. I was
not made to kill skunks, those disgusting little animals. I hate to
think of them.

Pardon me for keeping you listening to me so long; I have done. I wish
to hear now what that respectable-looking broadsword has to say. We two
ought to be friends."

"I was born a gentleman," said the broadsword. "I was always considered
the sign, the symbol of one. Not many years since, a sword was so
essential to the character of a gentleman that a man without one by his
side, was, in fact, not considered a gentleman.

My master, who was also yours, Mr. Curlingtongs, was one the officers
in the company of Cadets at its first formation. He had the honorable
title of Major, and all his best friends called him Major. Little did I
think once that I should be condemned to the disgrace of spending my
old age in a garret with crooked curling tongs, broken pitchers, old
baize gowns, noseless tea-kettles, old crutches, a foot stove, and,
worse than all, a spinning wheel.

My only peers here are the venerable musket and the respectable wig.
Even they have seen too much hard service to be able fully to
appreciate the feelings of a gentleman who has been brought up as I
have. The degradation the musket especially endured, in being used as a
spade by such a very common sort of person as Judah Loring--a
degradation of which, far from being ashamed, he seems actually proud;
all this, I say, my friends, makes a wide separation between us never
to be forgotten or got over."

"I'm agreed, the further off the better," growled the musket. The old
wig also gave a sort of contemptuous hitch, that seemed to say, he
agreed with the musket.

"I consider myself," resumed the broad-sword, "to be a perfect
gentleman. I have never denied myself by any sort of labor. I have been
considered something to show, something to be used only as a terror to
evil doers.

It strikes me that I really made the Major; he never could appear in
his company or perform his duties without me; his queue was not more
essential. He was not a Major without me. Every one feared me when they
saw my shining blade out of its scabbard, and it was really amusing
occasionally to see the effect I produced. There have been swords that
have done bloody work, but I have never been so defiled.

The Boston Cadets, you know, are the Governor's body guard, and such is
the anxiety of people sometimes to see a real live governor when he has
on his governor's dress and character, that t