n short,
as the brigadier could tell you, if he were so disposed, they are
antagonist, body and soul. To be plain, sir, they are enemies."

"This is very extraordinary for fellow-citizens!"

"'Tis the monikin nature," observed Mr. Downright; "no doubt, sir, men
are much wiser?"

As I did not wish to divert the discourse from the present topic, I
merely bowed to this remark, and begged the judge to proceed.

"Well, sir," continued the latter, "you can easily imagine that they who
are placed near the point where the two lines meet, have no sinecures.
To speak the truth, they blackguard each other with all their abilities,
he who manifests the most inventive genius in this high accomplishment,
being commonly thought the cleverest fellow. Now, sir, none but a
patriot could, in the nature of things, endure this without some other
motive than his country's good, and so we esteem them."

"But the most patriotic patriots, commodore?"

The minister of Leaphigh now toed the mark again, placing himself within
a few feet of the point of junction between the two lines, and then he
begged me to pay particular attention to his evolution. When all was
ready, the commodore threw himself, as it were, invisibly into the air,
again head over heels, so far as I could discover, and alighted on the
antagonist line, toeing the mark with a most astonishing particularity.
It was a clever gyration, beyond a doubt; and the performer looked
towards me, as if inviting commendation.

"Admirably executed, judge, and in a way to induce one to believe that
you must have paid great attention to the practice."

"I have performed this manoeuvre, Sir John, five times in real life; and
my claim to be a patriotic patriot is founded on its invariable success.
A single false step might have ruined me; but as you say, practice makes
perfect, and perfection is the parent of success."

"And yet I do not rightly understand how so sudden a desertion of one's
own side, to go over in this active manner head over heels, I may
say, to another side, constitutes a fair claim to be deemed so pure a
character as that of a patriot."

"What, sir, is not he who throws himself defencelessly into the very
middle of the ranks of the enemy, the hero of the combat? Now, as this
is a political struggle, and not a warlike struggle, but one in which
the good of the country is alone uppermost, the monikin who thus
manifests the greatest devotion to the cause, must be the pur