e was many an ill-made coat in those old times that
was good enough to be shown to the enemy's front rank too often to
be left on the field with a round hole in its left lapel that matched
another going right through the brave heart of the plain country captain
or major or colonel who was buried in it under the crimson turf.

Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not
acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that
there was no offence,--thought it might have been mutooally agreeable,
conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and backed himself
out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to
the risk of accelerating impulses.

The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot,
as if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round
the room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy
and water to compose his feelings.

CHAPTER IX. THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. (With a Digression on
"Hired Help.")

"ABEL! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."

Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they
breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly
nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be
found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of
late years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite
basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by
California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of
New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of
that deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or
mule between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England
serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an
emperor and a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part
(be the same more or less) of the power that sways the destinies of the
Great Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is about to
polish. It is impossible to turn a fellow citizen whose vote may make
his master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or who may
be one or both himself, into a flunky.