reasury, and
hastened home. But the President's levees were about opening for the
season; and two or three of those most insufferable of all coxcombs,
the _attaches_ of foreign embassies,--whisking their dandy rattans
and sporting finely curled mustachoes;--who, to his unsophisticated
observation, appeared to be men of far greater importance than their
less-pretending diplomatic masters,--and who not unfrequently shared
oysters with him during the day at Laturno's, and canvass-backs and
champagne at O'Neal's by night,--persuaded him to remain a few weeks
longer,--not much to the advantage of his exchequer, as may well be
supposed. Still, as he was not a gambler, and was withal a moral man,
no great inroad upon his purse would have resulted from a few
entertainments thus bestowed upon his sponging acquaintances,--who, as
he really supposed, were reversing the order of the obligation, by the
light and flashy touches they gave him of high life in Europe,--relating,
with great particularity, their adventures in France,--dining with the
Dukes of Chartres and Angouleme, and attending the opera with the Duke
of Berry and the Countess de Chausel,--visiting Rome with the grand
Duke of Tuscany, and flirting with the Countess Guiccioli, in the
absence of Lord Byron,--engaged in the chase with the Percies of
Northumberland, or at Almack's, with the Marchioness of Conyngham,--all
of which apocryphal incidents and adventures my simple-minded friend
received as sober verity, and felt himself exceedingly edified thereby.

The result was, that Wheelwright whiled away the whole winter in
Washington; and it was a marvel, that what between the mid-day
dissipation at Laturno's--that unhallowed den in the base of the
capitol, which has proved the grave of so many reputations,--and the
suppers at Brown's and O'Neal's, he did not quite use himself up. But
he escaped in those respects; and notwithstanding his natural
indifference to public and intellectual matters, he actually became not
a little interested in the great debates on the Seminole war, and the
conduct of the commander who had conducted it according to law "as he
understood it."

It was during these interesting proceedings that Mr. Wheelwright most
unluckily formed two other acquaintances, in the persons of a clever
and plausible lottery-broker at Washington, the author of the
celebrated parody of "Hail to the Chief," beginning--

"All hail to Ben Tyler, who sells all the pri