"What wud yees be after axin' for nor a chicken like that?" "That's a turkey, not a chicken," says the merchant. "Turkey? Be dad an' it's a mighty small turkey--it's stale enough, too, I'd be sworn; poor it is, too! What'd yees ax for 'un?" "Well, seein' it's pooty nigh night, and the last I've got, I'll let you have it for _two and six_." "Two and six? Hoot! I'd give yees half a dollar fur it, and be dad not another cint." "Well," says the _satisfied_ poultry merchant, "take it along; I won't dicker for a cent or two." Mrs. Doolygan paid over the half, boned the turkey, and went on her way quite elated with the brilliancy of her talents in financiering! There's one merit in meanness, if it disgusts the looker-on, it never fails to carry a pleasing sensation to the bosom of the gamester. Nights with the Caucusers. Office-Seeking has become a legitimatized branch of our every-day business, as much so as in former times "reduced gentlemen" took to keeping school or posting books. In former times, men took to politics to give zest to a life already replete with pecuniary indulgences, as those in the "sere and yellow leaf" are wont to take to religion as a solacing comfort against things that are past, and pave the way to a very desirable futurity. But now, politicians are of no peculiar class or condition of citizens; the success of a champion depends not so much upon the matter, as upon the manner, not upon the capital he may have in real estate, bank funds or public stocks, but upon the fundamental principle of "confidence," gutta percha lungs and unmistakable amplitude of--brass and bravado! If any man doubts the fact, let him look around him, and calculate the matter. Why is it that _lawyers_ are so particularly felicitous in running for, securing, and usurping most of all the important or profitable offices under government? Lungs--gutta percha lungs and everlasting impudence, does it. A man might as well try to bail out the Mississippi with a tea-spoon, or shoot shad with a fence-rail, as to hope for a seat in Congress, merely upon the possession of patriotic principles, or double-concentrated and refined integrity. Why, if George Washington was a Virginia farmer to-day, his chance for the Presidency wouldn't be a circumstance to that of Rufus Choate's, while there is hardly a lawyer attached to the Philadelphia bar that would not beat the old gentleman out of his top boots in running for the Senate! But we'll _cut_ "wise saws" for a modern instance; let us attend a small "caucus" where incipient Demostheneses, Ciceros, and Mark Antonies most do congregate, and see things "workin'." It is night, a ward meeting of the unterrified, meat-axe, non-intervention--hats off--hit him again--butt-enders, have called a meeting to _caucus_ for the coming fall contest. "Owing to the inclemency of the weather," and other causes too tedious to mention, of some eight hundred of the _unterrified, non-intervention--Cuban