ts in the catalogue, but I say he is Dutch, and that's enough
to keep him out of the kingdom of heaven and out of this free and
enlightened republic. And an American may be a good-fer-nothin', ornery
little pertater-ball, wuthless alike to man and beast; he mayn't be good
fer nothin', nuther fer work nur study; he may git drunk and git turned
outen school and do any pertikeler number of disgraceful and
oncreditable things, he may be a reg'ler milksop and nincompoop, a fool
and a blackguard and a coward all rolled up into one piece of brown
paper, ef he wants to. And what's to hender? A'n't he a free-born an'
enlightened citizen of this glorious and civilized and Christian land of
Hail Columby? What business has a Dutchman, ef he's ever so smart and
honest and larned, got in our broad domains, resarved for civil and
religious liberty? What business has he got breathin' our atmosphere or
takin' refuge under the feathers of our American turkey-buzzard? No, my
beloved and respected feller-citizen of native birth, it's as plain to
me as the wheels of 'Zek'el and the year 1843. I say, Hip, hip, hoo-ray
fer liberty or death, and down with the Dutch!"

Norman Anderson scratched his head.

What did Jonas mean?

He couldn't exactly divine; but it is safe to say that on the whole he
was not entirely satisfied with this boomerang speech. He rather thought
that he had better not depend on Jonas.

But he was not long in finding allies enough in his war against Germany.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.

There was an egg-supper in the country store at Brayville. Mr. Mandluff,
the tall and raw-boned Hoosier who kept the store, was not unwilling to
have the boys get up an egg supper now and then in his store after he
had closed the front-door at night. For you must know that an egg-supper
is a peculiar Western institution. Sometimes it is a most enjoyable
institution--when it has its place in a store where there is no Kentucky
whisky to be had. But in Brayville, in the rather miscellaneous
establishment of the not very handsome and not very graceful Mr.
Mandluff, an egg-supper was not a great moral institution. It was
otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting; it would
be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of the insiders grew very
happy before it was over. For an egg-supper at Mandluff's store was to
Brayville what an oyster-supper at Delmonico's is to New York. It was
one tenth hard eggs an