The Statesman from Tupelo beheld in Jim Britt with his Gothic simplicity a self-offered prey to the spear of every joker. The Statesman from Tupelo, with a specious suavity of accent and a blandness irresistible, drew forth Jim Britt in converse. The latter, flustered, flattered, went to extremes of confidence and laid frankly bare his railroad hopes and fears which were now all fears. The Statesman from Tupelo listened with decorous albeit sympathetic gravity. When Jim Britt was done he spoke: “As you say,” observed the Statesman from Tupelo, “your one chance is to get acquainted with a majority of both Houses and interest them personally in your bill.” “But how might a party do that soonest?” asked Jim Britt. “I don’t want to camp yere for the balance of my days. Besides, thar’s Samantha.” “Certainly, there’s Samantha,” assented the Statesman from Tupelo. Then following a pause: “I suppose the readiest method would be to give a dinner. Could you undertake that?” “Why, I reckon I could.” The dinner project obtained kindly foothold in the breast of Jim Britt; he had read of such banquet deeds as a boy when the papers told the splendors of Sam Ward and the Lucullian day of the old Pacific Mail. Jim Britt had had no experience of Chamberlin prices, since his purchases at that hotel had gone no farther a-field than a now-and-then cigar. He had for most part subsisted at those cheap restaurants which--for that there be many threadbare folk, spent with their vigils about Congress, hoping for their denied rights--are singularly abundant in Washington. These modest places of regale would give no good notion of Chamberlin’s, but quite the contrary. Wherefore, Jim Britt, quick with railway ardor and to get back to the far-away Samantha, took the urgent initiative, and said he would order the dinner for what night the Statesman from Tupelo deemed best, if only that potent spirit would agree to gather in the guests. “We will have the dinner, then,” said He of Tupelo, “on next Saturday. You can tell Chamberlin; and I’ll see to the guests.” “How many?” said Chamberlin’s steward, when he received the orders of Jim Britt. The coming railway magnate looked at the Statesman from Tupelo. “Say fifty,” remarked the Statesman from Tupelo. Jim Britt was delighted. He would have liked sixty guests better, or if one might, one hundred; but fifty was a fair start. There could come other dinners, for the future holds a deal of room. In time Jim Britt might dine a full moiety of Congress. The dinner was fixed; the menu left to the steward’s ingenuity and taste; and now when the situation was thus relaid, and Saturday distant but two days, Jim Britt himself called for an apartment at Chamberlin’s, sent for his one trunk, and established himself on the scene of coming dinner action to have instant advantage of whatever offered that might be twisted to affect his lead-mine road.