...
It's partially tongue-tied, a sad victim of its own excesses. Habitual
over-indulgence in blaming has given it a painful stutter when
attempting praise; it's the sprucely written sheet of the supercilious;
it's the after-dinner pill of the American who prefers Europe; it's our
Republic's common scold, the Xantippe of journalism, the paper without a
country."

"The paper without a country! That's very good!"

"Oh, no! I'll tell you something much better, but it is not mine. A
clever New Yorker said that what with The Sun--"

"I know that paper."

"--what with The Sun making vice so attractive in the morning and the
Post making virtue so odious in the evening, it was very hard for a man
to be good in New York."

"I fear I should subscribe to The Sun," said John Mayrant. He took his
hand from the church-gate railing, and we had turned to stroll down
Worship Street when he was unexpectedly addressed.

For some minutes, while John Mayrant and I had been talking, I had grown
aware, without taking any definite note of it, that the old custodian
of the churchyard, Daddy Ben, had come slowly near us from the distant
corner of his demesne, where he had been (to all appearances) engaged in
some trifling activity among the flowers--perhaps picking off the faded
blossoms. It now came home to me that the venerable negro had really
been, in a surreptitious way, watching John Mayrant, and waiting for
something--either for the right moment to utter what he now uttered, or
his own delayed decision to utter it at all.

"Mas' John!" he called quite softly. His tone was fairly padded with
caution, and I saw that in the pause which followed, his eye shot
a swift look at the bruise on Mayrant's forehead, and another look,
equally swift, at me.

"Well, Daddy Ben, what is it?"

The custodian shunted close to the gate which separated him from us.
"Mas' John, I speck de President he dun' know de cullud people like we
knows 'um, else he nebber bin 'pint dat ar boss in de Cussum House, no,
sah."

After this effort he wiped his forehead and breathed hard.

To my astonishment, the effort brought immediately a stern change over
John Mayrant's face; then he answered in the kindest tones, "Thank you,
Daddy Ben."

This answer interpreted for me the whole thing, which otherwise would
have been obscure enough: the old man held it to be an indignity that
his young "Mas' John" should, by the President's act, find himself the
subordinate