The House of the Seven Gables
Page 171Alas, this dinner. Have you really forgotten its true object? Then
let us whisper it, that you may start at once out of the oaken chair,
which really seems to be enchanted, like the one in Comus, or that in
which Moll Pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather. But ambition is a
talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurrying
through the streets, burst in upon the company, that they may begin
before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you; and it is little for
your interest that they should wait. These gentlemen--need you be told
it?--have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the
State. They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled
to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people,
without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers. The
popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as
thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall
speak, under their breath, at your friend's festive board. They meet
to decide upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers
And what worthier candidate,--more wise and learned, more noted for
philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by
public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake
in the common welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in
the faith and practice of the Puritans,--what man can be presented for
the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to
the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us?
Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which you have toiled, and
fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at
this dinner!--drink a glass or two of that noble wine!--make your
pledges in as low a whisper as you will!--and you rise up from table
virtually governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of
Massachusetts!
And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like
this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it.
do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair,
as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King
Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will
hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.
Well; it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog,
woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have
vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and
gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing
else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he,
you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like
appetite, that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the
dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual
endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. But, for
once, the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear,
even to join the party at their wine! The guests are warm and merry;
have him, they will fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to
stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and
stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer.
Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous
in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson
stain upon his shirt-bosom. By the bye, how came it there? It is an
ugly sight, at any rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button
his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from
the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, after a
glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled
fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had
better spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers a
long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this
vile old house has sent curdling through his veins.