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It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing. The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?
As the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery and make them wait on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or bar-keepers in hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 'Tis the same with our idolatries.
Most of them were unintelligent; those who were intelligent made their living out of those who weren't, a method of subsistence satisfactory to the individual, but adding little to the aggregate of national wealth. Only two classes made fortunes of any size, Government officials and bar-keepers, and even in their case the wealth was not great, looked at by an English or American standard.
They might rush to the wilds of some frontier treasury of nature, now unknown. Even Philip Hardin dared not dream that humble bar-keepers would blossom out into great bank presidents, that signatures, once potent only on the saloon "slate," would be smiled on by "friend Rothschild" and "brother Baring." The "lightning changes" of the burlesque social life of Western America begin to appear.
The number of public houses benefited the flow of temporary population; some were farmer's taverns, cheap, homely, and comfortable; others were magnificent hotels, with negro waiters, gentlemanly landlords in black broad-cloth, and foppish bar-keepers in Broadway coats, with chased gold watches in their waistcoat-pockets. I caught one of these fellows quizzing me through an eye-glass.
Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow. By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two bar-keepers of the saloon were in pretty constant activity.
"I can consider it a thing of the past," she returned, coldly, "if I will take your word for it, just as you may or may not take my word for my conduct with Andy Buckton. Oh, I suppose it is nothing for a wife to see the knowing smiles that pass around when the gaudy creature shows up at the theater or ball-game accompanied by gamblers and bar-keepers.
He bustled up to the poor old man, and proceeded to exhibit his consequence, by securing, through his interest with the bar-keepers and macers, a seat for Deans, in a situation where he was hidden from the general eye by the projecting corner of the bench.
But there is a certain air about most of these young Councilmen which, in the eyes of a New-Yorker, stamps them as belonging to what has been styled of late years "our ruling class," butcher-boys who have got into politics, bar-keepers who have taken a leading part in primary ward meetings, and young fellows who hang about engine-houses and billiard-rooms.
This man, the ruler of a friendly people, British journalists have proclaimed guilty of crimes to which the records of the darkest despotisms can scarcely furnish a parallel. The precious blood of Ellsworth was taken by the "Saturday Review" as the text of such disgraceful banter as we trust few bar-keepers in America would bestow upon a bully killed in a pot-house fray.
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