"Just now, I grant you. What with log cabins and hard cider, and coons, the enlightened people are pretty well gammoned. But there's a good time coming. Before you know it, democracy will be upon you again like a load of bricks. Why, what can you expect of a party that will take a coon for its emblem? I saw one chained up this morning in the yard of Taft's tavern, a dirty, mean-looking beast, about half way between a jackal and an owl. He looked uncommonly well in health, and could puff out his fur as round as a muff. But, when you looked close, there was nothing of him but skin and bone; exactly like the whig party. He put up his nose, and smiled at me. I suppose—damn his impudence—he took me for a whig. That coon is going into a decline. It won't be long before he is taken by the tail and tossed over Charles River bridge; and there he'll lie on the mud at low tide, for a genuine emblem of the defunct whig party, and a solemn warning to all coon worshippers."
"Let the whigs alone, Dick; and if you won't dine with me, come in here and drink a glass of claret."
"That I'll do." And they went into the hotel accordingly.
As Rosny took up his glass, Morton observed a large old seal ring on his finger.
"Do you call yourself a democrat, and yet always wear that ring of yours?"
"Why, what's the matter with the ring?"
"Nothing, except that it is a badge of feudalism, aristocracy, and every thing else abominable to your party."
"Pshaw, man. Look here: do you see that crest, cut in the stone? That crest followed King Francis to Pavia, and when Henri Quatre charged at Ivry, it wasn't far behind him. It is mine by right. It comes down to me, straight as a bee line, through twenty generations. And do you think I'm going to renounce my birthright? No, be gad!"
"I wouldn't. But what becomes of your democracy?"
"Democracy is tall enough to take care of itself. I wear that ring; but it don't follow that I stand on my ancestry. You needn't laugh: the case is just this. If the blood in my veins makes me stand to my colors where another man would flinch, or hold my head up where another would be sprawling on his back; if it gives me a better pluck, grit, go-ahead; why, that's what I stand on,—that's my patent of nobility. What the deuse are you laughing at?—the personal quality,—don't you see?—and not the ancestry."