and began
easily, quite dispassionately, to address me.

"I wish you would favour us with your point of view, Mr. Carvel," said
he; "for, upon my soul, I know little about the subject."

"You know little about the subject, and you in Parliament!"

I cried.

This started them all to laughing. Why, I did not then understand. But I
was angry enough.

"Come, let's have it!" said he.

They drew their chairs closer, some wearing that smile of superiority
which to us is the Englishman's most maddening trait. I did not stop
to think twice, or to remember that I was pitted against the greatest
debater in all England. I was to speak that of which I was full, and the
heart's argument needs no logic to defend it. If it were my last word, I
would pronounce it.

I began by telling them that the Americans had paid their share of the
French war, in blood and money, twice over. And I had the figures in my
memory. Mr. Fox interrupted. For ten minutes at a space he spoke, and
in all my life I have never talked to a man who had the English of King
James's Bible, of Shakespeare, and Milton so wholly at his command.
And his knowledge of history, his classical citations, confounded me.
I forgot myself in wondering how one who had lived so fast had acquired
such learning. Afterward, when I tried to recall what he said, I laughed
at his surprising ignorance of the question at issue, and wondered where
my wits could have gone that I allowed myself to be dazzled and turned
aside at every corner. As his speech came faster he twisted fact into
fiction and fiction into fact, until I must needs close my mind and bolt
the shutters of it, or he had betrayed me into confessing the right
of Parliament to quarter troops among us. Though my head swam, I clung
doggedly to my text. And that was my salvation. He grew more excited,
and they applauded him. In truth, I myself felt near to clapping. And
then, as I stared him in the eye, marvelling how a man of such vast
power and ability could stand for such rotten practices, the thought
came to me (I know not whence) of Saint Paul the Apostle.

"Mr. Fox," I said, when he had paused, "before God, do you believe what
you are saying?"

I saw them smiling at my earnestness and simplicity. Fox seemed
surprised, and laughed evasively,--not heartily as was his wont.

"My dear Mr. Carvel," he said, glancing around the circle, political
principles are not to be swallowed like religion, but taken rather like