GREAT MEETING AT THE SYCAMORE SPRING—SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE ARRANGEMENTS—NICODEMUS HANDY CHOSEN TO PRESIDE ON THIS OCCASION—MOTION TO THAT EFFECT BY MR. SNUFFERS—THIS WORTHY GENTLEMAN'S MISFORTUNE—HIS ESCAPE—SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION OF THE MEETING.

The morning of the 8th of September, Anno Domini 1837, was cloudless and cool. The dust had been laid by a shower of rain a little before daylight, and the day therefore was auspicious to the wishes of all who proposed to assemble at the Sycamore Spring. By eight o'clock Ante Meridiem, Nicodemus Handy's barouche, with two beautiful bays, stood upon the gravel before Handy House on Copperplate Ridge. Agamemnon Flag, attired in a new blue coat with figured gilt buttons, white waistcoat, india-rubber watch-guard, snowy pantaloons of very fine drilling, and boots of drab prunelle, tipped at the toes with polished French leather, a watered-silk cravat, and gold spectacles, sat at the breakfast-table with Mrs. Handy and Henrietta, her daughter—the smallest, the neatest, and the best-shaped female, it is said by those who pretend to be judges, in Quodlibet.

Nicodemus was in a flurry. He had swallowed his breakfast with great dispatch, and four servants were busily in attendance upon him. Sam, the waiter, was beating time in the hall with a corn whisk alternately upon the person of his master and his left hand, after a very favorite and ingenious fashion of dusting a gentleman's coat, only known to and practiced by that musical race of colored dandies, of which Sam was a first-rate specimen. Sarah, a lady of Sam's complexion, Mrs. Handy's maid, was running up stairs to sprinkle some verbena perfume on Mr. Handy's cambric handkerchief; William was smoothing the nap of his glossy-black Brewster with a brush as soft as silk; and Mrs. Trotter, the housekeeper, was arranging a basket of sandwiches and a bottle of Rudesheimer to be stowed away in the box of the back seat of the barouche. The coachman, in a sky-blue frock, and hat with gold band secured by a huge buckle, was in his seat holding the reins, every moment speaking to the horses to make them restive, and then whipping them for not standing still. The whole scene was one eminently calculated to disprove that stale Whig slander which purports to affirm that "all the decency" was in their ranks:—nothing could be more striking than this refutation of it. And as I was myself present—having called in at that moment to deliver a message from the New-Light Club to Mr. Handy, apprising him of their intention to move that he should act as chairman of the meeting to be held at the Sycamore Spring—I witnessed with lively satisfaction the very decided impression of pleasure made upon an assemblage of New Lights, who stood looking on outside of the front gate, by this triumphant vindication of our party from the malevolent insinuations of the Whig press.

Agamemnon Flag seemed to be very much at his ease, and to be thinking but little about the meeting, while he sat uttering some pleasant things to Miss Handy;—at least I suppose they must have been pleasant to her, as she and her mother both laughed a good deal at what he said. By-the-by, there is a report in the Borough, that Ag is making up to this young lady, which will be a grand thing for him if she favors him, since she is an only child, and Nicodemus is amazingly rich.

"God bless me, my dear!" said Mr. Handy, breaking away from Sam's whisk, and speaking after the manner of a table of contents, (a habit which he has acquired since he has grown rich,) "past eight o'clock—I'm to be the chairman of that meeting—ought to be early on the ground—five miles off—no time for nonsense now—you and Henrietta and Ag—have to drive like lightning—barbacue, my dear—want to see the arrangements before the voters arrive—the schoolmaster will take a seat along side of Nace."

"Thank you kindly," said I; "I accept your offer with great pleasure."

"Shan't want William," he added, referring to the servant who generally rode with the coachman—"upon second thoughts, will put our Secondthoughts inside—ha! ha!—must have William—shall want him; you can sit (speaking to me) on the front seat—Ag and I behind—offer the other seat to Barndollar—want to be civil to him, my dear—come, hurry, hurry, hurry!—William, get on your livery and be prepared to mount beside Nace."

As it was very manifest that Mr. Handy was really in a hurry—as very opulent men are exceedingly apt to be—there was of course a great bustle to accommodate him, by getting off. Agamemnon immediately rose from the breakfast-table, and, taking up his superfine Leghorn hat, which was very chastely adorned with a light yellow ribbon band, the ends whereof hung a little over the rim, he put it gently on his head, and then standing before the ladies, asked them with very apparent complacency, whether they thought he was in good trim to appear before the Democracy—and having received answer that "he was exactly the thing," he signified his readiness to depart; whereupon we all bustled out to the barouche and took our seats. William clambered into his place, and away we went at full trot, down to The Hero to take up Jacob Barndollar.

