University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
MR. FISHBLATT'S NEWS-ROOM.

Through all of Puffer's dreams that night there glided
a graceful form; a pair of bright dark eyes glanced hither
and thither like meteors, in all the motions of the dance:
sometimes he was moving by its side, sometimes it parted
from him—and when she left his hand, ah! how keen a
pang shot through his heart! But gliding, and glancing,
and full of cheerful images as were his dreams—whatever
the mazes, whatever the turns, the pirouettes,
the long country dances, the perspective always closed
with the fair dancer's wearing a great green hood, and an
old woman's head thrust inside, chattering and bobbing up
and down. He had danced a score or more cotillions,
reels, and flings—always with the same ending, when, at
length, the old head seemed somehow to get fixed upon the
young shoulders, the old body, without a head, galloped
off, and the fair, young form was left, chasséing, double-headed,
among the trees. This was too much for mortal
patience to bear, and Puffer waked up. His first business,
when he had fairly recovered himself, was to recall the
dark-eyed young lady, in all her agreeable proportions, one
by one, and replace her in his mind as she had been when
he had stretched himself to sleep. Lately as he had
looked upon her, it was something of an effort: at one
time he would fix her in a graceful attitude bending forward
to move—her head slightly turned back towards
him—but then the eyes, or the motion of the arm, or the
smile that had played upon her lip, would escape him, and
he would begin again. He went puzzling on in this way,

even till he was dressed—though this did not prevent his
appareling himself with great skill and judgment; drawing
out, from the very bottom of a drawer, where it had
been laid religiously aside for some select occasion, a bright
blue neckcloth; arraying his new buff vest, which he
had worn to the Ball, to marked advantage, and disposing
of his handsome blue coat so that every wave and plait
should tell. With the two tasks, his mind, it must be confessed,
was sufficiently engaged; and when he had laid
the last lock in its exact place upon his brow, and succeeded
in recalling the dark-eyed young lady, in all her beauty,
even down to the neat shoe-tie, (that his dreams had not
forgotten,) it came into his head, as opportunely as one
could wish, that he ought to go down to Mr. Fishblatt's,
at whose entertainment he had first met the dark-eyed
young lady, and have a little gossip, just by way of
relief! The day had, in this way glided past dinner time,
and he thought the pleasing idleness of the morning had
fairly purchased the afternoon as an extension of his holiday.

When he reached the house of Mr. Fishblatt, the door,
in compliment to the pleasant weather, stood wide open
and Puffer, having established a sufficient friendship to
warrant it, proceeded at once to the small supplemental
room in the rear; where Mr. Halsey Fishblatt held his
lair. Here he found Mr. Fishblatt in his arm-chair, holding,
in a firm gripe, a wet sheet, which he regarded
with a steady gaze. At his side there was a wooden stool,
on the top of which lay a pile of damp newspapers.
The reading of the wet sheet seemed to move Mr.
Fishblatt greatly; his teeth were firmly fixed, and a thick
sweat, as though it had steamed up from the newspaper,
stood upon his brow. His attention was so entirely
engrossed that, notwithstanding the unusual gloss and
neatness of Puffer's apparel, he merely nodded to him as
he came in, and, unfixing one of his arms, waived him to
a seat. As soon as one side of the paper was finished—
very little, apparently, to the satisfaction of Mr. Fishblatt
—he gave the sheet a gentle shake, and, letting it fall into
a current of air, which set in from the entry, he turned a
leaf, and folding it back, fixed himself upon the fresh
side.

Glancing aside not once, but ranging up and down the
solid columns as steadily as a plough-horse in a furrow,
Mr. Fishblatt finished his acre or half acre of print.

“This is certainly an astonishing circumstance,” he
exclaimed, folding his paper, laying it upon his knee,
and smiting it with his open palm, breathing now for
the first time freely; “An astonishing circumstance;
on Monday, Busts, of the Bladder, made that pungent
sally, and here it's Saturday, and no rejoinder from
Flabby—what can this mean?”

At this moment a series of shouting boys streamed by
in the street, whose voices, at their very top, were broken
in passing through the long hall and up a flight of stairs.
Mr. Fishblatt, however, whose ear was better practised,
started up, with a stern smile upon his face, and proceeding
to the stair-head, called down. Shuffling feet
were heard in answer, and tossing down a coin of small
dimensions upon the entry-floor, merely said “The Puncheon,”
and returned to his seat. In a second or two the
frowzy-headed servant girl, with her hair all abroad, appeared
at the door, and presented to him a fresh sheet,
which he fastened upon with great eagerness.

