by the way,' he added, remembering that the
colonel had whispered him to that effect, before going out.

'Not much beholden,' said the stranger drily. 'The colonel occasionally
boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest information
for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to board here, I
believe, with a view to the little percentage which attaches to those
good offices; and which the hostess deducts from his weekly bill. I
don't offend you, I hope?' he added, seeing that Martin reddened.

'My dear sir,' returned Martin, as they shook hands, 'how is that
possible! to tell you the truth, I--am--'

'Yes?' said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.

'I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,' said Martin,
getting the better of his hesitation, 'to know how this colonel escapes
being beaten.'

'Well! He has been beaten once or twice,' remarked the gentleman
quietly. 'He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so
long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw
our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don't know that Franklin, in very
severe terms, published his opinion that those who were slandered
by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient remedy in the
administration of this country's laws or in the decent and right-minded
feeling of its people, were justified in retorting on such public
nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?'

'I was not aware of that,' said Martin, 'but I am very glad to know
it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially'--here he hesitated
again.

'Go on,' said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin's
throat.

'Especially,' pursued Martin, 'as I can already understand that it may
have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely on any
question which was not a party one in this very free country.'

'Some courage, no doubt,' returned his new friend. 'Do you think it
would require any to do so, now?'

'Indeed I think it would; and not a little,' said Martin.

'You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could breathe
this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us to-morrow,
he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature,
and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has
anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and
who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate
hatred a