Sence the November elections I hev bin spendin' the heft uv my time in
Washinton. I find a melankoly pleasure in ling'rin around the scene uv
so many Demokratic triumphs. Here it wuz that Brooks, the heroic,
bludgeoned Sumner; here it wuz that Calhoon, & Yancey, and Breckinridge
achieved their glory and renown. Besides, it's the easiest place to
dodge a board bill in the Yoonited States. There's so many Congressmen
here who resemble me, that I hev no difficulty in passin for one,
two-thirds uv the time.
Yesterday I met, in the readin-room uv Willard's, Ginral MacStinger, of
South Karliny. The Ginral is here on the same bizness most uv the
Southern men hev in this classic city, that uv prokoorin a pardon, wich
he hed prokoored, and wuz gittin ready to go home and accept the
nominashen for Congress in his deestrick.
The Ginral wuz gloomy. Things didn't soot him, he observed, and he wuz
afeerd that the country wuz on the high road to rooin. He hed bin absent
from the Yoonited States suthin over four yeers, wich time he hed spent
in the southern confederacy. When he went out the Constooshnel Dimocrisy
hed some rites wich wuz respected. On his return wat did he see? The
power in the hands uv Radikals, Ablishnism in the majority everywhere, a
ex-tailor President,--a state uv affairs disgustin in the extreme to the
highly sensitive Southern mind. He had accepted a pardon only becoz he
felt hisself constrained to put hisself in2 position to go to Congress,
that the country might be reskood from its impendin peril. He shood go
to Congress, and then he should ask the despots who now hev control,
whether,--