round and round!  What sightseeing by the country members and their wives who have come to attend the inauguration of the new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray!  There he is, with the whiskers and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which wears already a look of gubernatorial dignity and power.  He stands for a moment in the lobby of the Pelican Hotel,—­thronged now to suffocation,—­to shake hands genially with new friends, who are led up by old friends with two fingers on the elbow.  The old friends crack jokes and whisper in the ear of the governor-to-be, who presently goes upstairs, accompanied by the Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal suite, which is reserved for him, and which has fire-proof carpet on the floor.  The Honourable Hilary has a room next door, connecting with the new governor’s by folding doors, but this fact is not generally known to country members.  Only old timers, like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know that the Honourable Hilary’s room corresponds to one which in the old Pelican was called the Throne Room, Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat in the old days and watched unceasingly the groups in the street from the window.

But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants shorn of power.  An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient kingdoms.  Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and Leith—­influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still “going along by when they are talking sly.”  But there are no guerrillas now, no condottieri who can be hired:  the empire has a paid and standing army, as an empire should.  The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan warfare of bygone days, are generals now,—­chiefs of staff.  The captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits in Number Seven.  A new Number Seven,—­with electric lights and a bathroom and a brass bed.  Tempora mutantur.  There is an empire and a feudal system, did one but know it.  The clans are part of the empire, and each chief is responsible for his clan—­did one but know it.  One doesn’t know it.

The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has arrived unostentatiously—­as is his custom—­and is seated in his own headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom).  Number nine belongs from year to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of the Northeastern which was the old Central,—­a thin gentleman with side-whiskers.  He loves life in the capital so much that he takes his vacations there in the winter,—­during the sessions of the Legislature, —­presumably because it is gay.  There are other rooms, higher up, of important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so much of an honour.  The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton in Truro (Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large place now), has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no bathroom); and the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the North Country, and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual vacation in room fifty-nine (no bath).  Senator Whitredge has a room, and Senator Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only temporary).