understanding of the public sentiment, cared very
little what Martin or anybody else thought about him. His high-spiced
wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers
could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton
can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.
Nothing would have delighted the colonel more than to be told that
no such man as he could walk in high success the streets of any other
country in the world; for that would only have been a logical assurance
to him of the correct adaptation of his labours to the prevailing taste,
and of his being strictly and peculiarly a national feature of America.

They walked a mile or more along a handsome street which the colonel
said was called Broadway, and which Mr Jefferson Brick said 'whipped the
universe.' Turning, at length, into one of the numerous streets which
branched from this main thoroughfare, they stopped before a rather
mean-looking house with jalousie blinds to every window; a flight of
steps before the green street-door; a shining white ornament on the
rails on either side like a petrified pineapple, polished; a little
oblong plate of the same material over the knocker whereon the name of
'Pawkins' was engraved; and four accidental pigs looking down the area.

The colonel knocked at this house with the air of a man who lived there;
and an Irish girl popped her head out of one of the top windows to see
who it was. Pending her journey downstairs, the pigs were joined by two
or three friends from the next street, in company with whom they lay
down sociably in the gutter.

'Is the major indoors?' inquired the colonel, as he entered.

'Is it the master, sir?' returned the girl, with a hesitation
which seemed to imply that they were rather flush of majors in that
establishment.

'The master!' said Colonel Diver, stopping short and looking round at
his war correspondent.

'Oh! The depressing institutions of that British empire, colonel!' said
Jefferson Brick. 'Master!'

'What's the matter with the word?' asked Martin.

'I should hope it was never heard in our country, sir; that's all,' said
Jefferson Brick; 'except when it is used by some degraded Help, as new
to the blessings of our form of government, as this Help is. There are
no masters here.'

'All "owners," are they?' said Martin.

Mr Jefferson Brick followed in the Rowdy Journal's footsteps without
returning any answer. Martin t