When we arrived at the tavern door, we found there Nim Porter's trotting buggy with his stub-tailed gray. Nim himself appeared on the steps in a big broad-brimmed low-crowned Russia blue hat, set very knowingly over his right eye, with a long taper whip in his hand; and before we could take up Mr. Barndollar, this most good natured of bar-keepers, with an agility not to be expected in so fat a person, sprang up into his tub-shaped seat, which held him about as compactly as the shell of an acorn holds the nut, and spreading the skirts of his green coatee with steel buttons over the periphery of the same, darted off at a speed of about fifteen miles to the hour, down the Rumblebottom road. During this time Mrs. Ferret filled the front door, and Mrs. Barndollar was looking over her shoulder, while they both opened their batteries upon poor Jesse Ferret, in a contemporaneous objurgation of his mean-spiritedness, addressed to Mr. Handy in the barouche, but intended for the master of the hotel, who looked rather sheepishly through the window of the bar-room. Before he could say anything in his own defense, and even before the amiable ladies of his family were done talking, Jacob Barndollar came out, and got into the barouche; and as Mr. Handy was growing more and more impatient, he ordered Nace to lose no time, and so off we started. As well as I could judge, from looking back, until we turned down by Christy M'Curdy's mill, Mrs. Ferret was still arguing her case in the front door of The Hero.

All the roads leading to the Sycamore Spring were filled with persons on horseback, on foot, in gigs, buggies, barouches, and rattle-traps of every sort. It was obvious we were going to have a great meeting. Before nine o'clock, Mr. Handy was on the ground. About a hundred persons were already there. Booths were scattered along under the huge elms and sycamores which shaded a low flat upon the margin of the Rumblebottom. The fine, copious, old spring—where there has been many a barbacue in my time—was pouring out its crystal treasures, as some poet says, with prodigal bounty, and transferring them, as the Secretary does the deposits, by large draughts, from the living rock to the running Rumblebottom—in fact, taking them out of one bank, and distributing them between others. Not far from this spring, adumbrated by over-arching boughs—the reader will excuse this poetical orgasm—for fifteen years and upwards have I been visiting this fountain, sacred to Pan, (we used to have fish frys here,) and have ever grown poetical at the sight thereof—it is my infirmity: not far from the spring stood the tables—boards on trestles, and on the boards trenchers filled with cubic sections of beef, lamb, mutton, and ham, interspersed with pyramids of bread—a goodly sight! Upon skids, remote from the tables, stood a barrel of old Monongahela, and hard by in a cart, tumblers, pitchers, noggins, and bottles. Far off, at the opposite confine of this field of action, was a stage erected, with a chair for the President of the day, and benches of unplaned board for persons of inferior dignity. Everything was in order; and now that Mr. Handy had arrived he had nothing to do but wait for the gathering in of the people.

Presently Mr. Grant, mounted on a large bow-necked bay, arrived, with his four sons, all men grown, of a rustic, farmer-like complexion; they were attended by Augustus Postlethwaite Tompkinson, of The Whole Team, and some dozen Whigs from Thorough Blue, who had traveled as far as Mr. Grant's the night before, and now made a very solid and formidable troop. Andrew Grant, the candidate, a youth of good presence, and reputable, (bating his politics,) was of this party. Andy had been to college, and his father first intended to make a doctor of him, but the lad somehow took a dislike to physic, and turned in to this new business of engineering on canals and railroads, and was considered, I believe, a tolerably smart hand in that calling. But as he happened to catch a bilious fever in the Dismal Swamp, the old lady his mother, who always had made a pet of him, would not hear of his going back to that line of livelihood; and so he stayed at home helping to manage at the Hogback farm, and doing pretty much as he pleased; until, about a year before he was brought out, he married Stephen P. Crabstock's daughter; and ever since that event does as his wife pleases—spending his time one part of the year at the Iron Works, and the other at the old man's.

By eleven o'clock the company had pretty nearly got to its maximum. A large party came down in a wagon from Quodlibet with Abel Brawn—among them Neal Hopper, Sandy Buttercrop, Davy Post the wheelwright, and I can't tell how many more. Quipes, the painter, borrowed a horse out of Geoffry Wheeler's team, and was there studying human nature and the picturesque. Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben Inky, and Jeff Drinker, with a squad of regular loafers, came on foot. The Tumbledownians were there in great force under Cale Goodfellow, to help Theodore Fog; and the Bickerbrayians with Virgil Philpot, the editor of The Scrutinizer, mustered a heavy phalanx in favor of Ag Flag. To swell the assemblage to its largest compass, there were about fifty laborers from the newly-begun Bickerbray and Meltpenny Railroad, a worthy accession to the New-Light Democracy, who had about a month before this meeting come into the State.

