human
Nick, said he at length slowly,
gpt
Never! I protested;
human
Platforms! echoed my chief. His white hand dropped on the table as he still sat looking at me.
gpt
But he will get you some time, Nicholas! he smiled.
human
Jim Polk will not forget.
gpt
Let him come at me as he likes!
human
Of course, this had to come one time or another, said he.
gpt
The split was in the wood of their proposed platform of bluff and insincerity. `What do the people say?' asks Jim Polk. 'What do they _think_?' asks John Calhoun. And being now, in God's providence; chosen to do some thinking for them, I have thought.
human
Copy this out fair for me to-night, Nicholas, said he.
gpt
This is our answer to the Aberdeen note. You have already learned its tenor, the time we met Mr. Pakenham with Mr. Tyler at the White House.
human
Shall we not take it across direct to Mr. Blair for publication in his _Globe_?
gpt
commented he at last.
human
He gets all the news of the Mexican ministry!
gpt
Ah, you think he cultivates the Doña Lucrezia, rather than adores her!
human
I know it! One-third of Jim Polk may be human, but the other two-thirds is politician. He will flatter that lady into confidences. She is well nigh distracted at best, these days, what with the fickleness of her husband and the yet harder abandonment by her old admirer Pakenham; so Polk will cajole her into disclosures, never fear. In return, when the time comes, he will send an army of occupation into her country! And all the while, on the one side and the other, he will appear to the public as a moral and lofty-minded man.
gpt
On whom neither man nor woman could depend!
human
Neither the one nor the other.
gpt
Silk! Mr. Calhoun, I grinned.
human
Still silk and dimity, my faith! And you!
gpt
I must take men and women and circumstances as I find them, he rejoined;
human
If we temporarily lack the Baroness von Ritz to add zest to our game, I hazarded,
gpt
By the Lord Harry! boy, you give me an idea. Wait, now, for a moment. Do you go on with your copying there, and excuse me for a time.