So long as Cheetham remained in good standing with the Democrats, Paine and he were fast friends; but when he became heretical and schismatic on the Embargo question, some three or four years later, and was formally read out of the party, Paine laid the rod across his back with all his remaining strength.  He had vigor enough left, it seems, to make the “Citizen” smart, for Cheetham cuts and stabs with a spite which shows that the work was as agreeable to his feelings as useful to his plans.  His reminiscences must be read multis cum granis.

In New York Paine enjoyed the same kind of second-rate ovation as in Washington.  A great number of persons called upon him, but mostly of the laboring class of emigrants, who had heard of the “Rights of Man,” and, feeling disposed to claim as many rights as possible in their new country, looked with reverence upon the inventor of the system.  The Democratic leaders, with one or two exceptions, avoided Paine.  Respectabilities shunned him as a contamination.  Grant Thorburn was suspended from church-membership for shaking hands with him.  To the boys he was an object of curious attention; his nose was the burden of their songs.

Cheetham carried round a subscription-list for a public dinner.  Sixty or seventy of Paine’s admirers attended.  It went off brilliantly, and was duly reported in the “American Citizen.”  Then the effervescence of New York curiosity subsided; Paine became an old story.  He left Lovett’s Hotel for humble lodgings in the house of a free-thinking farrier.  Thenceforward the tale of his life is soon told.  He went rarely to his farm at New Rochelle; he disliked the country and the trouble of keeping house; and a bullet which whizzed through his window one Christmas Eve, narrowly missing his head, did not add agreeable associations to the place.  In the city he moved his quarters from one low boarding-house to another, and generally managed to quarrel with the blacksmiths, bakers, and butchers, his landlords.  Unable to enjoy society suited to his abilities and large experience of life, Paine called in low company to help him bear the burden of existence.  To the men who surrounded him, his opinions on all subjects were conclusive, and his shrewd sayings revelations.  Among these respectful listeners, he had to fear neither incredulity nor disputation.  Like his friend Elihu Palmer, and the celebrated Dr. Priestley, Paine would not tolerate contradiction.  To differ with him was, in his eyes, simply to be deficient in understanding.  He was like the French lady who naively told Dr. Franklin, “Je ne trouve que moi qui aie toujours raison.”  Professing to adore Reason, he was angry, if anybody reasoned with him.  But herein he was no exception to the general rule,—­that we find no persons so intolerant and illiberal as men professing liberal principles.