“‘You don’t know if the General is at home, do you?’ I inquired of him, with as much good intention as it were possible to put in a question.  ’Know nothing about him since he’s possessed himself of the White House!—­My name is Major Sykes, of the Hard Shells, New York!  I know as little of him as the country did before he was elected:—­now and then I see him smoking a long nine while laying off at his ease, his dirty boots sticking out of the east window.’  Here I interrupted by asking if it were possible such charges could be true.  ‘True!’ (exclaimed he, more gritty than ever), ’true as daylight; the nation may bless itself if he stops there.  Be careful, my down-east friend, be careful.  He will sell you for a mess of corn for his black pig.  Down-east will stand no chance until Down-south gets satisfactorily served:  a wondrous change has come over the General since he left the granite hills of his native State, where he did the law trade in a small way.  Now—­Smooth, I think they call you, says he—­if I be not much mistaken the General will create a Babylon of parties, the result of which will render it difficult to define his own position.  If the General would but get up a cross between southern secessionists and northern free-soilers, how happily it would illustrate his policy.’  Clasping his hand, ‘Major Sykes,’ said I, ’I pity you.’

“‘And so do I you,’ he replied quickly.  ’And when you come face to face with the General, think of Uncle Sam, but don’t forget yourself,—­that is the motto!’ Saying thus, he started off, much after the fashion of a man who feels somewhat fudgy.  Duly esteeming the position of a man who has that in his composition which gives power to manliness, and has higher motives than political for its aims, I made my way to the entrance of the White House, whistling Yankee Doodle as I went.  The closer I got to the great doors the more violent became the crowd, until at last it ended in a jam of bodies.  ‘Not so fast!’ exclaimed an anxious individual, whose eyes darted terror from their very sockets.  ‘Gentlemen!—­it’s my turn,’ re-echoes another half-stifled voice.  ’Was not I in the city seven weeks before the inauguration? and didn’t I carry everything for the General down in Pennsylvania?’ roars a tall individual, whose hat had received what may be called a shocking smash.  Then they swayed forward in a serf of bodies.  Now it poised, as if for breath; then again it swayed onward, threatening limb and wind.  An exceedingly lean gentleman, with a hard brown face, and a patch over his left eye, cried out to the figure that stood bowing at the door, and demanded that his card be first taken to the General, whom he was kind enough to declare a right good fellow and a most intimate friend of his.  ‘Perhaps you have a claim that way!’ retorts a sharp voice, which belonged to a sturdy figure well out at the elbows.  He declared he had driven the whigs out of Old North Carolina—­had carried strong