from the Seat of War, to have it shattered for him by the
positive statements of persons who had probably not read the papers at
all, and sometimes couldn't. For in those happy days there were still
people who were unable to read or write.

Perhaps the only other customer in the parlour at The Sun, when Uncle Mo
was smoking his pipe there, on the afternoon which saw the Countess
interest herself in negro slavery, _was_ able to read and write, unknown
to his friends, who had never seen him do either. They, however, knew,
or professed to feel assured, that old Billy--for that was his only
ascertainable name--knew everything. This may have been their vulgar
fun; but if it was, old Billy's own convictions of his omniscience were
not shaken by it, any more than a creed he professed, that small doses
of rum shrub, took reg'lar, kept off old age. In a certain sense he took
them regularly, counting the same number in every bar, with nearly the
same pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him
against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical,
and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as
of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty
character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap
having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he
might have inherited from a coaching ancestor.

This afternoon he was eloquent on foreign policy. Closing one eye to
accentuate the shrewd vision of the other, and shaking his head
continuously to express the steadiness and persistency of his
convictions, he indicted Louis Napoleon as the _bete noire_ of European
politics. "Don't you let yourself be took in, Mr. Moses," he said, "by
any of these here noospapers. They're a bad lot. This here Nicholas,
he's a Rooshian--so him I say nothin' about. Nor yet these here
Turkeys--them and their Constant Eye No Pulls!"--this with great scorn.
"None of 'em no better, I lay, than Goard A'mighty see fit to make 'em,
so it ain't, so as you might say, their own fault, not in a manner of
speaking. But this Louis Sneapoleum, _he's_ your sly customer. He's as
bad as the whole lot, all boiled up together in a stoo! Don't you be
took in by him, Mr. Moses. Calls hisself a Coodytar! _I_ call him ..."
etcetera _de rigueur_, as some of old Billy's comparisons were
unsavoury.

"Can't foller you all the way down the lane, Willy-um," said Uncle Mo,