success of the Knickerbocker history, he would have drifted through
life, half lawyer and half placeman, if the associations and stimulus of
an old civilization, in his second European residence, had not fired his
ambition. Like most young lawyers with little law and less clients, he
began to dabble in local politics. The experiment was not much to his
taste, and the association and work demanded, at that time, of a ward
politician soon disgusted him. "We have toiled through the purgatory of
an election," he writes to the fair Republican, Miss Fairlie, who
rejoiced in the defeat he and the Federals had sustained:--

"What makes me the more outrageous is, that I got fairly drawn into
the vortex, and before the third day was expired, I was as deep in
mud and politics as ever a moderate gentleman would wish to be; and
I drank beer with the multitude; and I talked hand-bill fashion
with the demagogues; and I shook hands with the mob, whom my heart
abhorreth. 'Tis true, for the first two days I maintained my
coolness and indifference. The first day I merely hunted for whim,
character, and absurdity, according to my usual custom; the second
day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the Seventh Ward, and
read a volume of 'Galatea,' which I found on a shelf; but before I
had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good Feds
sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half
shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and
spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering
hand-bill. But the third day--ah! then came the tug of war. My
patriotism then blazed forth, and I determined to save my country!
Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such filthy
nooks and filthy corners; sweep offices and oyster cellars! 'I have
sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can drink with any tinker
in his own language during my life,'--faugh! I shall not be able to