No more was needed: we hung on each other's necks, as had been my wont
in boyhood.

"But who is that pedlar, Hugh?" demanded my grandmother, after a time.
"Can it possibly be Roger, my son?"

"It is no other; we have come to visit you, incog."

"And why this disguise?--Is it connected with the troubles?"

"Certainly; we have wished to take a near view with our own eyes, and
supposed it might be unwise to come openly, in our proper characters."

"In this you have done well; yet I hardly know how to welcome you, in
your present characters. On no account must your real names be revealed.
The demons of tar and feathers, the sons of liberty and equality, who
illustrate their principles as they do their courage, by attacking the
few with the many, would be stirring, fancying themselves heroes and
martyrs in the cause of justice, did they learn you were here. Ten armed
and resolute men might drive a hundred of them, I do believe; for they
have all the cowardice of thieves, but they are heroes with the unarmed
and feeble. Are you safe, yourselves, appearing thus disguised, under
the new law?"

"We are not armed, not having so much as a pistol; and that will protect
us."

"I am sorry to say, Hugh, that this country is no longer what I once
knew it. Its justice, if not wholly departed, is taking to itself wings,
and its blindness, not in a disregard of persons, but in a faculty of
seeing only the stronger side. A landlord, in my opinion, would have but
little hope, with jury, judge, or executive, for doing that which
thousands of the tenants have done, still do, and will continue to do,
with perfect impunity, unless some dire catastrophe stimulates the
public functionaries to their duties, by awakening public indignation."

"This is a miserable state of things, dearest grandmother; and what
makes it worse, is the cool indifference with which most persons regard
it. A better illustration of the utter selfishness of human nature
cannot be given, than in the manner in which the body of the people look
on, and see wrong thus done to a few of their number."

"Such persons as Mr. Seneca Newcome would answer, that the public
sympathises with the poor, who are oppressed by the rich, because the
last do not wish to let the first rob them of their estates! We hear a
great deal of the strong robbing the weak, all over the world, but few
among ourselves, I am afraid, are sufficiently clear-sighted to see how
vivid an instance of