“As I thought,” said Mr. Fishblatt, glancing rapidly
down the columns. “An `Extra Puncheon,' pretending
to give late news from the Capitol, but containing, in reality,
Flabby's long-expected reply. Capital! capital!”
cried Mr. Fishblatt, as he hurried on; “Flabby called
Busts a drunken vagabond, in the Puncheon of Wednesday
week; Busts called Flabby a hoary reprobate, in
Monday's Bladder, and now Flabby calls Busts a keg of
Geneva bitters—says the bung's knocked out and the
staves well coopered. Capital! This alludes to a thrashing,
in front of the Exchange, in which Busts had his eye
blacked and a couple of ribs beaten in. Give us plenty
of newspapers!” pursued Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, starting
from his chair in the furor of his enthusiasm. “They
make a people happy and intelligent and virtuous. The
press, sir, the press is the palladium of liberty, and the
more palladiums we have the freer we are—of course.
See here, sir, here's a big palladium and here's a little
palladium.” At this he held forth to Puffer's gaze first
the mammoth sheet, and then the dwarf, and brandishing

them in the air, proceeded: "This"—referring to the
small sheet—" is edited by a couple of overgrown boys in
Williamsburg, who do their own press-work—and this by
an undergrown man in Ann-street, who does his thinkinh
on the other side of the Atlantic. Never mind that—give
us more. This people can never be free, Mr. Hopkins,
thoroughly and entirely free, till every man in the country
edits a newspaper of his own; till every man issues a
sheet every morning, in which he's at liberty to speak of
every other man as he chooses. The more we know each
other, the better we'll like each other—so let us have all
the private affairs, the business transactions and domestic
doings of every man in the United States, set forth in a
small paper, in a good pungent style, and then we
may begin to talk of the advancement of the human race.
That's what I call the cheap diffusion of knowledge;
a penny-worth of scandal on every man's breakfast table,
before he goes to business."

Mr. Fishblatt having refreshed himself and his hearer
with a tumbler each of lemonade, from the mantle, (the
probable remains of a last night's entertainment,) was about
to resume, when he was brought to a pause by the sudden
entrance of the frowzy-haired servant-girl, who brought him
a parcel from the postman who was distributing the
southern and western mail.

"Ah! what have we here ?" said Mr. Fishblatt, taking
the parcel from her hand. `The Nauvoo Bludgeon,'
`Potomac Trumpet,' `Western Thundergust,' something
rich in each, I will warrant." "The corporal," says
the Nauvoo Bludgeon, pursued Mr. Fishblatt, reading
from the newspapers as he unfolded them; " The corporal,
we are glad to see, has resumed his editorial chair.
There are few men in the press in the United States, that
could be better spared than Tompkins; there is a raciness
about his paragraphs, his humour is so delicate, his go, 0.
taste so marked and prominent in all he writes. In a
word we could'nt spare Tompkins." Mr. Fishblatt unfolded
another paper, remarking that the corporal edited
the Potomac Trumpet—and here. it was, a day's date
later than the Bludgeon. "Our friend Smith of the
Bludgeon," continued Mr. Fishblatt, reciting from the
Trumpet, "has our thanks for the handsome manner in

which he has alluded to our recovery from a critical sickness.
Smith, we owe you one and will pay you as soon
as you are on your back—if not sooner. We were passing
down Market-lane yesterday, when we heard a voice.
`Tompkins,' said the voice; `Hallo!' We looked up;
it was Grigsby—our old friend Grigsby, of Clambake
Point. He understood us, and we passed on. Do you
take, Smith?”

Having despatched these, Mr. Fishblatt came to the
Western Thundergust. The Thundergust was in a furious
rage; they had been purloining his jokes, and he
wouldn't tolerate it any longer.

“We have submitted long enough,” said the Thunder-gust,
“to the unbridled plunderings of the Nauvoo
Bludgeon and the Potomac Trumpet. We mean to put
a stop to it; and to begin at the beginning, we would like
to ask the man of the Bludgeon where he got that phrase,
`In a word, we couldn't spare Tompkins'? Does he recollect
the Thundergust of Wednesday, the 15th of July?
If he doesn't we can refresh his memory. `In a word,'
said we, speaking of an article of furniture in our late
office, `we couldn't spare our cedar-wood desk.' There—
we think we have pinned the Bludgeon man to the wall,
and now we'll dispose of him of the Trumpet, by suggesting
whether it wouldn't be better for him to buy a copy
of the works of Mr. Joseph Miller at once, rather than be
at the trouble of stealing his jokes from all the newspapers
in the country? We only suggest it;—while we are
on the point, we might as well say that the anecdote of
Grigsby, in the last Trumpet, was stolen as it stands,
from the first number of this paper, where the reader will
find it printed at the head of the first column of the second
page. Paste-boy, scratch off the `Trumpet'—it'll be
your turn next, Mr. Bludgeon; so you're on your good
behaviour!”

