"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you insist on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they resolved that your father meant to give them the Point."
"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will destroy all my father's own resolutions on the same subject. Did they stop at the Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also gave them his wife and children?"
"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."
"I cannot properly express my gratitude for the forbearance, as they had just as good a right to pass this resolution, as to pass the other."
"The public's is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"
"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still more awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this 'crisis'--that is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"
"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or the death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the American vocabulary."
"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father's intentions better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the mistake he made in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in the plenitude of its power?"
"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions of your father."
"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is one of the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pass. Did it proceed any farther?"