tion, and backed himself
out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to
the risk of accelerating impulses.

The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot, as
if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round the
room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy and
water to compose his feelings.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. (With a Digression on "Hired Help.")

"ABEL! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."

Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they
breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly
nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be
found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of late
years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite
basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by
California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of
New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of that
deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule
between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England serving-man.
The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an emperor and
a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part (be the same
more or less) of the power that sways the destinies of the Great
Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is about to polish.
It is impossible to turn a fellow citizen whose vote may make his
master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or who may be one
or both himself, into a flunky. That article must be imported ready-made
from other centres of civilization. When a New Englander has lost his
self-respect as a citizen and as a man, he is demoralized, and cannot be
trusted with the money to pay for a dinner.

It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional emperor, this
continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when he goes into service,
and that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing. It is
always under protest that the hired man does his duty. Every act of
service is subject to the drawback, "I am as good as you are." This