nd intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears,
believe me. In some cases I could name to you, where a native writer
has ventured on the most harmless and good-humoured illustrations of
our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce, that in
a second edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained
away, or patched into praise.'

'And how has this been brought about?' asked Martin, in dismay.

'Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with the
colonel,' said his friend, 'and ask yourself. How THEY came about,
is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be samples of the
intelligence and virtue of America, but they come uppermost, and in
great numbers, and too often represent it. Will you walk?'

There was a cordial candour in his manner, and an engaging confidence
that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own part, and a
simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger; which Martin had
never seen before. He linked his arm readily in that of the American
gentleman, and they walked out together.

It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a traveller
of honoured name, who trod those shores now nearly forty years ago, and
woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots and stains upon
its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his distant dreams were
lost to view, appealed in these words--

'Oh, but for such, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall before her spring were o'er!'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MARTIN ENLARGES HIS CIRCLE OF AQUAINTANCE; INCREASES HIS STOCK
OF WISDOM; AND HAS AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY OF COMPARING HIS OWN
EXPERIENCES WITH THOSE OF LUMMY NED OF THE LIGHT SALISBURY, AS RELATED
BY HIS FRIEND MR WILLIAM SIMMONS

It was characteristic of Martin, that all this while he had either
forgotten Mark Tapley as completely as if there had been no such person
in existence, or, if for a moment the figure of that gentleman rose
before his mental vision, had dismissed it as something by no means of
a pressing nature, which might be attended to by-and-bye, and could wait
his perfect leisure. But, being now in the streets again, it occurred to
him as just coming within the bare limits of possibility that Mr Tapley
might, in course of time, grow tired of waiting on the threshold of the
Rowdy J