“Promising my companion that I would profit by his valuable hint, we turned into Duane Street, and, after groping our way up one of its wet and narrow alleys, halted at the cellar-door of a dilapidated little house that seemed to have been ignominiously crammed in between two dead walls and left for an owl roost.  I was never wanting in courage, as my companions in Mexico can assert, but I confess that a sort of shaky sensation came over me just then.  This was observed by my companion, who hoped I would not be alarmed, since the place we had arrived at was nothing more than the celebrated locofoco ‘nest number three,’ the members of which had their head quarters at Tammany Hall and the Irving House, and were very respectable men, and good working politicians.  A less inquisitive man than a citizen of Cape Cod is acknowledged to be, could not have failed to discover the artifice.  But my enthusiasm carried away my discretion; and, after descending six slippery steps, we came to a door upon which my companion gave two loud knocks, and placed his ear to the crevice.  Mutterings, in a tongue very like the Tuscan, were interspersed with loud swearings, which were in turn diffused with curious whisperings.  Another loud knock, and a peremptory demand from my companion, and the door was cautiously opened by a witchlike figure, the hideous face of which protruded apace, and then shrank quickly back, as if to present me a commentary of what I might expect within.

“’Rise, strike a light, and let the quality of metal you are made of be seen!’ said my companion, as he stepped inside.  The light of a tallow candle, in the hand of a half-shirtless figure, with bruised face and upright hair, discovered a cellar about twenty by sixteen feet, and seven high.  The man of the shirt and candle, I took for the high priest of the locofoco nest number twenty-three, so nimbly did he mount a little counter at the further end, and set to arranging his bottles and glasses, thinking, no doubt, that he had caught a customer of extensive generosity.  The atmosphere was thick and gloomy; nor was it rendered purer by the fourteen stalwart fellows who lay stretched at full length upon half-emptied whiskey barrels, and seemed much devoted to shattered garments, disfigured faces, and collapsed hats.  ‘Here,’ my friend said, ’is your true working politician, who has no fear of the infernal regions, and never thinks of heaven.’  At a word from him, they rose to their feet, though not without an effort, and having given their hats an extra tip, and thrust their hands into places where pockets ought to have been, and let drop a few words of discontent, like my learned friend Easley once said Calypso did, they seized tumblers and ranged up to the counter, forming a most striking panorama of dejected faces.  ‘I love and reverence these men,’ said my companion, modestly suggesting that I must do myself the honor of paying for their medicine, ’since they were extremely useful in absorbing the refuse liquor made at our distilleries, and keeping up the respectability of the party to which they belong.  Indeed, they are not the base fabric of the vision you might take them for; they are all pensioned members of the Empire Club, a very disorderly body of men, of whom it is said that no man can be elected President of the United States without first consulting their approbation.’