ll, got by that means
upon a little platform of tables at the upper end; where an armchair was
set for the General, and Mr La Fayette Kettle, as secretary, was making
a great display of some foolscap documents. Screamers, no doubt.

'Well, sir!' he said, as he shook hands with Martin, 'here is a
spectacle calc'lated to make the British Lion put his tail between his
legs, and howl with anguish, I expect!'

Martin certainly thought it possible that the British Lion might have
been rather out of his element in that Ark; but he kept the idea to
himself. The General was then voted to the chair, on the motion of a
pallid lad of the Jefferson Brick school; who forthwith set in for a
high-spiced speech, with a good deal about hearths and homes in it, and
unriveting the chains of Tyranny.

Oh but it was a clincher for the British Lion, it was! The indignation
of the glowing young Columbian knew no bounds. If he could only have
been one of his own forefathers, he said, wouldn't he have peppered
that same Lion, and been to him as another Brute Tamer with a wire whip,
teaching him lessons not easily forgotten. 'Lion! (cried that young
Columbian) where is he? Who is he? What is he? Show him to me. Let me
have him here. Here!' said the young Columbian, in a wrestling attitude,
'upon this sacred altar. Here!' cried the young Columbian, idealising
the dining-table, 'upon ancestral ashes, cemented with the glorious
blood poured out like water on our native plains of Chickabiddy Lick!
Bring forth that Lion!' said the young Columbian. 'Alone, I dare him! I
taunt that Lion. I tell that Lion, that Freedom's hand once twisted
in his mane, he rolls a corse before me, and the Eagles of the Great
Republic laugh ha, ha!'

When it was found that the Lion didn't come, but kept out of the way;
that the young Columbian stood there, with folded arms, alone in his
glory; and consequently that the Eagles were no doubt laughing wildly on
the mountain tops; such cheers arose as might have shaken the hands upon
the Horse-Guards' clock, and changed the very mean time of the day in
England's capital.

'Who is this?' Martin telegraphed to La Fayette.

The Secretary wrote something, very gravely, on a piece of paper,
twisted it up, and had it passed to him from hand to hand. It was an
improvement on the old sentiment: 'Perhaps as remarkable a man as any in
our country.'

This young Columbian was succeeded by another, to the full as eloquent
as he, wh