“And now what nonsense!” cried I. “What wise one said 'Silence is golden!'?”
“Some wise one who wanted the floor for himself, doubtless,” puffed the General. “Talk is a cloak, and great talk a great cloak to hide one's movements. It is a common fallacy to suppose that one who talks much—chatters, we will even call it—tells ever the truth. Now my experience goes for it that a great talker is misleading you nine-tenths of the time; heads one way while he talks another. I cannot be sure of the plans or aims of a great talker. He would seem to point so many ways at once. Your tongue-tied fellow I read easily. When I once know where he is, and then remember where he would be, I will readily foresee for you the trail he means to travel.”
“Calhoun is a silent man.”
“And Calhoun is a defeated man; his one chance is my death, which I have no mind shall happen. Calhoun is a silent, but not a secret man. He hides nothing, and can hide nothing by a still tongue. Who does not know how he is for Nullification and must live or die by it?”
“And you,” said I, “have decided it shall be the latter.”
“If Calhoun had not assailed me, and, more, if he had not included Peg's destruction in his plans—as a soldier might burn a beautiful suburb for an element of his assault on a city—Calhoun and I would have come by some agreement. I like the man; but you see he has no gift to be popular. He makes war on me, which is the least popular thing he could do and then, to prick me on for bitterest resolution and a strife to the death, he sets his dogs to baying Peg. Also, let us not forget how he would drag down Van Buren because he is Peg's friend and mine. Sir, you and I will one day make Van Buren president for that.”
“And you have written Calhoun that letter to be notice of your hate.”
“It ties him hand and foot,” said the General. “Were Calhoun Samson, that letter shears his locks. He will publish it, and make every friend I have his enemy.”
“And you are enough loved by the people to make that a most formidable condition for Calhoun.”
You are to observe that now when I would find the General idle and with an itch for talk, I trolled him along as folk troll pickerel. It relieved him to thus unbuckle; more, it helped him form his plans, for so he said himself.