“Harder to get both than a ’pintment in these crowded times on a opposition recommendation when all ole Virginny is yaw to be tuk care of,” said Hon. Fitzchew Smy, of the Old Dominion.

The small boy standing up on crutches, with large hazel eyes swimming and wistful, so far from being cut down by these criticisms, stood straighter, and only his narrow little chest showed feeling, as it breathed quickly under his brown jacket.

“I can run as fast as anybody,” he said impetuously.  “My sister says so.  You try me!”

“Who’s yo’ sister, bub?”

“Joyce.”

“Who’s Joyce?”

“Joyce Basil—­Miss Joyce Basil to you, gentlemen.  My mother keeps boarders.  Mr. Reybold boards there.  I think it’s hard when a little boy from the South wants to work, that the only body to help him find it is a Northern man.  Don’t you?”

“Good hit!” cried Jeroboam Coffee, Esq., of Alabama.  “That boy would run, if he could!”

“Gentlemen,” said another member of the committee, the youthful abstractionist from South Carolina, who was reputed to be a great poet on the stump, the Hon. Lowndes Cleburn—­“gentlemen, that boy puts the thing on its igeel merits and brings it home to us.  I’ll ju my juty in this issue.  Abe, wha’s my julep?”

“Gentlemen,” said the Chairman of the Committee, Jeems Bee, “it ’pears to me that there’s a social p’int right here.  Reybold, bein’ the only Whig on the Lake and Bayou Committee, ought to have something if he sees fit to ask for it.  That’s courtesy!  We, of all men, gentlemen, can’t afford to forget it.”

“No, by durn!” cried Fitzchew Smy.

“You’re right, Bee!” cried Box Izard.  “You give it a constitutional set.”

“Reybold,” continued Jeems Bee, thus encouraged, “Reybold is (to speak out) no genius!  He never will rise to the summits of usefulness.  He lacks the air, the swing, the pose, as the sculptors say; he won’t treat, but he’ll lend a little money, provided he knows where you goin’ with it.  If he ain’t open-hearted, he ain’t precisely mean!”

“You’re right, Bee!” (General expression.)

“Further on, it may be said that the framers of the gov’ment never intended all the patronage to go to one side.  Mr. Jeff’son put that on the steelyard principle:  the long beam here, the big weight of being in the minority there.  Mr. Jackson only threw it considabul more on one side, but even he, gentlemen, didn’t take the whole patronage from the Outs; he always left ’em enough to keep up the courtesy of the thing, and we can’t go behind him.  Not and be true to our traditions.  Do I put it right?”

“Bee,” said the youthful Lowndes Cleburn, extending his hand, “you put it with the lucidity and spirituality of Kulhoon himself!”

“Thanks, Cleburn,” said Bee; “this is a compliment not likely to be forgotten, coming from you.  Then it is agreed, as the Chayman of yo’ Committee, that I accede to the request of Mr. Reybold, of Pennsylvania?”