ggerin', bullyin' monument up? I
should be sorry for 'em to take notice of such vulgar insolence as this;
for bullies will brag.' He'd wink and say, 'I won't non-concur with you,
Mr. Slick. I hope it won't be blowed up; but wishes like dreams come
con_trary_ ways sometimes, and I shouldn't much wonder if it bragged
till it bust some night.' It would go for it, that's a fact. For Mr.
Lett has a kind of nateral genius for blowin' up of monuments.

"Now you talk of our Eagle takin' an anchor in its claws as bad taste.
I won't say it isn't; but it is a nation sight better nor this. See what
the little admiral critter is about! why he is a stampin' and a jabbin'
of the iron heel of his boot into the lifeless body of a fallen foe!
It's horrid disgustin', and ain't overly brave nother; and to make
matters wus, as if this warn't bad enough, them four emblem figures,
have great heavy iron chains on 'em, and a great enormous sneezer of
a lion has one part o' the chain in its mouth, and is a-growlin' and
a-grinnin' and a-snarling at 'em like mad, as much as to say, 'if you
dare to move the sixteen hundredth part of an inch, I will fall to and
make mincemeat of you, in less than half no time. I don't think there
never was nothin' so bad as this, ever seen since the days of old daddy
Adam down to this present blessed day, I don't indeed. So don't come for
to go, Squire, to tarnt me with the Eagle and the anchor no more, for I
don't like it a bit; you'd better look to your '_Nelson monument_' and
let us alone. So come now!"

Amidst much that was coarse, and more that was exaggerated, there was
still some foundation for the remarks of the Attache.

"You arrogate a little too much to yourselves," I observed, "in
considering the United States as all America. At the time these
brilliant deeds were achieved, which this monument is intended to
commemorate, the Spaniards owned a very much greater portion of the
transatlantic continent than you now do, and their navy composed a part
of the hostile fleets which were destroyed by Lord Nelson. At that time,
also, you had no navy, or at all events, so few ships, as scarcely
to deserve the name of one; nor had you won for yourselves that high
character, which you now so justly enjoy, for skill and gallantry. I
agree with you, however, in thinking the monument is in bad taste. The
name of Lord Nelson is its own monument. It will survive when these
perishable structures, which the pride or the gr