whim; and even if he should be found dishonest or dangerous, he has a
right to be treated just exactly as we treat the knaves and ruffians who
are native born! Every discreet man must admit that."

"But if they do not enforce it, Mr. Grandissime," quickly responded the
sore apothecary, "if they continually forget it--if one must surrender
himself to the errors and crimes of the community as he finds it--"

The Creole uttered a low laugh.

"Party differences, Mr. Frowenfeld; they have them in all countries."

"So your cousins said," said Frowenfeld.

"And how did you answer them?"

"Offensively," said the apothecary, with sincere mortification.

"Oh! that was easy," replied the other, amusedly; "but how?"

"I said that, having here only such party differences as are common
elsewhere, we do not behave as they elsewhere do; that in most civilized
countries the immigrant is welcome, but here he is not. I am afraid I
have not learned the art of courteous debate," said Frowenfeld, with a
smile of apology.

"'Tis a great art," said the Creole, quietly, stroking his horse's neck.
"I suppose my cousins denied your statement with indignation, eh?"

"Yes; they said the honest immigrant is always welcome."

"Well, do you not find that true?"

"But, Mr. Grandissime, that is requiring the immigrant to prove his
innocence!" Frowenfeld spoke from the heart. "And even the honest
immigrant is welcome only when he leaves his peculiar opinions behind
him. Is that right, sir?"

The Creole smiled at Frowenfeld's heat.

"My-de'-seh, my cousins complain that you advocate measures fatal to the
prevailing order of society."

"But," replied the unyielding Frowenfeld, turning redder than ever,
"that is the very thing that American liberty gives me the
right--peaceably--to do! Here is a structure of society defective,
dangerous, erected on views of human relations which the world is
abandoning as false; yet the immigrant's welcome is modified with the
warning not to touch these false foundations with one of his fingers."

"Did you tell my cousins the foundations of society here are false?"

"I regret to say I did, very abruptly. I told them they were privately
aware of the fact."

"You may say," said the ever-amiable Creole, "that you allowed debate to
run into controversy, eh?"

Frowenfeld was silent; he compared the gentleness of this Creole's
rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated.
But M.