I ain't a man to go fooling around--I'm a man that DOES things, I tell you." The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts.

Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said: "Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, once?
...
But I see you haven't." He backed Mr.Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest: "I will tell you about that man.

It was in Jackson's time.

Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then.

Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, 'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait-- said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.
"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up--said he would collect the claim in the morning.