onger.

'I shall move,' said the General, when he could make himself heard,
'that the Watertoast Association of United Sympathisers be immediately
dissolved!'

Down with it! Away with it! Don't hear of it! Burn its records! Pull the
room down! Blot it out of human memory!

'But, my fellow-countrymen!' said the General, 'the contributions. We
have funds. What is to be done with the funds?'

It was hastily resolved that a piece of plate should be presented to a
certain constitutional Judge, who had laid down from the Bench the noble
principle that it was lawful for any white mob to murder any black man;
and that another piece of plate, of similar value should be presented
to a certain Patriot, who had declared from his high place in the
Legislature, that he and his friends would hang without trial, any
Abolitionist who might pay them a visit. For the surplus, it was agreed
that it should be devoted to aiding the enforcement of those free and
equal laws, which render it incalculably more criminal and dangerous
to teach a negro to read and write than to roast him alive in a public
city. These points adjusted, the meeting broke up in great disorder, and
there was an end of the Watertoast Sympathy.

As Martin ascended to his bedroom, his eye was attracted by the
Republican banner, which had been hoisted from the house-top in honour
of the occasion, and was fluttering before a window which he passed.

'Tut!' said Martin. 'You're a gay flag in the distance. But let a man
be near enough to get the light upon the other side and see through you;
and you are but sorry fustian!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FROM WHICH IT WILL BE SEEN THAT MARTIN BECAME A LION OF HIS OWN ACCOUNT.
TOGETHER WITH THE REASON WHY

As soon as it was generally known in the National Hotel, that the young
Englishman, Mr Chuzzlewit, had purchased a 'lo-cation' in the Valley
of Eden, and intended to betake himself to that earthly Paradise by the
next steamboat, he became a popular character. Why this should be, or
how it had come to pass, Martin no more knew than Mrs Gamp, of Kingsgate
Street, High Holborn, did; but that he was for the time being the lion,
by popular election, of the Watertoast community, and that his society
was in rather inconvenient request there could be no kind of doubt.

The first notification he received of this change in his position, was
the following epistle, written in a thin running hand--with here and
there a fat letter o