hub piled on top of that. "I never can do it," thought I. "Tom
will hoot at you if you don't," whispered the inconvenient little
voice that is always goading people to the performance of
disagreeable duties, and always appeals to the most effective
agent to produce the proper result. The idea of allowing any boy
that ever wore a felt basin and a shoddy jacket with a
microscopic tail, to crow over me, was preposterous, so giving
myself a mental slap for such faint-heartedness, I streamed away
across the Common, wondering if I ought to say "your Honor," or
simply "Sir," and decided upon the latter, fortifying myself with
recollections of an evening in a charming green library, where I
beheld the Governor placidly consuming oysters, and laughing as
if Massachusetts was a myth, and he had no heavier burden on his
shoulders than his host's handsome hands.

Like an energetic fly in a very large cobweb, I struggled
through the State House, getting into all the wrong rooms and
none of the right, till I turned desperate, and went into one,
resolving not to come out till I'd made somebody hear and
answer me. I suspect that of all the wrong places I had
blundered into, this was the most so. But I didn't care;
and, though the apartment was full of soldiers, surgeons,
starers, and spittoons, I cornered a perfectly incapable person,
and proceeded to pump for information with the following result:

"Was the Governor anywhere about?"

No, he wasn't.

"Could he tell me where to look?"