"'You are not only an intruder, but an impertinent fellow!'
"'Needn't feel disagreeable about it. Smooth—a man of standing in his diggins, and Young America's independent delegate, has only come to take a bird's-eye view of the way things look about this seat of war.'
"'Who the devil is Mr. Smooth? I know he has no business here!' again grumbled the old man.
"'Don't know Solomon Smooth, eh?'
"'No, don't nor do I want to. You are always making difficulty wherever you go, probing your nose into everybody's business. You may be a keen fellow in commerce, but in diplomacy you are impertinent and quite beside yourself. You better be off from here, inasmuch as I am the biggest toad in this puddle, and mean to remain so. We are not inclined to know anything about Mr. Smooth; so the quicker he packs himself and his baggage up and is off from this, the better.' The earnestness with which he said this left me no reason to doubt his intention to remain the biggest toad of the pool.
"'Mr. Smooth, something of a man in Washington, holds a contrary opinion, and claims a right to know the ins and outs of what is going on outside of your dominions, as well as inside his own, and to insinuate himself into just what it may please him,' I replied in the measured manner of an experienced diplomatist.
"'Perhaps you have,' he interrupted, 'but if you were possessed of ordinary modesty, you would refrain from intermeddling when you saw what a blasted time I had to keep that great Bear, across there, from breaking his chain and devouring everything on this side.'
"'Feeling a fellow sympathy, I thought perhaps I might lend you a hand to do some of the whipping,—knowing how the brute professes to be a christian of the latest pattern.' Nicholas had a strong appetite for the Turkey, which, though sick, he would have no objection to breakfast upon, as I have before stated; and, that his christian cubs might share the feast, he had begun to teach them the straightforward principles of holy orthodoxy; which said holy orthodoxy incited a craving for blood we have not yet learned to appreciate.
"The said sick Turkey had not given the best satisfaction to the world in his mode of reducing to poverty his flock; and, too, he was always ready to bandy words and ostentation,—having a large supply of the latter always on hand. He had, moreover, evinced a certain degree of heroism; nor was he ever backward in professing his readiness to fight somebody—if it were the unruly Bear, so much the better. The heroism thus manifested on the part of the decaying Turk would have deserved more praise had it not had its origin in the assurance that Uncle John would lend a hand to do the fighting. Mark ye! John had copiously poured forth his treasure and blood in order that this vagabond Turkey might still live, and be saved from the Bear's all-digesting stomach, and for which he would deny John the freedom of his city; he would condescend only to honor him with the title of dog.
"In one sense a more generous fellow than John was not to be found on the outside of our small world. He had been the pack-horse of Europe, and all sorts of kings had used him for all sorts of purposes. Never was friend used better. He was proud, and yet how submissive. Ready to shed his blood and squander his treasure for he knew not what, he was equally willing to submit his well-burdened back to the kicks and cuffs of those he had saved from ignominy. Now, the very type of endurance was he who sat poised in the puddle. 'As for the Bear,' says John, 'he won't guarantee to be satisfied with his ordinary rations; and if he were to plant himself in the centre of this puddle I would very obediently have to plant myself out.' Here John folded his arms, and, with a dignified air, ordered his beer.