talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurrying
through the streets, burst in upon the company, that they may begin
before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you; and it is little for
your interest that they should wait. These gentlemen--need you be told
it?--have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the
State. They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled
to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people,
without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers. The
popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as
thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall
speak, under their breath, at your friend's festive board. They meet
to decide upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers
will control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party.
And what worthier candidate,--more wise and learned, more noted for
philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by
public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake
in the common welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in
the faith and practice of the Puritans,--what man can be presented for
the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to
the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us?

Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which you have toiled, and
fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at
this dinner!--drink a glass or two of that noble wine!--make your
pledges in as low a whisper as you will!--and you rise up from table
virtually governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of
Massachusetts!

And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like
this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it.
Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why
do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair,
as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King
Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will
hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.

Well; it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog,
woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have
vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and
gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done