plete with pecuniary indulgences, as
those in the "sere and yellow leaf" are wont to take to religion as a
solacing comfort against things that are past, and pave the way to a
very desirable futurity. But now, politicians are of no peculiar class
or condition of citizens; the success of a champion depends not so much
upon the matter, as upon the manner, not upon the capital he may have in
real estate, bank funds or public stocks, but upon the fundamental
principle of "confidence," gutta percha lungs and unmistakable amplitude
of--brass and bravado! If any man doubts the fact, let him look around
him, and calculate the matter. Why is it that _lawyers_ are so
particularly felicitous in running for, securing, and usurping most of
all the important or profitable offices under government? Lungs--gutta
percha lungs and everlasting impudence, does it. A man might as well try
to bail out the Mississippi with a tea-spoon, or shoot shad with a
fence-rail, as to hope for a seat in Congress, merely upon the
possession of patriotic principles, or double-concentrated and refined
integrity. Why, if George Washington was a Virginia farmer to-day, his
chance for the Presidency wouldn't be a circumstance to that of Rufus
Choate's, while there is hardly a lawyer attached to the Philadelphia
bar that would not beat the old gentleman out of his top boots in
running for the Senate! But we'll _cut_ "wise saws" for a modern
instance; let us attend a small "caucus" where incipient Demostheneses,
Ciceros, and Mark Antonies most do congregate, and see things "workin'."
It is night, a ward meeting of the unterrified, meat-axe,
non-intervention--hats off--hit him again--butt-enders, have called a
meeting to _caucus_ for the coming fall contest. "Owing to the
inclemency of the weather," and other causes too tedious to mention, of
some eight hundred of the _unterrified, non-intervention--Cuban
annexation--Wilmot proviso, compromise, meat-axe, hats off--hit him
again--butt-enders_--only eighty attend the call. Of these eighty
faithful, some forty odd are on the wing for office; one at least wants
to work his way up to the gubernatorial chair, five to the Senate, ten
to the "Assembly," fifteen to the mayoralty, and the balance to the
custom house.

Now, before the "curtain rises," little knots of the anxious multitude
are seen here and there about the corners of the adjacent neighborhood
and in the recesses of the caucus chamber, their heads
together-