r it was good, for the country, the race, ay, the
species, that they should be so distinctly removed from the thousands
who fought the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread
of life. Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set
them in a great sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of
elegance and refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor
are everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea....

One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of meditation that is half-built
on the sensations as well as on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire
to have those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht and the Lady,
swept away? Oh, dear, no. He admired them, he was at home with them.
They were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the beach for a last
look at them before he set his face to the town, he prolonged the look
in a manner to indicate that the place where business called him was not
in comparison at all so pleasing: and just as little enjoyable were his
meditations opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart from his
breast. But he had taken up arms; he had drunk of the questioning
cup, that which denieth peace to us, and which projects us upon the
missionary search of the How, the Wherefore, and the Why not, ever
afterward. He questioned his justification, and yours, for gratifying
tastes in an ill-regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and
bounties unrighteously dispensed--not sufficiently dispersed. He said
by-and-by to pleasure, battle to-day. From his point of observation, and
with the store of ideas and images his fiery yet reflective youth had
gathered, he presented himself as it were saddled to that hard-riding
force known as the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over
precipices, across oceans and deserts, and through systems and webs, and
into shops and cabinets of costliest china, will come at it, will not be
refused, let the distances and the breakages be what they may. He went
like the meteoric man with the mechanical legs in the song, too quick
for a cry of protestation, and reached results amazing to his instincts,
his tastes, and his training, not less rapidly and naturally than
tremendous Ergo is shot forth from the clash of a syllogism.

CHAPTER XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS

Beauchamp presented himself at Mount Laurels next day, and formally
asked Colonel Halkett for his vote,