and it is a matter of some doubt whether so many graceless scoundrels were
ever before convened in one building in Chicago, not excepting the Armory
when the police have been unusually active and vigilant. Occasionally a
fine looking man would brush hastily by you, as if afraid to be discovered
and recognised--not in the least conscience-stricken, perhaps, for his
purposes and intentions. Should the gas-light show to you the comely
features of the Grand Senior Obadiah Jackson, Jr. Esq., on his pilgrimage
upward, you would scarcely be willing to believe that he was the presiding
genius of the room in the upper regions, and bound to dispense light and
wisdom to the motley crowd who would so soon be filling the hall with
fumes of cheap tobacco and the poorest quality of whiskey, mingled with
the fragrance of onions, borne by gentle zephyrs from yonder open
vestibule. Yonder comes L.A. Doolittle, Esq., a lawyer of some distinction
and a justice of the peace; he wears a look of wisdom, and you can read
upon his face that he is certain that the "despot Lincoln," and "Lincoln's
hirelings," and "Lincoln's bastiles" are all going under together beneath
the wheels of the triumphal car drawn by the opposition party, with
Vallandigham as the leader. But we will not try to find any great number
of fine looking men in very close proximity to the hall. Arriving on the
fifth floor, and proceeding to a door upon which you find the sign of the
"American Protestant Association," your friends casting furtive glances
around and behind them, disappear by the door and are lost to view; one by
one, like stars upon the approach of dawn, our constellation vanishes. You
open the door, but your curiosity is not repaid; the seedy friends who
preceded you but an instant are lost to sight--presto! the room is as
vacant as a last year's robin's nest, and observation detects a hole of
six inches in diameter in a door in one side of the room; you try the
door, but it is fast, and you may leave if you wish, but the idea of a
Copperhead crawling through a hole six inches in diameter will haunt your
dreams that night.