to see the truth of what he had told me--men licking the
hand of riches with the tongue of flattery men so stricken with the
itch of vanity that they grovelled for the touch of praise; men even who
would do perjury for applause. I do not say that most of the men I saw
were of that ilk, but enough to show the tendency of life in a great
town.

I was filled with wonder at first by meeting so many who had been
everywhere and seen everything, who had mastered all sciences and all
philosophies and endured many perils on land and sea. I had met liars
before--it was no Eden there in the north country--and some of them had
attained a good degree of efficiency, but they lacked the candour and
finish of the metropolitan school. I confess they were all too much
for me at first. They borrowed my cash, they shared my confidence, they
taxed my credulity, and I saw the truth at last.

'Tom's breaking down,' said a co-labourer on the staff one day. 'How is
that?' I enquired.

'Served me a mean trick.'

'Indeed!'

'Deceived me,' said he sorrowfully.

'Lied, I suppose?'

'No. He told the truth, as God's my witness.'

Tom had been absolutely reliable up to that time.

Chapter 36

Those were great days in mid autumn. The Republic was in grave peril of
dissolution. Liberty that had hymned her birth in the last century
now hymned her destiny in the voices of bard and orator. Crowds of
men gathered in public squares, at bulletin boards, on street corners
arguing, gesticulating, exclaiming and cursing. Cheering multitudes went
up and down the city by night, with bands and torches, and there was
such a howl of oratory and applause on the lower half of Manhattan
Island that it gave the reporter no rest. William H. Seward, Charles
Sumner, John A. Dix, Henry Ward Beecher and Charles O'Connor were the
giants of the stump. There was more violence and religious fervour in
the political feeling of that time than had been mingled since '76. A
sense of outrage was in the hearts of men. 'Honest Abe' Lincoln stood,
as they took it, for their homes and their country, for human liberty
and even for their God.

I remember coming into the counting-room late one evening. Loud voices
had halted me as I passed the door. Mr Greeley stood back of the
counter; a rather tall, wiry grey-headed man before it. Each was shaking
a right fist under the other's nose. They were shouting loudly as they
argued. The stranger was for war; Mr Greeley for wait