ly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request
was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As
the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his
kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment
so often named.

Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted,
Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from
Mr. Effingham that he was ready to hear his communication, told the
agent that it was too late to change his determination.

"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus
commenced, "agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost
regret at being compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for
whom I entertain so profound a respect."

"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body
slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.

"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing
one."

"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as
fifty or sixty having been present."

"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims
to anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr.
Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though
I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted
on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I
understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited
to its own sense of propriety."

Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr.
Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the
dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an
affair of this nature.

"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus
resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this
nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"

"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the
Americans are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get
together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution
is as much a consequence of such an 'organization,'--I believe that
is the approved word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling
of a hen."

"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"

"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the
pleasure of obtaining from