“To make rogue one honest man is one clever thing; Mr. Jonathan mistake himself in tinking himself great, when he not so great.  Now, dem Yankee one grand ’cute fellow; you no catch him wid de, bird chaff,’ he is supposed to conclude.  Smooth very amiably suggested that it were better to let Cuba be Cuba, until the time came when, if she felt like snugly brooding under Uncle Sam’s wings, without any assistance would he attend to the little matter of offering her a roost.  Uncle Sam was growing, but had grave ideas, with which he generally maintained his own dignity.  They here reckoned Mr. Smooth had delivered his speech with becoming dignity.  Of this fact I was fully sure, for my Lord Littlejohn put his finger into his mouth and began to suck it, as is common with him in these his days of tribulation.  ’Let us quit the Ottomans and go into the eatables:  the one is so dry nothing is to be made at it, while at the other everything is to be made, for there is something to eat,’ rejoined John.  They carried the suggestion by acclamation.  Just then, whang!—­bang!—­whiz! somebody thundered at the door, when, alarmed, they all cried out—­’whose there?’ In answer to this the man with the long rod cried out at the very top of his voice—­’Stop the game!’ The old fellows began to stow away their gambling tools, look innocently and vacantly at one another, as if a crisis was upon them they could not understand.  ‘It’s only us outsiders,’ a voice replied, in most harmless accents.

“’There!  I told you we’d make a mess of it,—­that the outsiders would break in upon us’ said Littlejohn, with a savage grimace, directing himself to Dablerdeen, who it was now thought better to call Grandmamma Fudge.  The gentlemen outsiders were the honor-saving committee from Finsbury, the members of which declared themselves large stakeholders in the game at the Treasury.  Grandmamma Fudge thought it best to tell them, merely in a bluff sort of way, that England’s honor was safe in his keeping—­that they must not be scared about it; not however, until they found him pedling pills and other quack medicines with the object of inducing Austria to be more explicit.  ’But, my old closeters, in we must come!  Fearing you have got the gout in the head, we are here to make an examination; things done in secret have a dark look about them; and we, being the honor-saving committee, have come to make a single suggestion, which is that my lord of foreign affair memory is found wanting in firmness, and gets very crooked when he is not kept straight, which is most unfortunate in a diplomatist who smokes bad cigars all the day long.  This said, it must be remembered that old Finsbury feels sensitive of her rights and liberties; closely allied to which is the honor of Old England.  And Christmas being near at hand, if the old Bear eat up all the Turkey, Finsbury cannot keep it; and we have been honied down in a good-natured sort of way long enough.’  Poor old Grandmamma Fudge looked