William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[13] minutes more sufficed to get these articles read and passed. The Federal troops were handy, under Packard's orders, so that things were done as easily as they were said. Pinch assumed the rank of Acting Governor, took possession of the State House, seized the Great Seal of Louisiana, and proclaimed his advent to the world. Seldom in either history or fiction have grotesqueness and absurdity been carried to such lengths. We sigh over the doings of Bocking, the tailor of Leyden, as a pitiful illustration of human folly. We laugh at the impudence of Sancho, as a pleasant creation of satiric art. But Minster and Barrataria must look to their bays. If Bocking has no rival, and Sancho no superior, Pinchback and Antoine in high places have an air of burlesque not easily surpassed.

Warmoth refused to recognise Pinchback, and Pinchback was puzzled how to act even though he had Packard and a guard of honour in his ante-room. A duellist, who shoots his man as coolly as he shoots his bird, General Warmoth was not a man for Pinch to bully. The Conservative members, too, on finding the Chambers closed to