"Why, y-e-e-s, of course. Didn't he skin me out of my watch last winter, playing poker, at Willard's?"

"Well," continued the fat farmer-looking man, "I didn't know Duncan _gambled_?"

"Mum, not a word out of school; ha, ha! Let's drink, gents. Gamble? Lord bless you, it's common as dish-water down there--I've played euchre for hours with old Tom Benton, Harry Clay and Gen. Scott, _right behind the speaker's chair!_"

_Then_ they all _drank_, of course, and some of the party liked to have choked. The company now proposed to adjourn to the smoking room, and they arose and left the table accordingly. The man of all talk promenaded out on to the steps, and in course of half an hour, says the leading spirit of the late dinner, or wine party, to him:--

"Mr. ----a--a--?"

"Ferguson, sir; George Adolphus Ferguson is my address, sir," responded the victim.

"Mr. Ferguson, did you know that your friend Benton was in town?"

inquired the wag.

"What, Tom Benton here?"

"And Allen," continued the wag.

"What, Bill Allen, too?" says the victim.

"And Doctor Duncan."

"You don't tell me all them fellows are here?"

"Yes, sir, your friends are all here. Come in and see them; your friends will be delighted," says the wag, taking Mister Ferguson by the arm, to lead him in.

"Ha, ha! I'm a--a--ha, ha! _won't_ we have a time? But you just step in--I a--I'll be in in one moment," but in less than half the time, Mr.

Ferguson mizzled, no one knew whither!

The gentlemen at the table, it is almost needless to say, were no others than Benton, Allen, Duncan, and some three or four other arbiters of the fate of our immense and glorious nation, in her councils, and fresh from the capital.

Ferguson has not been heard of since.

A Severe Spell of Sickness.

It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it.

What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep all the children in "a poor neighborhood" in "vittels" and clothes the year round. When old Cauliflower took sick, once in a long life-time, he was prevailed upon to send for Dr. Borax, and it was some weeks before Cauliflower got down stairs again. At the end of the year Dr. Borax sent in his bill; the amount gave Cauliflower spasms in his pocket-book, and threatened a whole year's profits with strangulation.

"Doctor," says Cauliflower, "that bill of yours is all-fired steep, isn't it?"

"No, sir," says Borax; "your case was a dangerous case--I never raised a man from the grave with such difficulty, in all my practice!"

"But, fifty-three _calls_, doctor, one hundred and six dollars."

"Exactly--two dollars a visit, sir," said the urbane doctor.

"And twenty-seven prescriptions, four plasters, &c.--eighty-one dollars!"

"One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, sir."

"Well," says Cauliflower, "this may be all very _well_ for people who can af-_ford_ it, but I can't; there's your money, doctor, but I'll bet you won't catch me sick as that again--_soon!_"

The Race of the Aldermen.

In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect were a sort of _tie_; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy.

They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed their favors among their partizans accordingly. The whigs at length _tied_ them, and the _locos_, beholding with horror and misgivings, the new order of things which was destined to turn out many a holder of fat office, many a pat-riot overflowing with democratic patriotism, whose devotion to the cause of the country was manifest in the tenacity with which he clung to his place, were extremely anxious to devise ways and means to keep the whigs at bay; and as the day drew near, when the a.s.sembled Board of Aldermen should have their sitting at the City Hall, various _dodges_ were proposed by the locos to out-vote the whigs, in questions or decisions touching the distribution of places, and appointment of men to fill the various stations of the new munic.i.p.al government.

"I have it--I've got it!" exclaimed a round and jolly alderman of a democratic ward. "To-night the Board meets--we stand about eight and eight--this afternoon, let two of us invite two of the whigs, Alderman H---- and Alderman J----, out to a dinner at Harlem, get H---- and J---- tight as wax, and then we can slip off, take our conveyance, come in, and vote the infernal whigs just where we want them!"

"Capital! prime! Ha, ha, ha!" says one.

"First rate! elegant! ha, ha, ha!" shouts another.

"Ha, ha! haw! haw! he, he, he!" roared all the locys.

"Well, gentlemen, let's all throw in a V apiece, to defray expenses; we, you know, of course, must put the whigs _through_, and we must give them a rouse they won't forget soon. Champagne and turtle, that's the ticket; coach for four _out_ and two _in_. Ha, ha!--The whigs shall see the elephant!"

Well, the purse was made up, the coach hired, and the two victims, the poor whigs, were carted out under the pretence of a grand aldermanic feast to Harlem, the scene of many a spree and jollification with the city fathers, and other bon vivants and gourmands of Gotham.

Dinner fit for an emperor being discussed, sundry bottles of "Sham" were uncorked, and their effervescing contents decanted into the well-fed bodies of the four aldermen. Toasts and songs, wit and humor, filled up the time, until the democrats began to think it was time that one of them slipped out, took the carriage back to the city, leaving the other to _fuddle_ the two whigs, and detain them until affairs at "the Tea Room," City Hall, were settled to the entire satisfaction of the democrats.

"Landlord," says one of the democrats, whom we will call Brown, "landlord, have you any conveyance, horses, wagons, carriages or carts, by which any of my friends could go back to town to-night, if they wish?"

"Oh, yes," says the landlord, "certainly--I can send the gentlemen in if they wish."

"Very well, sir,--they may get very _tight_ before they desire to return--they are men of families, respectable citizens, and I do not wish them, under any circ.u.mstances, to leave your house until morning.

Whatever the bill is I will foot, provided you deny them any of your means to go in to-night. You understand!"

"Oh! yes, sir--if you request it as a matter of favor, that I shall keep your friends here, I will endeavor to do so--but hadn't you better attend to them yourself?"

"Well, you see," says Brown, "I have business of importance to transact--must be in town this evening. Give the party all they wish--put that in your fob--(handing the host an X)--post up your bill in the morning, and I'll be out bright and early to make all square. Do you hark?" says Brown.

"Oh, yes, sir--all right," responded the landlord.

Brown gave his confederate the _cue_, stepped out, promising to "be in in a minute," and then, getting into a carriage, he drove back to the city, almost tickled to death with the idea of how nicely the whigs would be "dished" when they all met at the City Hall, and came up minus _two!_

Smith, Brown's loco friend, did his best to keep the thing up, by calling in the New Jersey thunder and lightning--vulgarly known as Champagne--and even walked into the aforesaid t. and l. so deeply himself, that a man with half an eye might see Smith would be as blind as an owl in the course of the evening. But Smith was bound to do the thing up brown, and thought no sacrifice too great or too expensive to preserve the loaves and fishes of his party. All of a sudden, however, night was drawing on a pace, the whigs began to smell a _mice_. The absence of Brown, and the excessive politeness and liberality of Smith, in hurrying up the bottles, settled it in the minds of the whigs, that something was going on dangerous to the whig cause, and that they had better look out--_and so they did_.

"Jones," says one of the whigs, _sotto voce_, to the other, "Brown has cleared; it is evident he and Smith calculate to corner us here, prevent your presence in 'the Tea Room' to-night, and thus defeat your vote."