riends."

This answer met with much commendation, and manifested, as they all
protested, great political capabilities; the statesman who submitted
all to his friends never failing to rise to eminence in Leaplow. The
committee took my name in writing and hastened back to their schooner,
in order to get into port to promulgate the nomination. These persons
were hardly off the deck, before another party came up the opposite side
of the ship. They announced themselves to be a nominating committee of
the Perpendiculars, on exactly the same errand as their opponents. They,
too, wished to propitiate the foreign interests, and were in search of
a proper candidate. Captain Poke had been an attentive listener to all
that occurred during the circumstances that preceded my nomination; and
he now stepped promptly forward, and declared his readiness to serve. As
there was quite as little squeamishness on one side as on the other, and
the Perpendicular committee, as it owned itself, was greatly pressed for
time, the Horizontals having the start of them, the affair was arranged
in five minutes, and the strangers departed with the name of NOAH
POKE, THE TRIED PATRIOT, THE PROFOUND JURIST, AND THE HONEST MONIKIN,
handsomely placarded on a large board--all but the name having been
carefully prepared in advance.

When the committee were fairly out of the ship, Noah look me aside,
and made his apologies for opposing me in this important election. His
reasons were numerous and ingenious, and, as usual, a little discursive.
They might be summed up as follows: He never had sat in a parliament,
and he was curious to know how it would feel; it would increase the
respect of the ship's company, to find their commander of so much
account in a strange port; he had had some experience at Stunnin'tun by
reading the newspapers, and he didn't doubt of his abilities at all,
a circumstance that rarely failed of making a good legislator; the
congressman in his part of the country was some such man as himself, and
what was good for the goose was good for the gander; he knew Miss Poke
would be pleased to hear he had been chosen; he wondered if he should
be called the Honorable Noah Poke, and whether he should receive eight
dollars a day, and mileage from the spot where the ship then was; the
Perpendiculars might count on him, for his word was as good as his bond;
as for the constitution, he had got on under the constitution at
home, and he believed a man wh