Languages & literature > Beauties of Washington Irving

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BEAUTIES OF
became what nature had fitted him to be;—his tone
softened down from arrogant self-sufficiency to the whine
of fawning solicitation. He mingled in the causes of
the sovereign people ; adapted his dress to a similitude
of dirty raggedness ; argued most logically with those
who were of his own opinion ; and slandered, with all
the malice of impotence, exalted characters whose orbit
he despaired ever to approach:—just as that scoundrel
midnight thief, the owl, hoots at the blessed light of the
sun, whose glorious lustre he dales never contemplate.
He likewise applied himself to discharging faithfully
the honourable duties of a partizan; he poached about
for private slanders, and ribald anecdotes ; he folded
hand-bills—he even wrote one or two himself, which he
carried about in his pocket and read to every body; he
became a secretary at ward-meetings, set his hand to
divers resolutions of patriotic import, and even once
went so far as to make a speech, in which he proved
that patriotism was a virtue;—the reigning bashaw a
great man ;—that this was a free country, and he him¬
self an arrant and incontestable buzzard !
Dabble was now very frequent and devout in his visits
to those temples of politics, popularity, and smoke, the
ward porter-houses ; those true dens of equality, where
all ranks, ages, and talents, are brought down to the
dead level of rude familiarity. ’Twas here his talents
expanded, and his genius swelled up to its proper size;
like the loathsome toad, which shrinking from balmy
airs, and jocund sunshine, finds his congenial home in
caves and dungeons, and there nourishes his venom, and
bloats his deformity. ’Twas here he revelled with the
swinish multitude in their debauches on patriotism and
porter; and it became an even chance whether Dabble
would turn out a great man or a great drunkard. But
Dabble in all this kept steadily in his eye the only deity
he ever worshipped—his interest. Having by this
familiarity ingratiated himself with the mob, he became
wonderfully potent and industrious at elections; knew
all the dens and cellars of profligacy and intemperance ;
brought more negroes to the polls, and knew to a greater