“No nonsense, Mr. Brierly.  Nonsense won’t do in Hawkeye, not with my friends.  The Hawkins’ blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee.  The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is millions when it comes into market.”

“Of course, Colonel.  Not the least offense intended.  But you can see she is a fascinating woman.  I was only thinking, as to this appropriation, now, what such a woman could do in Washington.  All correct, too, all correct.  Common thing, I assure you in Washington; the wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives, and some who are not wives, use their influence.  You want an appointment?  Do you go to Senator X?  Not much.  You get on the right side of his wife.  Is it an appropriation?  You’d go ’straight to the Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose?  You’d learn better than that.  It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office:  I tell you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your friend.”

“Would you have her sign our petition?” asked the Colonel, innocently.

Harry laughed.  “Women don’t get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody does, that’s for form.  Petitions are referred somewhere, and that’s the last of them; you can’t refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is present.  They prefer ’em mostly.”

The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on the great through route to the Pacific, of the, immediate improvement of Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city and a survey of the river.  It was signed by all the people at Stone’s Landing who could write their names, by Col.  Beriah Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress.  When completed it was a formidable document.  Its preparation and that of more minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and Harry for many weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest spirits.

In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm.  He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of what he was going to do.  As for Washington, Harry thought he was a man of ability and comprehension, but “too visionary,” he told the Colonel.  The Colonel said he might be right, but he had never noticed anything visionary about him.

“He’s got his plans, sir.  God bless my soul, at his age, I was full of plans.  But experience sobers a man, I never touch any thing now that hasn’t been weighed in my judgment; and when Beriah Sellers puts his judgment on a thing, there it is.”