Captain Wallingford." I bowed an assent, foreseeing another
application for _facts_.

"Well, sir. I hope you'll excuse the liberty I am taking, on account of
its object. I represent the public, which is ever anxious to obtain the
earliest information on all matters of general concernment, and I feel
emboldened by duty, to introduce myself--Colonel Positive of the Federal
Truth Teller, a journal that your honoured father once did us the favour
to take--we have this moment heard of the atrocities committed on you,
Captain Wallingford, by 'a brigand of a French piratical, picarooning,
plundering vagabond,'" reading from what I dare say was another caption,
prepared for the other side of the question; "a fresh instance of Gallic
aggression, and republican, jacobinical insolence; atrocities that are of
a character to awaken the indignation of every right-thinking American,
and which can only find abettors among that portion of the community,
which, possessing nothing, is never slow to sympathize in the success of
this robber, though it be at the expense of American rights, and American
prosperity."

As soon as Col. Positive had read this much, he stopped to take breath,
looking at me, as if expecting some exclamations of admiration
and delight.

"I have suffered by means of what I conceive to be a perfectly
unauthorized act of a French privateer, Col. Positive," I replied; "but
this wrong would not have been done me, had I not suffered previously by
what I conceive to be an equally unjustifiable act of the English frigate,
the Speedy, commanded by Captain Lord Harry Dermond, a son of the Irish
Marquis of Thole."

"Bless me, sir, this is very extraordinary! An English frigate, did you
say? It is very unusual for the vessels of that just nation ever to be
guilty of an aggression, particularly as our common language, common
descent, Saxon ancestors, and Saxon English, and all that sort of thing,
you know, operate against it; whereas, sorry I am to say, each new arrival
brings us some fresh instance of the atrocities of the myrmidons of this
upstart Emperor of the French; a man, sir, whose deeds, sir, have never
been paralleled since the day of Nero, Caligula, and all the other tyrants
of antiquity. If you will favour me, Captain Wallingford, with a few of
the particulars of this last atrocity of Bonaparte, I promise you it shall
be circulated far and near, and that in a way to defy the malignant and
corrupt perversions of