“No rest,” exclaimed a full-necked man, “I eat at figures, and think in my sleeping car.  Go slow, go fast, young man, ’But it is even, heads I win, stomach you lose!’”

The shaggy iron-gray whiskers and hair of Charles Sumner were well known to Mr. Waples, as that great Senator strutted down the maple paths.  “You here, also!” shouted Mr. Waples.

“Ay!” answered the champion.  “Freedom is not worth enjoying without the gastric juice.  The taste of Chateau Yquem pursues me through eternity.  There are times when Plymouth Rock is a pennyweight in value compared to High Rock at Saratoga, and all the acts of Congress foolish beside a pint of Congress water!”

A tall and elegant man came by and said:  “I was the reviver of the running turf.  My stomach was tough as my four-in-hand.  ’Twas Angostura nipped my bud.  It was, by Saint Jerome!”

Another passer, with a dark skin and a merry twinkle, said:  “Uncle John’s under the weather to-night.  But he can lay out another generation yet.  While there’s sleep there’s hope.  Cecil’s the word!  Give me me an order.”

A tremendous fellow, with a foot a little gouty, gulped down a gallon of the water, and said:  “Rufe Andrews never gives up while on that high rock he builds his church!”

“The way to eat a sheep’s head,” exclaimed a florid man, “is with plain sauce.  Clams are not kind after nightfall.  Champagne destroyed the coats of W. Wickham, Mayor of the bon vivants. Sic transit overtook my rapid transit.  Heigh-ho!”

“Hear me lisp a couplet,” said the great poet Saxe.  “Oh, how many a slip ’twixt the couplet and the cup!  Abdomen dominates.  When Homer had no paunch, he went blind.”

“Halt!  ’Sdeath! is’t I, that once could put the whole Brazilian court to bed, who prowls these grounds for midnight water now?  I am the Chevalier Webb.  Who says it is dyspepsia?  I will spit him upon my walking-staff.”

“Ees! ‘tis good drinkin’ at the fount when one can naught sleep.  Johnson, of Congress Spring, the resident cherub; that’s my name.  I tipped the rosy, and it tripped on me.  What measure I used to take around the bread-basket!”

“The top of the foine midnight to you!” said Richard O’Gorman.  “I’m here, my lords and gentle folk, to find a portion of my appetite.  It was not so when I could lead a revolution in a cabbage garden.”

So went past Uncle Dan Sanford and Father Farrell, and arm-in-arm, on mutual errands of thirst, Judge Hilton and Joseph Seligman.

“Shudge,” said Seligman, “when you refushed me a room, it was only becaush you had no stummicks?  Heigh, Shudge?”

“Ay, Joseph, me broth of a darlint,” answered Hilton, “when a spalpeen has no stummick, he speaks without circum—­spection.  Ye can impty yer stummick wherever ye loike over the furniture, if ye’ll fill this aching void.”