That Jefferson dinner is an admirable device, one adapted to draw the General's fire. Its authors go about felicitating themselves upon their sagacity in evolving it.
“What say you, Major?” asks the General, when he receives the invitation upon which so much of national good or ill may pend; “what say you? Shall we humor them? You know what these Calhoun traitors are after.”
“True!” responds Wizard Lewis; “they want to count us, and measure us, in that business of their proposed treason.”
“I'll tell you what I think,” says the General, after a pause. “I'll fail to attend; but you shall go, and be counted in my stead. Also, since they'll expect a toast from me, I'll send them one in your care. I hope they may find it to their villain liking--they and their archtraitor Calhoun!”
The Indian Queen is a crowded hostelry that Jefferson night. The halls and waiting rooms are thronged of eminent folk. Some are there to attend the dinner; others for gossip and to hear the news. As Wizard Lewis climbs the stairs to the banquet room on the second floor, he encounters the lion-faced Webster coming down.
“There's too much secession in the air for me,” says the lion-faced one, shrugging his heavy shoulders.
“If that be so,” returns Wizard Lewis, “it's a reason for remaining.”
Wizard Lewis mingles with the groups in the corridors and parlors, for the banquet hall is not yet thrown open. Among these, he nods his recognition of Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky, tall of form, grave of brow, he who slew Tecumseh; Senator Benton, once of that safe receptive cellar; the lean Rufus Choate, eaten of Federalism and the worship of caste; Tom Corwin, round, humorous, with a face of ruddy fun; Isaac Hill, gray and lame, the General's Senate friend from New Hampshire whose insulted credit started the war on Banker Biddle's bank; Editor Noah, of New York, as Hebraic and as red of head as Absalom; the quick-eyed Amos Kendall; Editor Blair, who conducts the _Globe_, the General's mouthpiece in Washington; the reckless Marcy, who declares that he sees “no harm in the aphorism that 'to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.'”
The dinner is spread. The decorations are studied in their democracy. Hundreds of candles in many-armed iron branches blaze and gutter about the great room. The high ceilings and the walls are festooned of flags. The stars and stripes are draped over a portrait of the dead Jefferson. Here and there are hung the flags of the several States. With peculiar ostentation, and as though for challenge, next to the national colors flows the Palmetto-rattlesnake flag of South Carolina--Statesman Calhoun's emblem.