y-hole.'

"'You mean that the General's friends don't shine over on the square?'

"'Precisely so!--Mr. General Pierce himself is a sort of mixed stripe;
but his friends (and he has regiments of them!), all fighters in the
Mexican war when he was brigadier, expect so much something material
for themselves that all _outsiders_ are forgotten. Now and then the
General is sorry to inform his many friends that he is a little ill;
to which a voice here and there is heard to say that he is not
inclined to do the clean thing.'

"Well, I saw what the feller wanted; so I pulled out a fist full of
shiners, just to show him what Young America could do. The seeing the
dimes smoothed him down into the most agreeable amiability. His face
loomed out with good natur, his feelings seemed coming right from his
inards; and he struck up Yankee Doodle by way of an offset.

"'Pooty full, Mr. Smooth,' he generously remarked, 'but we must try
accommodate you somehow! We'll tuck you away in a spare corner, high
up!'

"'That's a good soul,' said I,--'know'd ye warn't a bad sort of
fellow,--when a body understood how to get the good out!'

"'Apartments for Solomon Smooth, Esq., from Cape Cod,' he said,
mutteringly, looking over his book, and drumming with his fingers on
the page. Mr. Smooth, in proof of his fast principles, will have no
objection to tying up in the seventh story?'

"'Rather stiff that, Major! Young America can do most anything,--hang
up on a pin if it be necessary to accommodate, but don't just like the
moon for a bedfellow.'

"'Won't trouble you with a bedfellow, Mr. Smooth,' he, grinned out,
shaking all over his broad sides.

"It being well understood in Washington that great men were most
condescending, while little men, with large expectations, were most
aspiring, there was nothing left but to cut a course between the two.
As for the latter quality of gentlemen, they never stood at trifles,
and when they failed to get the big business, had not the slightest
objection to the small,--which was the doing all Mr. President
Pierce's thinking. Therefore, be it known that, with a full knowledge
of this sad state of affairs, did I write down:--'Mr. Solomon Smooth,
from Cape Cod:' which, when down, looked like the footprints of a hen
that, having dipped her claws in an inkstand, had waddled across the
page. Thus ended my induction at the National.

CHAPTER II.

MR. SMOOTH SUPS, AND GOES TO BED.

"At length, Uncle