;
life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its
dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having
their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honour
and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good
Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars.
Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the
nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by
stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars!
What is a flag to THEM!

One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a fox,
will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with these
gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who brawled the
loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was their champion who,
in the brutal fury of his own pursuit, could cast no stigma upon them
for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes'
straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative
assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize
opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully,
and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and
stabs at Freedom, striking far deeper into her House of Life than any
sultan's scimitar could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a
grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh
heaven of Fame.

Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such questions as
naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the national poets,
the theatre, literature, and the arts. But the information which these
gentlemen were in a condition to give him on such topics, did not extend
beyond the effusions of such master-spirits of the time as Colonel
Diver, Mr Jefferson Brick, and others; renowned, as it appeared, for
excellence in the achievement of a peculiar style of broadside essay
called 'a screamer.'

'We are a busy people, sir,' said one of the captains, who was from the
West, 'and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't mind 'em
if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong stuff of
another sort, but darn your books.'

Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare thought
of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor political, and was
not in a newspaper, inq