began to get up his good-nature, as I inquired what earthly mission he could be prosecuting on so dark and cold a night. "'Well, now, friend Smooth,' he says: 'I like you, but the question you put so honestly has a point which you cannot see, though I can painfully feel. However, as I have no secrets, I don't mind telling you: it must be private, nevertheless--I am sensitive not to have these matters spread all over the Union. To-night, you see, a conclave of political wranglers met below, in this house. Conscious that they would have a large '_grin_' at me, discussing the means by which I have always been the rejected of this great and growing people, I came that my ears might lesson of fools. To this end, I mounted the chimney, and was reconoitering down the black abyss, when my eye turned and caught your light, like a star in tribulation, twinkling from the window. Strange kind of a tribune for a senator, I admit, but I heard many judgments, and from them may draw many more. One reckoned I had stamped with the cold hand of death my political life; always wanting to fight somebody--the English in particular! Another said Virginia and Pennsylvania couldn't approve of my policy--that it was too slow; while New York dare not vote for me, and I was New England's dread. A third said he didn't believe the middle West would back me up, because a doubt existed as to whether other States would. These sentiments I heard from down chimney. My solemn belief is, that I have been sacrificed to a firm and honest belief in the Monroe doctrine; which, singularly enough, had its origin in English minds. My efforts to carry it into effect seemed not to form a tangible objection; though a voice now and then said it might lead to evil consequences, England and France having formed a very unnatural alliance to put down the aggressive spirit of nations, without respect to the side of the Atlantic on which they were domiciled. Then, by way of a suspending clause, they said it was not so much my pugnacious propensities they feared, as that, being an old _fogy_, full of personal grievances against somebody, I would make the gratifying a venerable spleen paramount to the interests of States (all this I heard from down chimney). That I was not a bad man, nor an inflexible man, they all agreed; but that my time was passed was their verdict, and being passed, I would myself soon pass into political oblivion--nothing being left but executive expectations and ballet-boxes, with which I might build on high a monument! The trouble is, friend Smooth, I am not possessed of the tact of making the nation understand me; had I this all-necessary to political fame, the Chief Magistracy had long since been mine. To me the free press of our country is a sort of infernal machine,--its effect in my case strengthens the idea. Having held me up as dangerous, when in truth I am a peaceably disposed man, they have wronged me while misinforming