Next morning the Republican Freeman contained just such an account of the affair as comported with the consistency of that independent and manly journal; not a word being said about the French privateer, while the account of the proceedings of the English frigate was embellished with sundry facts and epithets that must have been obtained from Colonel Warbler’s general stock in trade, as it was certainly not derived from me.

As soon as I got rid of this gentleman, which was not long after he discovered my desire to press the delinquency of the French on his notice, Marble and I left the house, on the original design of strolling up Broadway, and of looking at the changes produced by time.  We had actually got a square, when I felt some one touch my elbow; turning, I found it was an utter stranger with a very eager, wonder-mongering sort of a countenance, and who was a good deal out of breath with running.

“Your pardon, sir; the bar-tender of the house where you lodge, tells me you are Captain Wallingford.”  I bowed an assent, foreseeing another application for facts.

“Well, sir.  I hope you’ll excuse the liberty I am taking, on account of its object.  I represent the public, which is ever anxious to obtain the earliest information on all matters of general concernment, and I feel emboldened by duty, to introduce myself—­Colonel Positive of the Federal Truth Teller, a journal that your honoured father once did us the favour to take—­we have this moment heard of the atrocities committed on you, Captain Wallingford, by ’a brigand of a French piratical, picarooning, plundering vagabond,’” reading from what I dare say was another caption, prepared for the other side of the question; “a fresh instance of Gallic aggression, and republican, jacobinical insolence; atrocities that are of a character to awaken the indignation of every right-thinking American, and which can only find abettors among that portion of the community, which, possessing nothing, is never slow to sympathize in the success of this robber, though it be at the expense of American rights, and American prosperity.”

As soon as Col.  Positive had read this much, he stopped to take breath, looking at me, as if expecting some exclamations of admiration and delight.

“I have suffered by means of what I conceive to be a perfectly unauthorized act of a French privateer, Col.  Positive,” I replied; “but this wrong would not have been done me, had I not suffered previously by what I conceive to be an equally unjustifiable act of the English frigate, the Speedy, commanded by Captain Lord Harry Dermond, a son of the Irish Marquis of Thole.”