“’Sh!” exclaimed one of the supporters of the litter, who wore the feathers and attire of an Indian. “’Tis Sir William Johnson—­he who receives to-night.”

“Young man,” exclaimed that great and first of Indian agents, “this is the spot where all people come to find their stomachs.  Mine was lost one hundred and ten years ago.  The Mohawks, my wards, then brought me through the forest to this spot.  Faith!  I was full of gout and humors, and took a drink from a gourd.  One night in the year I walk from purgatory and quench my thirst at this font.  The rest of the year I limp in the agonies of dyspepsia.”

A large and short-set woman was walking in one of the paths, wearing almost royal robes, and her train was held up by a company of young gallants, some of whom whistled and trolled stanzas of foreign music.  “Can you tell me her name!” asked Waples, speaking to a bystander.

“It is Madame Rush, the daughter of the banker who rivalled Girard.  She was a patroness of arts and letters in her day, full of sentiment.”

“But disguised in a stomacher!” interrupted our friend.  The lady passed him as he spoke, and, looking regretfully in his face, murmured: 

“Avoid hot joints for supper!  Terrapin must crawl again.  Drink nothing but claret.  Adieu!”

“Really,” thought Andrew Waples, “this is a sort of mass meeting of human picture-frames.  But here is one I know by his portrait—­the god-like head, the oxen eyes, the majestic stalk of Daniel Webster.”  He was about to address this massive figure, when it turned and looked upon him with rolling orbs like diamonds in dark caves.

“Brandy,” said the great man, “’tis the drink of a gentleman, and the stimulus of oratory.  But public life requires a thousand stomachs.  Who could have saved the Constitution on only one?”

“Poor ghost!” thought Andrew Waples.  “Yet here is a milder man, also of mighty girth, like the frame of a mastodon, transparent.  Your name, my friend?”

“John Meredith Clayton, of Delaware!  I filled my paunch of midnights with chicken soup.  I arose from bed to riot in gravy.  Ye who have livers and intestines, think of my fame and fate!”

The old man sobbed as he receded, and Waples had only time to get a glimpse of the next trio before they were upon him.

“I agree with Commodore Vanderbilt,” said the other, the wearer of a rubicund face, and great blue eyes.  “My forte was oysters and economy.  I grew wondrous fat and conservative, and one day awoke with a stomach that exclaimed, ’I have become round, so that you can trundle me for the exercise you deprived me of.’  Henceforward, not even the unequalled advantages of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad gave me pleasure.  I live like a skeleton world, without an inner globe, without a paunch.  Beware?”

“Well,” cried Mr. Waples, “it is a singular thing that the conservative as well as the volatile lose their full habits.  How is it with Colonel Tom Scott, I wonder?”