"Well, I suppose if you love nothing, nothing loves you, and no injustice is done."
"Just, so, sir. Self has got to be the idol, though in the general scramble a man is sometimes puzzled to know whether he is himself, or one of the neighbours."
"I wish I knew your political sentiments, commodore; you have been communicative on all subjects but that, and I have taken up the notion that you are a true philosopher."
"I hold myself to be but a babe in swaddling-clothes compared to yourself, sir; but such as my poor opinions are, you are welcome to them. In the first place, then, sir, I have lived long enough on this water to know that every man is a lover of liberty in his own person, and that he has a secret distaste for it in the persons of other people. Then, sir, I have got to understand that patriotism means bread and cheese, and that opposition is every man for himself."
"If the truth were known, I believe, commodore, you have buoyed out the channel!"
"Just so. After being pulled about by the salt of the land, and using my freeman's privileges at their command, until I got tired of so much liberty, sir, I have resigned, and retired to private life, doing most of my own thinking out here on the Otsego-Water, like a poor slave as I am."
"You ought to be chosen the next President!"
"I owe my present emancipation, sir, to the sogdollager. I first began to reason about such a man as this Mr. Dodge, who has thrust himself and his ignorance together into the village, lately, as an expounder of truth, and a ray of light to the blind. Well, sir, I said to myself, if this man be the man I know him to be as a man, can he be any thing better as an editor?"
"That was a home question put to yourself, commodore; how did you answer it?"
"The answer was satisfactory, sir, to myself, whatever it might be to other people. I stopped his paper, and set up for myself. Just about that time the sogdollager nibbled, and instead of trying to be a great man, over the shoulders of the patriots and sages of the land, I endeavoured to immortalize myself by hooking him. I go to the elections now, for that I feel to be a duty, but instead of allowing a man like this Mr. Dodge to tell me how to vote, I vote for the man in public that I would trust in private."