But he did not know of that day in Dubuque, and of my smuggling of
Mrs. Bliven into Iowa, as I have told it in this history. It hurt Bliven
politically, but he kept on boosting me, and it was his electioneering,
that I knew nothing about, that elected me justice of the peace; and it
was Mrs. Bliven's urging that caused me to qualify by being sworn
in--though I couldn't see what she meant by her interest.
6
On my next birthday, the twenty-seventh of July, however, something
happened that after a few months of figuring made me think that they
knew what they were about all the time; for on that day they (the
Blivens) got up a surprise party on us, and came in such rigs as they
had (there were more light rigs than at the Governor Wade reception, a
fact of historical interest as showing progress); though Virginia did
not seem to be much surprised. In the course of the evening Doc Bliven
started in making fun of me as a justice of the peace.
"I helped a little to elect you, Jake," said he, "but I'll bet you
couldn't make out a mittimus if you had to send a criminal to jail
to-night."
"I won't bet," I said, "I know I couldn't!"
"I'll bet the oysters for the crowd, Squire Vandemark," he went on
deviling me, "that you couldn't perform the marriage ceremony."
Now here he came closer to my abilities, for I had been through a
marriage ceremony lately, and I have a good memory--and oysters were a
novelty in Iowa, coming in tin cans and called cove oysters, put up in
Baltimore.
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