'Hallo hallo!' a dozen voices echoed from the table around which the all-accomplished sat:--'A rustic intruder is upon us!' half muttered the man who followed me in. 'It's only Solomon Smooth, Esq., from the Cape,' returned I, with a good, wholesome laugh. Believe me, Uncle Sam, there sat round a table ten of the most solemn-looking fellows, with faces as dreary as a wet moon in November. Some of this unique body looked as if they had seen hard usage and lean pay. Others were grey with thinking, instead of moving. Be not surprised either when I say that the gravity of their countenance left no visible room for anything else. Hard at it were they, straining their antiquated imaginations over a secret game of thimble-rig, which seemed of momentous importance. Only five, however, could play at the game; and Sawny Dablerdeen, who always played on two small pipes, and paid sundry small pipers to do a deal of blowing, seemed in the greatest fuddle. And then there was my Lord John Littlejohn, as crusty a little snap as ever declaimed against tyrant in one breath, or turned a political summersault in another;--bricks to the back-bone was he, and all for old England, though he was not bigger than one of Betsy Perkin's well-grown cucumbers, and could be turned to as many uses. But what there is mentally in a man must not be judged by the measure of his body from head to foot. And, too, there was my very amiable Lord Clarendon, who attempted to out-clever my Lord John, inasmuch as John stated, in the fulness of his geographical knowledge, that the passage between Havana and the extreme southern point of Florida was not more than four hundred miles, while my Lord Clarendon assured the House of Lords that South Carolina was an island. Enlightened House of Lords! But, after all, there was a harmony of sentiment between these two noble worthies that was truly grateful to the submissive hearts of the freedom-loving English; both could spin flattering speeches: both could play the long and short; both could wince when foreign bull-dogs sent out their threatening growls; and both were mighty of mouth when dealing with little chickens. It was not to be concealed, however that Dablerdeen, master of the board, was gifted with the unfortunate characteristic of talking himself into an interminable difficulty. "'Who, or from whence on earth do you come?' inquired my Lord. "'Smooth,' I replied, that is my name; I am a citizen of the Great Republic--come to study the way in which you are disorganizing foreign affairs.' "'Yer a little in advance of the times--too fast, sir!' replied a large man most serious of face. Thinking it best to answer him by declaring my opinion to be that it was better to be with the age than behind it,--and which I believe constituted the only difference between a fast and slow man of the present day, I let slide at him upon the fallacy of his political philosophy, with knock-down arguments.