dertakes to be noblemen, and tells us common
folks what we shall dew an' what we sha'n't. No, sir!'

"I took the opportunity to explain to Sir Michael and Sir Hans what it
was our fathers fought for, and what is the meaning of liberty. If these
noblemen did not like the country, they could go elsewhere. If they did
n't like the laws, they had the ballot-box, and could choose new
legislators. But as long as the laws existed they must obey them. I
could not admit that, because they called themselves by the titles the
Old World nobility thought so much of, they had a right to interfere in
the agreements I entered into with my neighbor. I told Sir Michael that
if he would go home and help Lady Fagan to saw and split the wood for her
fire, he would be better employed than in meddling with my domestic
arrangements. I advised Sir Hans to ask Lady Schleimer for her bottle of
spirits to use as an embrocation for his lame hip. And so my two
visitors with the aristocratic titles staggered off, and left us plain,
untitled citizens, Hiram and myself, to set our posts, and consider the
question whether we lived in a free country or under the authority of a
self-constituted order of quasi-nobility."

It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted "free and equal"
superiority over the communities of the Old World, our people have the
most enormous appetite for Old World titles of distinction. Sir Michael
and Sir Hans belong to one of the most extended of the aristocratic
orders. But we have also "Knights and Ladies of Honor," and, what is
still grander, "Royal Conclave of Knights and Ladies," "Royal Arcanum,"
and "Royal Society of Good Fellows," "Supreme Council," "Imperial
Court," "Grand Protector," and "Grand Dictator," and so on. Nothing
less than "Grand" and "Supreme" is good enough for the dignitaries of our
associations of citizens. Where does all this ambition for names without
realities come from? Because a Knight of the Garter wears a golden star,
why does the worthy cordwainer, who mends the shoes of his
fellow-citizens, want to wear a tin star, and take a name that had a
meaning as used by the representatives of ancient families, or the men
who had made themselves illustrious by their achievements?

It appears to be a peculiarly American weakness. The French republicans
of the earlier period thought the term citizen was good enough for
anybody. At a later period, "Roi Citoyen"--the citizen king was a common
title giv