may have so reluctantly dropped the wine and sandwiches because
they were loth to leave them to 'give aid and comfort to the enemy.'
There are always envious people to rail at those above them; pawns on
the world's chess-board, they pride themselves on their own
straightforward course; but let them push their way to the highest row,
how soon do they exchange this course for the 'crooked policy of the
knight,' or jump over principles with queen, castle, or bishop! Woe to
the poor pawn in their way.

How I have skipped! what connection can there be between members of
Congress and crooked policy, or jumping over principles? yet there must
have been a train of association that led me off the track; doubtless it
was purely arbitrary. Well, we'll let it go; poor pawn as I am, I have
but stepped aside to nab an idea.

But to return to the Yankee. The form which selfishness takes in his
system is not that of the most intensified exclusiveness. You know the
story of Rosicrucius' sepulcher, with its ever-burning lamp, guarded by
an armor-encased, truncheon-armed statue, which statue, on the entrance
of a man who accidentally discovered the sepulcher, arose, and at his
advance, raised its truncheon and shivered the lamp to atoms, leaving
the intruder in darkness. On examination, under the floor springs were
found, connecting with others within the statue. Rosicrucius wished thus
to inform the world that he had reinvented the ever-burning lamp of the
ancients, but meant that the world shouldn't profit by the information.
Had a Yankee reinvented those lamps, he would have got out a patent, and
some brother Yankee would have improved upon it, and invented one
warranted to burn 'forever _and a day_.' They would probably have thus
raked together a great deal of the 'filthy lucre;' _possibly_ this would
have been their main object; but the world would have been benefited by
them. All selfishness, to be sure, but exclusive selfishness benefits
the world.

[Speaking of _filthy_ lucre, I begin to see why those who have lost it
all are said to be '_cleaned_ out.' But this is only _par parenthese_.]

But exclusiveness is not peculiar to the Rosicrucians; there is too much
of it in even the religious sects of this enlightened age; it is too
much, 'Lord, bless me and my sect;' 'Lord, bless us, and no more.'
There are self-constituted mountain-tops that would extract all the
mercy and grace with which the winds come freighted from the great