CHAPTER XL.
Open your ears; for which of you will stop, The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride; The which in every, language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
King Henry IV.
As may be readily believed, Col.

Beriah Sellers was by this time one of the best known men in Washington.

For the first time in his life his talents had a fair field.
He was now at the centre of the manufacture of gigantic schemes, of speculations of all sorts, of political and social gossip.
The atmosphere was full of little and big rumors and of vast, undefined expectations.

Everybody was in haste, too, to push on his private plan, and feverish in his haste, as if in constant apprehension that tomorrow would be Judgment Day.

Work while Congress is in session, said the uneasy spirit, for in the recess there is no work and no device.
The Colonel enjoyed this bustle and confusion amazingly; he thrived in the air of-indefinite expectation.