number of other such
epithets, until she worked herself, and me too, into such an excess of
feeling that we sat down, side by side, and each had a hearty fit of
crying. Perhaps some such burst as this was necessary to relieve our
minds, and we submitted to it wisely.

My sister wept the longest, as a matter of course; but, as soon as she
had dried her eyes, she replaced the wig, and completely restored my
disguise, trembling the whole time lest some one might enter and detect
me.

"You have been very imprudent, Hugh, in coming here at all," she said,
while thus busy. "You can form no notion of the miserable state of the
country, or how far the anti-rent poison has extended, or the malignant
nature of its feeling. The annoyances they have attempted with dear
grandmother are odious; _you_ they would scarcely leave alive."

"The country and the people must have strangely altered, then, in five
years. Our New York population has hitherto had very little of the
assassin-like character. Tar and feathers are the blackguards', and have
been the petty tyrants' weapons, from time immemorial, in this country;
but not the knife."

"And can anything sooner or more effectually alter a people than
longings for the property of others? Is not the 'love of money the root
of all evil?'--and what right have we to suppose our Ravensnest
population is better than another, when that sordid feeling is
thoroughly aroused? You know you have written me yourself, that all the
American can or does live for is money."

"I have written you, dear, that the country, in its present condition,
leaves no other incentive to exertion, and therein it is cursed.
Military fame, military rank, even, are unattainable, under our system:
the arts, letters and science, bring little or no reward; and there
being no political rank that a man of refinement would care for, men
must live for money, or live altogether for another state of being. But
I have told you, at the same time, Martha, that, notwithstanding all
this, I believe the American a less mercenary being, in the ordinary
sense of the word, than the European; that two men might be bought, for
instance, in any European country, for one here. This last I suppose to
be the result of the facility of making a living, and the habits it
produces."

"Never mind causes; Mr. Warren says there is a desperate intention to
rob existing among these people, and that they are dangerous. As yet
they do a little resp