chairman, had nothing to do but to take the sense of the meeting, which,
if he did not choose to act up to, it was only for him to vacate the
chair, and we would place some one in it that would. The little Sheriff
did not relish the idea of vacating the chair, and therefore the
question was put whether the meeting would hear what I had to say or
not. The show of hands in favour of my continuing in the same strain was
nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand; there being only
three hats, that I saw, held up against it. These three persons
consisted of a little knot of placemen, led on by a notorious
Custom-house scamp of that town; a tall, lanky fellow, whose head was
nearly half a foot above the rest of the crowd. From the visage of this
worthy projected a cocked nose of a very peculiar kind, the nostrils of
which appeared to be two round holes passing horizontally, instead of
perpendicularly, into his head. Upon this delicious proboscis (which was
a sort of mixture between the pug-dog and a Chinese pig), was mounted
a pair of silver barnicles, apparently placed there for the purpose of
hiding a brace of things more resembling coddled gooseberries than human
eyes. That feature which, in men, made as they ought to be, is called a
mouth, was in him not entitled to the name; it being a vulgar gash, with
a pair of very thick lips, extending across two dumpling cheeks, and
nearly uniting a brace of tremendous asinine ears. These altogether
formed something like a half-decayed turnip stuck upon a mop-stick. Let
the reader only imagine to himself a figure of this sort, constantly
opening the slit that I have above described, and vomiting forth at
once, from a fetid carcase, the most disgusting sound and stench, and
then he will have some faint idea of the scene exhibited by this animal
of a Customhouse officer. After being admonished twice to be peaceable,
and not attending to it, he and his satellites were handed out of the
crowd, and banished from the scene of action, amidst the cheers of the
multitude. This operation being performed upon the Customhouse ass and