Slickville.' It sounds better, that, than 'Old Minister,' don't
it?"

"Oh, if you go for to talk that way, Sam, I am done; but I will shew you
that the Tories are the men to govern this great nation. A Tory I may
say '_noscitur a sociis_.'"

"What in natur is that, when it's biled and the skin took off?" asked
Mr. Slick.

"Why is it possible you don't know that? Have you forgotten that common
schoolboy phrase?"

"Guess I do know; but it don't tally jist altogether nohow, as it were.
Known as a Socialist, isn't it?"

"If, Sir," said Mr. Hopewell, with much earnestness, "if instead of
ornamenting your conversation with cant terms, and miserable slang,
picked up from the lowest refuse of our population, both east and west,
you had cultivated your mind, and enriched it with quotations from
classical writers, you would have been more like an Attache, and less
like a peddling clockmaker than you are."

"Minister," said Mr. Slick, "I was only in jeest, but you are in
airnest. What you have said is too true for a joke, and I feel it. I was
only a sparrin'; but you took off the gloves, and felt my short ribs in
a way that has given me a stitch in the side. It tante fair to kick that
way afore you are spurred. You've hurt me considerable."

"Sam, I am old, narvous, and irritable. I was wrong to speak unkindly
to you, very wrong indeed, and I am sorry for it; but don't teaze me no
more, that's a good lad; for I feel worse than you do about it. I beg
your pardon, I--"

"Well," said Mr. Slick, "to get back to what we was a sayin', for you do
talk like a book, that's a fact; '_noscitur a sociis_,' says you."

"Ay, 'Birds of a feather flock together,' as the old maxim goes. Now,
Sam, who supported the Whigs?"

"Why, let me see; a few of the lords, a few of the gentry, the
repealers, the manufacturin' folks, the independents, the baptists, the
dissentin' Scotch, the socialists, the radicals, the discontented, and
most of the lower orders, and so on."

"Well, who supported the Tories?"

"Why, the majority of the lords, the great body of landed gentry, the
univarsities, the whole of the Church of England, the whole of the
methodists, amost the principal part of the kirk, the great marchants,
capitalists, bankers, lawyers, army and navy officers, and soon."

"Now don't take your politics from me, Sam, for I am no politician; but
as an American citizen, judge for yourself, which of those two parties
is most likely to be ri