ess, and too
proud not to be self-reliant.

Thus excusing and extenuating wherein he could not flatter, Atlee talked on
the entire evening, till he sent the two Englishmen home heartily sick of a
bombastic eulogy on the land where a pilot had run their cutter on a rock,
and a revenue officer had seized all their tobacco. The German had retired
early, and the Yankee hastened to his lodgings to 'jot down' all the fine
things he could commit to his next despatch home, and overwhelm Mr. Seward
with an array of historic celebrities such as had never been seen at
Washington.

'They're gone at last,' said the Minister. 'Let us have our cigar on the
terrace.'

The unbounded frankness, the unlimited trustfulness that now ensued between
these two men, was charming. Brammell represented one hard worked and
sorely tried in his country's service--the perfect slave of office,
spending nights long at his desk, but not appreciated, not valued at home.
It was delightful, therefore, to him, to find a man like Atlee to whom he
could tell this--could tell for what an ungrateful country he toiled,
what ignorance he sought to enlighten, what actual stupidity he had to
counteract. He spoke of the Office--from his tone of horror it might have
been the Holy Office--with a sort of tremulous terror and aversion: the
absurd instructions they sent him, the impossible things he was to do, the
inconceivable lines of policy he was to insist on; how but for him the king
would abdicate, and a Russian protectorate be proclaimed; how the revolt
at Athens would be proclaimed in Thessaly; how Skulkekoff, the Russian
general, was waiting to move into the provinces 'at the first check my
policy shall receive here,' cried he. 'I shall show you on this map; and
here are the names, armament, and tonnage of a hundred and ninety-four
gunboats now ready at Nicholief to move down on Constantinople.'

Was it not strange, was it not worse than strange, after such a show of
unbounded confidence as this, Atlee would reveal nothing? Whatever his
grievances against the people he served--and who is without them?--he would
say nothing, he had no complaint to make. Things he admitted were bad, but
they might be worse. The monarchy existed still, and the House of Lords
was, for a while at least, tolerated. Ireland was disturbed, but not in
open rebellion; and if we had no army to speak of, we still had a navy, and
even the present Admiralty only lost about five ships a yea