again closed
upon him, again the little paralytic crossed and
re-crossed before him in tears and laughter;
and was, finally lost in a deep gloom, which
compassed him in and shut him from the sight.