Nightfall found me at the residence of Mr. D., an intelligent, gentlemanly farmer, with whom I passed an agreeable evening. I was not long in discovering that my host was a candidate for civic honours; and that he, with his friend Mr. L., whose speech I had subsequently the pleasure of perusing, had just returned from Mechanicsburg,[196] a small village in the vicinity, where they had been exerting themselves upon the stump to win the _aura popularis_ for the coming election. "_Sic itur ad astra!_" {69} Before sunrise I had crossed the threshold of my hospitable entertainer; and having wound my solitary way, partially by twilight, over a prairie fifteen miles in extent, "Began to feel, as well I might, The keen demands of appetite." Reining up my tired steed at the door of a log cabin in the middle of the plain, the nature and extent of my necessities were soon made known to an aged matron, who had come forth on my approach. "Some victuals you shall get, _stran-ger_; but you'll just take your _creetur_ to the crib and _gin_ him his feed; _bekase_, d'ye see, the old man is kind o' _drinkin_ to-day; yester' was 'lection, ye know." From the depths of my sympathetic emotions was I moved for the poor old body, who with most dolorous aspect had delivered herself of this message; and I had proceeded forthwith, agreeable to instructions, to satisfy the cravings of my patient animal, when who should appear but my tipsified host, _in propria persona_, at the door. The little old gentleman came tottering towards the spot where I stood, and, warmly squeezing my hand, whispered to me, with a most irresistible serio-comic air, "_that he was drunk_;" and "that he was four hours last night getting home from _'lection_," as he called it. "Now, stran-ger, you won't think hard on me," he continued, in his maudlin manner: "I'm a poor, drunken old fellow! but old Jim wan't al'ays so; old Jim wan't al'ays so!" he exclaimed, with bitterness, burying his face in his toilworn hands, as, having now regained the house, he seated himself with difficulty upon the {70} doorstep. "Once, my son, old Jim could knock down, drag out, whip, lift, or throw any man in all Sangamon, if he _was_ a _leetle_ fellow: but _now_--there's the receipt of his disgrace--there," he exclaimed, with vehemence, thrusting forth before my eyes two brawny, gladiator arms, in which the volumed muscles were heaving and contracting with excitement; ironed by labour, but shockingly mutilated. Expressing astonishment at the spectacle, he assured me that these wounds had been torn in the flesh by the teeth of infuriated antagonists in drunken quarrels, though the relation seemed almost too horrible to be true. Endeavouring to divert his mind from this disgusting topic, on which it seemed disposed to linger with ferocious delight, I made some inquiries relative to his farm--which was, indeed, a beautiful one, under high culture--and respecting the habits of the prairie-wolf, a