"
The cheering at the close of Mr. Clay's speech merged into an awful
tempest of barking. I could compare it to nothing else,--500 men
barking with all their might! I thought it was all up with the
meeting--that all was lost in incurable confusion; and yet the
gentlemen on the platform looked down upon the raging tempest below
with calmness and composure, as a thing of course. Amidst the noise I
saw a middle-aged gentleman, rising on the platform, deliberately take
off his top-coat, and all was hushed--except at the outskirts of the
assembly, where a great trade in talking and tobacco was constantly
carried on. This gentleman's name was S.S. Prentiss, Esq.; and the
barking, it was now evident, consisted of calling out Prentiss!
--Prentiss!--Prentiss! with all their might, on the top of the
voice, and with an accent, sharp and rising, on the first syllable.
This gentleman gave us to understand that he was a lawyer--that he had
often appeared before his fellow-citizens on former occasions (those
occasions he briefly enumerated); but that the present was the most
painful of all. He expatiated largely, and with great vehemence of tone
and action, on the miseries of famine as experienced in
Ireland,--talked much of their own glorious and free country--("Looking
out for a few niggers this morning?" occurred to me),--and made some
severe reflections--not, I admit, altogether undeserved--on the
Government of England.
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