or neglected to--erect it again! "Rebecca," like Jack Cade, had
pronounced _her_ law--"sic volo, sic jubeo"--and we rode through, by
virtue of her most graceless Majesty's absolute edict--cost free. It was
really a very singular feeling we experienced on the first of these
occasions. I assure thee, my reader; believe me, my pensive public! I
never was transported--never held up hand at the Old Bailey, or
elsewhere; am not conscious of any sinister sort of projections about
my skull that phrenologists might draw ugly conclusions on; yet I
confess, that after an eloquent burst of Conservative wrath against this
strange triumph of anarchy--after looking down on these works of mob
law, unreversed, tamely endured--after fancying I saw the prostrate
genius of social order there lying helpless--the dethroned majesty of
British law there grovelling among the black ruins, insulted,
unrestored--left to be trampled over with insolent laughter, by
refractory boors, ignorant as savages of that law's inestimable
blessing--I say, after all these hurried thoughts and feelings--let me
whisper thee, my reader, that a certain scandalous pleasure _did_ creep
up from these finger-ends, instinctively groping the pocket for the
pre-doomed "thrippence," yea, quite up to this lofty, reasoning, and
right loyal sensorium, on leaving the said sum in good and lawful money,
snug and safe in my own pocket, instead of handing it over to a toll
collector. Let us not expect too much from poor human nature! I defy any
man--Aristides Redivivus himself, to ride _toll free_ through, or rather
over, a turnpike defunct in this manner, and not feel a pernicious
pleasure at his heart, a sort of slyly triumphing satisfaction, spite of
himself, as of a dog that gets his adversary undermost; in
short--without becoming for the moment, under the Circean chink of the
saved "coppers," a rank Rebeccaite! The Lord and the law forgive me, for
I surely loved 'Becca at _heart_ at that moment!

My son being a young man about returning to college, it was highly
important to conceal this backsliding within; so I launched out the more
upon the monster character of this victory of brawny ignorance and
stupid rebellion over the spirit of laws--but it wouldn't do. "But you
don't _look_ altogether so angry about it as you speak, father," said
he, though what he could see to betray any inward chuckling, I am not
aware. If the casual saving of a toll could thus operate upon ME, who