Charley—Daniel: I’ll slap your chops. I’ll not stand it. You forget yourself to pen me in. I’m a contractor, I, older in practice, and sharper than yourself to make contracts.

Mayor—Go to: You are not, Charley.

Charley—Dam if I aint.

Mayor—I say you are not.

Charley—How dare you so excite my dander? Look out for your dimes. I had a father, and I was a baker.

Mayor—Away spare man.

Charley—Toads and frogs! Am I Charley, or am I not. Where’s the looking glass?

Mayor—Hear me, for I’m dam’d if I dont belch. Must my bowels yield to your cholera? Shall I be frightened because the diarrhœa looks knives and scorpions through the windows of your liver?

Charley—O, me. Must I stand this? O that I had a dough knife, to let out my honest blood.

Mayor—This? ay, and a dam lot more. Growl till your liver bursts. Go and tell your contractors and office-holders, how hard you have got the diarrhœa, and make them tremble, lest you kick the bucket, and they get fleeced. Must I gouge? Must I lick you. Or must I get between your duck legs? By all the mush and Graham bread in the coat and boots and belly of Horace, you shall digest all the grub and gin you have gulched to-day, though it do split your spleen and kidneys. And henceforth I’ll use you as a brush and ladder for Peter and Edward and myself, to sweep the streets, and scale the gilded heights of Record Hall, at whose prolific and teeming hive we will suck your honey like bumble bees.

Charley—O, where am I?

Mayor—In a dam tight place. You say you are a better contractor. Prove it. Make your braggadocio true, and I’ll not grumble. There may be better contractors than me, but dam if I believe you are, though.

Charley—O gingerbread! You gouge me every second, Daniel. I said an older contractor, not a better. I know you can make better contracts than me, in paint and oil and glass and putty, but I’m some on ginger-nuts and doughnuts, and affy-davy’s, and street openings. Did I say better?

Mayor—I dont care a dam if you did.

Charley—If the devil were here, you would not dare talk thus.

Mayor—The devil is hard by, and you fear his claws, and dare not oppose his will.

Charley—Dare not?

Mayor—No.

Charley—What! dare not oppose the devil?

Mayor—What I have said, I have said.

Charley—If you trifle too much with my liver, dam me if I don’t kick you, and give you a black eye.

Mayor—I dare you to try it. I scout your threats, Charley, for I’m fortified so strongly through my supposed integrity, that they pass by me like incarcerated wind, which I can resist with a penny fan, or potato popgun. I did send to you for the legitimate keys of the Street Commissioner, which you refused me, for I despise false keys. By Juno, I would sell all the paint, and oil, and glass, and putty in my factory to the city, at a good price, before I would use false keys, or bamboozle the dear people, who think me so honest, and love me so intensely. I sent to you for the keys of Peter and Edward, which you denied me. Did not Charley err in that? Would I have treated Charley so? When Daniel is so mean as to refuse the keys of Blackwell’s Island to his Charley, be ready, Branch, with all your bombs, and dash out his honest and tender brains.

Charley—I denied you not. It’s a dam lie.

Mayor—I swear you did.

Charley—I did not. I gave the keys to the Turn-key, and told him to bring them to you. O! Daniel hath rent my liver, who should overlook my trivial faults, and not magnify them so hugely.

Mayor—I do, until you exaggerate my little peccadillos.

Charley—Daniel hates me.

Mayor—I dislike your didos.

Charley—None but an owl could discern my tricks.

Mayor—An alligator would not, unless he were hungry, and Charley was in a tree.

Charley—Come, Whiting, and young Conover, come, and revenge yourselves on Charley, who is weary of this wicked world. Hooted by the people, and braved by a Mayor, and checked like a forger, and all his thefts detected, and found in a note-book, and recited and sung by rote, and thrown into my very jaws—O! I could cry like a crocodile, until my eyes were balls of blood and fire. There’s my keys, and razor, and scissors, and here’s my yearning belly. Within, a liver, and bladder, and frogs, and kidneys, and tripe, and sausages, tenderer than my heart, itself, which nought but worms can ever conquer. If thou are not a bogus Mayor, or cunning spoilsman, apply thy scissors, and pluck them out, and appease thy insatiate palate. I, that denied thee keys, will yield my entrails. Strike, as thou didst at poor Branch’s claim, for I do know, that when thou didst hate him worst, thou lov’dst him better than ever thou didst Charley.

Mayor—Sheathe your scissors. Be waspish when you please,—you shall have sea-room. Be tricky when you will,—I’ll call it fun. O Charley! You are like Father Peter, who carries lightning as a withered limb bears fire,—who, tightly squeezed, shows a hasty flash, and straight is coal again.

Charley—Hath Charley toiled, and sweat, and groaned, and grunted all his days, to be the scoff and derision of his Daniel, when clouds and sorrows fret him?

Mayor—When I derided the honest Charley, I had the dyspepsia most horribly, with a touch of Peter’s chronic piles.

Charley—O ginger-snaps! Do you acknowledge so much corn? Give me your fist.

Mayor—Take it, with its nails and knuckles.

Charley—O, Daniel!

Mayor—What’s the matter, Charley?

Charley—I hear the echo clank of a culprit’s chains, and I almost feel the hangman’s halter round my neck. And have you not gizzard enough to forgive me, when that rash humor which the people gave me, makes me savage and forgetful?

Mayor—Yes, Charley, and henceforth, when you are over-savage with your Daniel, and refuse the keys to gilded treasure, and strive to rob his brother Edward, and Father Peter of a million spoils, he’ll say that only

Horace can deride,
And black people chide,
And he’ll let you slide
Down the rapid tide
Into the grassy dell,
Near the borders of——
Where the first sinners fell,
And where contractors dwell,
And all who truth do sell,
So, Charley, fare thee well.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
STEPHEN H. BRANCH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.

c8

Life of Stephen H. Branch.

With John, James, and Wesley Harper’s permission, I returned to Providence, and went with Smith & Parmenter, who published the “Literary Cadet and Rhode Island Statesman,” whose editor was the handsome and talented Sylvester S. Southworth, now editor of the “New York Mercury.” Samuel J. Smith courted Miss McBride, a beautiful actress, who extended her hand behind her for sewing silk, when her sister penetrated and broke a needle in the palm or rear of her hand, and she died in two days of lockjaw. I attended her funeral, and so piercing were her lover’s cries, and so mournful was the general scene, that I had to join the mighty throng in the universal lamentation. After the coffin was lowered, and the first spade of earth imparted its