rge
Alfred Townsend]

I--CHIPS

The Honorable Jeems Bee, of Texas, sitting in his committee-room half
an hour before the convening of Congress, waiting for his negro
familiar to compound a julep, was suddenly confronted by a small boy on
crutches.

"A letter!" exclaimed Mr. Bee, "with the frank of Reybold on it--that
Yankeest of Pennsylvania Whigs! Yer's familiarity! Wants me to appoint
one U--U--U, what?"

"Uriel Basil," said the small boy on crutches, with a clear, bold, but
rather sensitive voice.

"Uriel Basil, a page in the House of Representatives, bein' an infirm,
deservin' boy, willin' to work to support his mother. Infirm boy wants
to be a page, on the recommendation of a Whig, to a Dimmycratic
committee. I say, gen'lemen, what do you think of that, heigh?"

This last addressed to some other members of the committee, who had
meantime entered.

"Infum boy will make a spry page," said the Hon. Box Izard, of
Arkansaw.

"Harder to get infum page than the Speaker's eye," said the orator,
Pontotoc Bibb, of Georgia.

"Harder to get both than a 'pintment in these crowded times on a
opposition recommendation when all ole Virginny is yaw to be tuk care
of," said Hon. Fitzchew Smy, of the Old Dominion.

The small boy standing up on crutches, with large hazel eyes swimming
and wistful, so far from being cut down by these criticisms, stood
straighter, and only his narrow little chest showed feeling, as it
breathed quickly under his brown jacket.

"I can run as fast as anybody," he said impetuously. "My sister says
so. You try me!"

"Who's yo' sister, bub?"

"Joyce."

"Who's Joyce?"

"Joyce Basil--_Miss_ Joyce Basil to you, gentlemen. My mother keeps
boarders. Mr. Reybold boards there. I think it's hard when a little boy
from the South wants to work, that the only body to help him find it is
a Northern man. Don't you?"

"Good hit!" cried Jeroboam Coffee, Esq., of Alabama. "That boy would
run, if he could!"

"Gentlemen," said another member of the committee, the youthful
abstractionist from South Carolina, who was reputed to be a great poet
on the stump, the Hon. Lowndes Cleburn--"gentlemen, that boy puts the
thing on its igeel merits and brings it home to us. I'll ju my juty in
this issue. Abe, wha's my julep?"

"Gentlemen," said the Chairman of the Committee, Jeems Bee, "it 'pears
to me that there's a social p'int right here. Reybold, bein' the only
Whig on the Lake and Bayou Committee, ought to