ng kept up the
acquisition, I found it now of considerable use, for, it caused me to be
sent about much more than might otherwise have been the case--to report
the speeches of prominent public men, whether they were "stumping the
provinces" throughout the Union, or basking in the blazing "bunkum" of
the capital at Washington.

What an enormous amount of empty talk have I not had to attend to,
noting it down carefully, as if it were of the most vital importance
that not a syllable should be lost!

I have listened, with amused ears often, and busy pencil, to the
diabolical denunciations of our poor ill-used country, which have long
since made famous Senator Sumner--the greatest Anglophobist in the
States; hearkened to Horace Greeley's eager utterances, delivered in
thin falsetto voice, wherein he urged, as he urged to the last,
universal brotherhood and reconciliation between the North and South;
heard Andrew Johnson, the whilom president and one of the ablest who
ever occupied that position for ages, defend himself against
impeachment--that had been promoted through the bitter animosity of a
hostile faction--with the eloquence and legal ability of a Cicero and
the fearlessness of a Catiline:--

Reported Ben Butler, the ex-general, and now lawyer, of New Orleans,
where he attached to himself an infamous notoriety, that will never
desert him--"The Beast," as Brick Pomeroy, the western wit, calls him--
pelting his prosy platitudes and muddy language at the New York
"rowdies," who responded with a more practical shower, of dead cats, and
eggs that had seen their better days:--reported Frederick Douglas, the
tinted expounder of "advanced Ethiopianism," who regularly tells his
audiences--of sympathising abolitioners--that he had been "bought for
three thousand dollars when a slave"--a precious deal more than he was
worth, to judge by his appearance--although, he somehow always forgets
to speak of the present price he asks, for his "vote and interest!"

Reported Miss Anna Dickenson, the female champion, of whom report says
that she loveth the forementioned negro advocate even more as "a man"
than as "a brother," and who blinks her eyes and rolls out her sentences
at such a rate that the one dazzle while the other appal the poor
stenographer who may have to "follow" her:--reported Mesdames Susan B
Anthony--please notice the "B"--and Cady Stanton, besides a host of
other strenuous assertors of "woman's rights" and male wrongs