'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 waiting. The publisher of the Tribune stood beside the latter, smoking a pipe; a small man leaned over the counter at the stranger's elbow, putting in a word here and there; half a dozen people stood by, listening. Mr Greeley turned to his publisher in a moment.
'Rhoades,' said he, 'I wish ye'd put these men out. They holler 'n yell, so I can't hear myself think.