upward; he would involuntarily button up his pockets and keep as far distant from his fellow travelers as possible, for a more God-forsaken looking class of vagabonds never before entered a respectable building, and it is a matter of some doubt whether so many graceless scoundrels were ever before convened in one building in Chicago, not excepting the Armory when the police have been unusually active and vigilant. Occasionally a fine looking man would brush hastily by you, as if afraid to be discovered and recognised--not in the least conscience-stricken, perhaps, for his purposes and intentions. Should the gas-light show to you the comely features of the Grand Senior Obadiah Jackson, Jr. Esq., on his pilgrimage upward, you would scarcely be willing to believe that he was the presiding genius of the room in the upper regions, and bound to dispense light and wisdom to the motley crowd who would so soon be filling the hall with fumes of cheap tobacco and the poorest quality of whiskey, mingled with the fragrance of onions, borne by gentle zephyrs from yonder open vestibule. Yonder comes L.A. Doolittle, Esq., a lawyer of some distinction and a justice of the peace; he wears a look of wisdom, and you can read upon his face that he is certain that the "despot Lincoln," and "Lincoln's hirelings," and "Lincoln's bastiles" are all going under together beneath the wheels of the triumphal car drawn by the opposition party, with Vallandigham as the leader. But we will not try to find any great number of fine looking men in very close proximity to the hall. Arriving on the fifth floor, and proceeding to a door upon which you find the sign of the "American Protestant Association," your friends casting furtive glances around and behind them, disappear by the door and are lost to view; one by one, like stars upon the approach of dawn, our constellation vanishes. You open the door, but your curiosity is not repaid; the seedy friends who preceded you but an instant are lost to sight--presto! the room is as vacant as a last year's robin's nest, and observation detects a hole of six inches in diameter in a door in one side of the room; you try the door, but it is fast, and you may leave if you wish, but the idea of a Copperhead crawling through a hole six inches in diameter will haunt your dreams that night. CHAP. II. FOREIGN POWERS THE ENEMIES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--THEIR PART IN THE PROGRAMME OF THE REBELLION.