“He says that Paul Jones isn’t two years out of England; that his sympathies must needs lean toward King George.”
“It will be news if the patriotism of Mr. Adams himself stands as near the perpendicular as does that of Paul Jones!”
“And next he urges that our friend is a man of no family.”
“Now, did one ever hear such aristocratic bosh! The more, since our cause is the cause of human rights, and our shout ‘Democracy!’ I shall take occasion, when next I have the honor to meet Mr. Adams”—here the eyes of the old North Carolinian begin to sparkle—“to mention this subject of families, and remind him that it might worry the Herald’s College excessively, if that seminary of pedigrees were called upon to back-track his own.”
“No, no, my dear sir!” and the merchant-statesman, full of lofty mollifications, makes a soothing gesture with his hands. “For all our sakes, say nothing to Mr. Adams! You recall what Doctor Franklin remarked of him: ‘He is always honest, sometimes great, but often mad.’ Let us suppose him merely mad; and so forgive him. We may do it the more easily, since I told him that, even if his objections were valid, he was miles too late, the question of that lieutenancy having been already passed upon and settled. Let us forget Adams, and give Paul Jones his commission.”
As Lieutenant Paul Jones receives his commission from Mr. Hancock, the latter remarks with a smile:
“You have the first commission issued, Lieutenant Jones. If the simile were permissible concerning anything that refers to the sea, I should say now that, in making you a lieutenant, we lay the corner stone of the American Navy.”