Just then, and before Mr. Fishblatt could dive deeper
into the beauties of the press, an indifferently dressed
gentleman in a heated face and damp hair, rushed in,
stumbling at the threshold in his haste, and pitching forward,
but taking the precaution to knock his hat tight with
one hand as he stumbled.

“Heavens and earth!” exclaimed the damp-haired
stranger, as soon as he recovered himself, “It's passed!”

"It is?" echoed Mr. Fishblatt, in a hollow sepulchral
tone.

It is, sir !" responded the stranger, wildly.

What—you don't say, sir," continued Mr. Fishblatt,
gazing steadily at him, "that the bill for clearing the navigation
of the upper Wabash has passed?"

The stranger did; and he had in his hat an accurate
report of the debate. It had been brought in by special
express for the Junk Bottle. An express rider, by-the-bye,
had broken his neck in coming through New-Jersey, and
the messenger had pitched into the office of the Junk
Bottle, with such precipitation with his parcel, as to have
struck the senior editor where he knocked all the wind
out of him; so that they needn't look for any leader tomorrow.
He would take off his hat and they would get
at the particulars. The damp-haired stranger did so;
set his hat upon the floor—planted one foot upon a chair-seat
near by, and bending forward, so that the sweat
dropped on the paper as he read, proceeded to furnish the
following account, which was heralded in the Junk Bottle
with the portrait of a small fat cherub, flying at the top of
his speed, his cheeks distended, and a trumpet at his
mouth, from which issued the word "Postscript," in a
loud, bold type. It was from the Washington correspondent
of the Junk Bottle.

"I can hardly hold the quill in my hand with joy at
the news I am about to communicate; news that will, I
am satisfied, thrill the whole country from one end to
the other. THE BILL FOR CLEARING THE NAVIGATION OF
THE UPPER WABASH was passed last night between eleven
and twelve o'clock, after a most animated and stormy debate,
in which the emissaries of power put forth their
utmost strength. Their subterfuges, their cavils and cries
of I `order' were, however, of no avail. The bill had a
clear majority of five, and the country is safe. Of the
true-hearted men who distinguished themselves on the
side of justice and patriotic principle, Peter Alfred Brown,
of Massachusetts, was pre-eminently conspicuous. He
was seen every where during the debate, animating, exhorting,
encouraging; from his place in the house; sometimes,
in the energy of his extraordinary powers, standing
up in his chair, and sometimes addressing the house from

his desk-top, where he took his station at last, and maintained
it for better than hour, during which he delivered
one of the most remarkable and wonderful speeches of
the present epoch. There are few men, in any age or
country, to be compared with Peter Alfred Brown. I
subjoin a hasty outline of a few of the most striking passages
in the debate.

“Mr. Buffum, of Kentucky, in opening the discussion,
remarked that the country was in imminent danger, much
more imminent than he was willing to confess. The people
expected much and they got nothing. A crisis had
arrived which must be met. He need not describe to them
the present condition of the whole region around the Upper
Wabash. It was little better than a desert; trade, by the
obstruction of navigation, had fallen off to nothing—the
grass in the neighboring meadows was four feet high—
vessels of transportation were sticking, absolutely sticking
in the mud at the wharves; and the cartmen went about
the streets whistling dirges and psalm-tunes.

Mr. Woddle, of South Carolina, who rose in reply to
Mr. Buffum, would not answer for the consequences, if
the bill before the House should become a law. His,
(Mr. W.'s) constituents were in a highly inflamed and excited
state of mind, on the subject of the proposed clearing.
If the Upper Wabash (they asked) was once made navigable,
what would become of the Little Peedee? Why,
it would sink to a third-rate stream, and in the place of
the honorable gentleman's whistling cartmen, they would
have a stagnant marsh, full of musical bull-frogs. He
(Mr. W.) respected the constitution of the country, and
so did his constituents; but should this bill pass, he could
not promise that a flag with some terrible device would
not be seen flying, in twenty-four hours after the news,
from the walls of Charleston.

