"And all the better, I dare say, for the thrashing he got when a youngster, from the Vermont tailor."
Now Captain Truck quite as religiously believed in this vulgar tale concerning the prince in question, as Mr. Green believed that Washington had commenced his career as one no better than he should be, or as implicitly as Mr. Steadfast Dodge gave credit to the ridiculous history of the schoolmaster of Haddonfield; all three of the legends belonging to the same high class of historical truths.
Sir George Templemore looked with surprise at John Effingham, who gravely remarked,----
"Elegant extracts, sir, from the vulgar rumours of two great nations. We deal largely in these legends, and you are not quite guiltless of them. I dare say, now, if you would be frank, that you yourself have not always been deaf to the reports against America."
"You surely do not imagine that I am so ignorant of the career of Washington?"
"Of that I fully acquit you; nor do I exactly suppose that your present monarch was flogged by a tailor in Vermont, or that Louis Phillipe kept school in New Jersey. Our position in the world raises us beyond these elegancies; but do you not fancy some hard things of America, more especially concerning her disposition to harbour rogues, if they come with full pockets."
The baronet laughed, but he coloured. He wished to be liberal, for he well knew that liberality distinguishes the man of the world, and was an indispensable requisite for a gentleman; but it is very hard for an Englishman to manifest true liberality towards the ci-devant colonies, and this he felt in the whole of his moral system, notwithstanding every effort to the contrary.
"I will confess that case of Stephenson made an unfavourable impression in England," he said with some reluctance.
"You mean the absconding member of Parliament," returned John Effingham, with emphasis on the four last words. "You cannot mean to reproach us with his selection of a place of refuge; for he was picked up at sea by a foreign ship that was accidentally bound to America."
"Certainly not with that circumstance, which, as you say, was purely an accident. But was there not something extraordinary in his liberation from arrest!"