ell quarrel with the winds, or stab that water as it
flows by."

"As with what?"

"The fellow I've just been getting a good look at."

"What manner of fellow?"

"Ignorant, selfish, brutal, devilish."

"Tremendous! why don't you bind him over to keep the peace?"

"Because he is like the judge of old time, neither fears God nor
respects his image,--when his image is carved in ebony, and not ivory."

"What do you call this fellow?"

"Public Opinion."

"This big fellow is abusing and devouring a poor little chap, eh? and
the chap's black?"

"True."

"And sometimes the giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen,
otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun
or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver
knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is
raw-hide. Am I stating it all correctly?"

"All correctly."

"And you've been watching this operation when you had better have been
minding your own business, and getting excited when you had better have
kept cool, and now want to rush into the fight, drums beating and colors
flying, to the rescue of the small one. Don't deny it,--it's all written
out in your eyes."

"I sha'n't deny it, except about the business and the keeping cool. It's
any gentleman's business to interfere between a bully and a weakling
that he's abusing; and his blood must be water that does not boil while
he 'watches the operation' as you say, and goes in."

"To get well pommelled for his pains, and do no good to any one, himself
included. Let the weakling alone. A fellow that can't save himself is
not worth saving. If he can't swim nor walk, let him drop under or go to
the wall; that's my theory."

"Anglo-Saxon theory--and practice."

"Good theory, excellent practice,--in the main. What special phase of it
has been disturbing your equanimity?"

"You know the Franklins?"

"Of course: Aunt Mina's son--what's his name?--is a sort of _protege_
of yours, I believe: what of him?"

"He is cleanly?"

"A nice question. Doubtless."

"Respectable?"

"What are you driving at?"

"Intelligent?"

"Most true."

"Ambitious?"

"Or his looks belie him."

"Faithful, trusty, active, helpful, in every way devoted to my father's
service and his work."

"With Sancho, I believe it all because your worship says so."

"Well, this man has just been discharged from my father's employ because
seven hundred and forty-two