"When we had reached the street my companion very modestly said there were not less than a thousand curious places a politician should visit before being qualified for taking a high position among his fellows. Many of these were established for the benefit of poor men in pursuit of fortunes, which it was absurd to think could not be got without a too strict adherence to truth and probity. First, he said, he would introduce me to the high priest of the Pewter Mug, which was the Star Chamber of Tammany, though many simple-minded people residing in the rural districts had mistaken it for the place in which Mr. Beecher, the reverend, wrote his celebrated star letters. No famous politician or statesman ever visited New York without scenting its pure atmosphere. And even Marcy himself, who, notwithstanding his grievous fault of quoting great authors, would be written down in history as a knight of diplomatists, had been heard to say (he was a frequenter of the Mug) that he owed the profoundness of his wisdom to the quality of the beverages there served. And as the first dawn of his generosity was supposed to have broken forth in this compliment to the accommodating high priest, it did him infinite credit in the future. "A little reflection, however, produced a second thought. If I were as invulnerable as Virgil's witch, I could survive the process of initiation, for then I could enchant the faithful, who were politicians whose metal had been hardened in the furnaces of the custom-house, and had passed enactments, which they enforced with great rigor, that no country-made politician should be admitted unless he could drink and stand sober under thirty-two brandy cobblers per day, and was able to treat each member to his daily ration of an equal number, for the space of two weeks.