It was at this juncture that Peter Alfred Brown, of Massachusetts,
rose. Every eye was upon him; and without
faltering for a moment, he entered upon the subject. He
showed clearly, in a masterly effort of better than two
hours, that the constitution had manifestly contemplated the
object in the proposed bill. He showed, so that the
blindest and most jaundiced eye could not fail to see it,
that the framers had provided for the very contingency

that had now arisen. He would not occupy the time of
the House in pointing out the express clause in the constitution
covering the present case; but he proved, by an
ingenious and elaborate train of reasoning, in something
less than an hour, that the entire scope of that instrument
went to such an effect. In a peroration, never surpassed
in the House, he begged them to stand by the constitution.
His arms trembled, as he held up to their view a printed
copy which he had in his hand; and when he sat down,
the universal conviction was that he could not be answered.
Notwithstanding this feeling, he was immediately
followed by Marc Anthony Daggers, the notorious
member from Virginia, who poured out upon the head of
the illustrious Brown, the vials of his wrath. There was
no epithet of denunciation he did not heap upon the head
of that distinguished man. "Sir," said Daggers, turning
so as to face Mr. Brown, who sat complacent and unmoved,
writing a letter at his desk; "Sir, you are a disgrace
and a contumely to the American Congress; a
pedlar of logic, and a wholesale dealer in falsehood and
fable. Where you were born, sir, the land, in sympathy
with you, breeds nothing but copper-heads and toadstools,
the soil is rocky as your bosom, sterile as your
brain." Here there were loud cries of order, but Daggers
went on without heeding them in the least. Brown
was a buffalo, ready to plunge his horns into the vitals of
his country; he was a volcanic fire, a monster, a doting
idiot, and a political mountebank.

At nine o'clock in the evening, to which hour they had been
kept listening to the tirade of Mr. Marc Anthony Daggers,
Mr. Blathering, of Missouri, obtained the floor. His effort
was in every way worthy of his matured powers and
reputation. For fourteen years he (Mr. B.) had labored,
single-handed and alone, to obtain justice for the citizens
of Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. For fourteen years he
had cried at the top of his lungs to the people of the United
States, to render their right to the residents on the
Wabash. The Wabash was still obstructed, and if be,
like Curtius of old, could, by casting himself headlong
in, reverse the spell and open the river, he was ready, at
any moment, for the sacrifice. All he asked was an hour's

notice, and an opportunity to say “farewell,” a last farewell,
to his wife and children.

The Upper Wabash, Mr. Speaker, is a stream rising
in the interior of Indiana, at about the latitude of 40°, &c.
(Here he produced several maps, and quoted freely from
two piles of books before him, which occupied about an
hour and a half delightfully.) He closed with an appeal
to the House, which surpassed any thing ever heard before
within its walls. I need only give you the concluding
sentence to show you the magnificent stamp of the whole.

“If I were now standing upon the summit of the Chippewyan
mountains, instead of the floor of this House, and
were suddenly and unexpectedly seized with the icy
pangs of death;—if I saw that my last hour had come, and
that but one more breath was left me to draw, I would
say with that last breath, so that I might be heard by
every man in America, `Clear the Wabash; in Heaven's
name careen its mighty bottom and let its waters flow in
a mercantile tide into the Ohio at Shawneetown, and
into the Mississippi at Big Swamp!' ”

The Bill was engrossed at twenty minutes past eleven,
and at twelve was sent to the Senate for concurrence.
There was an unexampled rush toward the stalls in the
lobby and the hotels on the Avenue the moment the House
was adjourned. This tended somewhat to allay the excitement.
Thank God the country is safe!”

“Curse that Junk-Bottle!” cried Mr. Fishblatt, who
had watched closely the reading of the Washington Letter.
“It's always bringing unpleasant news by express
in advance of the mail. Our trade is ruined, sir. New-York
is a dead herring. All Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois,
will flow into the Wabash, the Wabash into the Ohio, the
Ohio into the Mississippi, and the Mississippi makes a
mouth at New-Orleans. Where does that bring us? Not
an Indiana turkey, nor a Kentucky ham, nor an Illinois
egg reaches the New-York market henceforth forever. In
ten years you may expect to see this mighty metropolis a
heap of ruins, and auctioneers going about knocking down
the rubbish in lots to suit purchasers. What do they mean
by passing such bills?” Mr. Fishblatt turned to Puffer:
the damp-haired stranger, released from the steadfastness
of his gaze, hastily resumed his hat—to the crown

of which he had restored his paper—and escaped to dispense
his news in some other quarter of the town. Puffer,
who had stood aside, pondering in his own way, on the
subject of the Upper Wabash, and, turning it about in his
mind till he got it in a light that pleased him, looked at
Mr. Fishblatt, but made no answer. But when Mr. Fishblatt added,
"I'll go and see my friend, Mr. Samuel
Sammis, and have this explained—will you join me, Puffer?"
he started from his reverie, and said it was the
very best thing they could do. In a moment he threw down
the newspaper, with which his fingers had been toying,
held his hat in his hand, and was ready to issue forth on
the instant. Now this alacrity, on the part of Puffer—must
we confess it?—was owing to an unavoidable accident.
Mr. Samuel Sammis was the father of the dark-eyed
young lady.