general subjects. The Tippecanoe fever then began to spread with
great virulency, and such was the power of its contagion that John
Crispin threw away his lapstone, and Peter Vulcan hung up his anvil,
and both went about the country delivering themselves of great
speeches, with which they deluded the simple-minded villagers, who
forced greatness upon them at every step. And so forcibly did the
opinion that they were great men take root with the good natured
mass, that the great men of the newspapers, and the kind-hearted
critics, who are greater, seconded the opinion, and set them down
for wonders. The ambition of my wife now knew no bounds. She
insisted that I should go to the next political meeting, and then
and there deliver one of the speeches I had got into my head, and
which I had twice spoken before her, that the variations might be
squared to the occasion. My shoe bench I sold for a trifle, and my
pegs and awls were consigned to the children for playthings. The
Tippecanoe side of politics being the most popular, as well as
profitable, I tied to it at once; and on going to the "Coon-meeting"
surprised and astonished every one with the power and arguments of
my speech. I may indeed humbly say, I flashed into greatness with
the quickness of lightning. Neither Cicero nor Lycurgus were ever,
in their day, thought so well of by the multitudes. It got noised
about that Webster would have to give up to me. And I am sure that
if the elder Adams or Jefferson had been living, they would have
been set down by the editors, in the gravest sentences they were
capable of penning, as mere shadows in comparison."

Here the major paused to make room for the Provincetown stage; a
great yellow coach, full of passengers, which we had come upon
suddenly. The driver of the stage, not liking the slow pace in which
old Battle was proceeding to make room for him, laid his whip