e at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So
you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not, interrupted
during the time implied by these ex-post-facto remarks of mine, but for
some ten or fifteen seconds only.

He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again.
The "Sir" of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than
anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking
with some imaginary opponent.

--America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is
full-grown!

He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of his
high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his little
figure to the view of the boarders.

It was next to impossible to keep from laughing. The commentary was so
strange an illustration of the text! I thought it was time to put in a
word; for I have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less
cosmopolitan.

I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in
England,---I said.--An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and
politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr. Channing did,
and Mr. Bright is as independent as Mr. Seward.

Sir,--said he,--it is n't what a man thinks or says; but when and where
and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking
sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a
tinder-box is another. The free Englishman is born under protest; he
lives and dies under protest,--a tolerated, but not a welcome fact. Is
not freethinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul
of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it
antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital
and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended
with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath
or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a
quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all
fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the
atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American
baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs.

--That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it
commonly belongs to a female Paddy.

I thought--I will not be certain--that the Little Gentleman winked, as if
he