. Indeed, it were well we set about doing things fast,
instead of so thinking them over in the mind that they seem immovable
as mountains. Well, there was in London just about this time much
waste of that sort of small talk newspapers now and then deal largely
in, (editors are always kind enough to consider themselves great
warriors), concerning our very spunky Captain Ingraham, who, they
said, had Kosta safe under his guns, and would blow Austria to nobody
knew where. The whole, however, only amounted to the simplest evidence
of what there was in sympathy and the Saxon heart. To our Christian
friends would we say--none of these things moved Smooth from his
equilibrium. After all, come to the true philosophy of the thing, and
it only amounted to a broil among small bullies. And, too, did the
little skipper not take care of himself he was no Yankee, and the
whole United States would know it to his discredit.

"General Pierce, too, being a fighting President, (not a doubt could
exist since the bombardment of Greytown), would take good care of the
whole thing (perhaps send to Congress a message blazing with the
language of war). Could it turn a point to his own advantage, he
would--right or wrong--send a fleet to whip Austria, to make her
something.

"But let us turn to a subject more fruitful. London seemed like a
great waste of dingy dwellings and badly constructed palaces, the
whole sleeping under a canopy of sickly smoke. Everything wore a
sombre, heavy air--even the men seemed born to methodize on some one
object. Show-shops, beer-shops, and gin-palaces, made the very air
reek with their stifling fumes. Above all, there were great palaces
for very faint-hearted people, who thought well of themselves, and in
their prayers thanked Uncle John, at whose great cost they lived in
sumptuous idleness. As this last specimen of human nature, when
dressed in full shine, would completely outshine the most vain Pawnee
chief that ever ran wild in Arkansas, Mr. Smooth was anxious for a
peep at the curiosity. In truth, to Mr. Smooth's unpolished eye
London looked as if it might have emanated from a place called hook or
crook, and stretched along the banks of a nauseous stream spreading
its death stenches in the air, where, diffusing itself in the most
perfect of fogs, it lent cheerful aid to the trade of physicians.
Everybody affected great knowledge of system; and yet things were so
complex of past errors and ages that no system e