“I am glad to see you, sir,” observed the major, shaking hands with Martin, and not moving a muscle of his face. “You are pretty bright, I hope?”
“Never better,” said Martin.
“You are never likely to be,” returned the major. “You will see the sun shine here.”
“I think I remember to have seen it shine at home sometimes,” said Martin, smiling.
“I think not,” replied the major. He said so with a stoical indifference certainly, but still in a tone of firmness which admitted of no further dispute on that point. When he had thus settled the question, he put his hat a little on one side for the greater convenience of scratching his head, and saluted Mr. Jefferson Brick with a lazy nod.
Major Pawkins (a gentleman of Pennsylvanian origin) was distinguished by a very large skull, and a great mass of yellow forehead; in deference to which commodities it was currently held in barrooms and other such places of resort that the major was a man of huge sagacity. He was further to be known by a heavy eye and a dull slow manner; and for being a man of that kind who, mentally speaking, requires a deal of room to turn himself in. But, in trading on his stock of wisdom, he invariably proceeded on the principle of putting all the goods he had (and more) into his window; and that went a great way with his constituency of admirers. It went a great way, perhaps, with Mr. Jefferson Brick, who took occasion to whisper in Martin’s ear:
“One of the most remarkable men in our country, sir!”
It must not be supposed, however, that the perpetual exhibition in the marketplace of all his stock-in-trade for sale or hire, was the major’s sole claim to a very large share of sympathy and support. He was a great politician; and the one article of his creed, in reference to all public obligations involving the good faith and integrity of his country, was, “run a moist pen slick through everything, and start fresh.” This made him a patriot. In commercial affairs he was a bold speculator. In plainer words he had a most distinguished genius for swindling, and could start a bank, or negotiate a loan, or form a land-jobbing company (entailing ruin, pestilence, and death, on hundreds of families), with any gifted creature in the Union. This made him an admirable man of business. He could hang about a barroom, discussing the affairs of the nation, for twelve hours together; and in that time could hold forth with more intolerable dullness, chew more tobacco, smoke more tobacco, drink more rum-toddy, mint-julep, gin-sling, and cocktail, than any private gentleman of his acquaintance. This made him an orator and a man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising character, and a popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent by the popular party to the State House of New York, if not in the end to Washington itself. But as a man’s private prosperity does not always keep pace with his patriotic devotion to public affairs; and as fraudulent transactions have their downs as well as ups, the major was occasionally under a cloud. Hence, just now Mrs. Pawkins kept a boardinghouse, and Major Pawkins rather “loafed” his time away than otherwise.
“You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great commercial depression,” said the major.
“At an alarming crisis,” said the colonel.
“At a period of unprecedented stagnation,” said Mr. Jefferson Brick.
“I am sorry to hear that,” returned Martin. “It’s not likely to last, I hope?”
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
“It’s not likely to last, I hope?” said Martin.
“Well!” returned the major, “I expect we shall get along somehow, and come right in the end.”
“We are an elastic country,” said the Rowdy Journal.
“We are a young lion,” said Mr. Jefferson Brick.
“We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,” observed the major. “Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, colonel?”
The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity, Major Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring barroom, which, as he observed, was “only in the next block.” He then referred Martin to Mrs. Pawkins for all particulars connected with the rate of board and lodging, and informed him that he would have the pleasure of seeing that lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as the dinner hour was two o’clock, and it only wanted a quarter now. This reminded him that if the bitter were to be taken at all, there was no time to lose; so he walked off without more ado, and left them to follow if they thought proper.
When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove, and so disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their brows, the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as to leave no doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman’s attire. Indeed, as Martin walked behind him to the barroom, he could not help thinking that the great square major, in his listlessness and langour, looked very much like a stale weed himself; such as might be hoed out of the public garden, with great advantage to the decent growth of that preserve, and tossed on some congenial dunghill.
They encountered more weeds in the barroom, some of whom (being thirsty souls as well as dirty) were pretty stale in one sense, and pretty fresh in another. Among them was a gentleman who, as Martin gathered from the conversation