This is a hasty glance over the field of action, and will serve to show that the country was all alive to the importance of the occasion and duly estimated the nature of the crisis. Looking over this congregation I, as one having knowledge therein, may safely affirm, that the genuine Quods present fully outnumbered the Whigs three to one. Eliphalet Fox, who has been more accustomed to measure crowds, however, after a minute inspection of the various groups, judging by that tact which he says never failed him in discriminating between what he calls a Loco Foco and a Whig, (he does not pretend to say that he is so expert in pointing out a New Light, but as to a Loco he asserts he is perfect,) set down the number at nearer ten to one; and accordingly so reported it in the account of the meeting which afterwards appeared in The Whole Hog. Without, however, dwelling upon this topic, let us proceed to the business of the day.

At twelve o'clock dinner was announced; and this army of hungry politicians, with a unanimity of sentiment, an accord of principle, and a concert of action, which we might in vain seek for in other occupations of a political nature, combined, like a band of brothers, to devour the largest possible amount of the stores which lay before them. With somewhat less agreement they made their advances to the Monongahela; the more shy of the assemblage being rather kept at bay by the remarkable perseverance and adhesiveness of Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben Inky, and a chosen body of troops under their command, who had constituted themselves the forlorn hope in this assault. Still, as the newspapers say when they are disposed to puff a popular play, the barrel went off very much to the satisfaction, and, indeed, the delight of the company.

These matters being dispatched, Nicodemus Handy, who during the repast had acted inimitably the part of a perfectly ravenous man, but who having an eye to the sandwiches and Rudesheimer, made his appetite rather a matter of "seems," rapped upon the table, and called upon every man to fill up his glass; which order was faithfully obeyed by Flan Sucker & Company, a firm that was in possession of all the tumblers—the remainder of the guests allowing the filling to be, as we say in grammar, "understood,"—and then offered the following toast, which, as he said, would speak for itself:—"The several candidates who are about to address the people—success to him who shall best deserve it!" Sucker & Company drained to the bottom, and then set up a shrill yell, very much in the style of the Winnebagoes, except that there was a running note of "Yip!" that was distinctively Suckerian.

"Now, gentlemen, to the stand!" cried out Mr. Handy.

But before the crowd obeyed this order, Mr. Snuffers had a motion to make. It was a matter of some importance, as the subject was considered in the New-Light Club, that our party should have the President of the day—and it was therefore determined that the moment dinner was over, and before the Whigs might be aware of it, Mr. Snuffers, the head of our club, should rise in some conspicuous place, and move that Nicodemus Handy be requested to preside over the meeting. Mr. Snuffers is a slow and nervous man, and was admonished to be on his guard, so as to make sure of getting ahead of the Whigs who we knew wanted Mr. Grant in the chair. He was in consequence very fidgety all the time of dinner; and now, when the moment for action arrived, the good old gentleman elbowed his way toward the center of the table, and without difficulty succeeded in clambering upon an inverted and empty flour-barrel, which had once been filled with bread. "I move, gentlemen," said he, with a tremulous and agitated voice—"I move, gentlemen, that Mr. Nicodemus Handy——"

Before the next word escaped from his lips, this worthy and respectable old gentleman broke in, and in an instant (I am shocked to tell it) was jammed up tight in the barrel—disappearing as a dip of twenty to the pound is apt to do when stuck into a black bottle—"be President of this meeting," said Mr. Doubleday, with a hurried utterance, taking up the word which was lost with Mr. Snuffers, and which, but for the admirable presence of mind of our Vice, might have been lost forever.

"Break the barrel to pieces!" cried out forty voices.

"Mr. Snuffers is blue in the face—he will die of apoplexy," cried out others.

"An ax!—knock the barrel to pieces!" shouted more, in great alarm at his precarious situation.

In a few moments our distressed and worthy President of the New Light was extricated from his unpleasant durance, and finding no harm done, we proceeded to take the question on the motion. Mr. Handy was thus called to the chair. Nine Vice-Presidents were appointed, and six Secretaries to record the proceedings. These matters being arranged, the whole assemblage moved toward the rostrum at the opposite end of the wood.

What followed we shall read in the next chapter.