“I am belligerent.”

“I see,—­that means quarrelsome.”

“And hopeless.”

“Bad,—­very! belligerent and hopeless!  When you go into a fight always expect to win; the thought is half the victory.”

“Suppose you are an atom against the universe?” “Don’t fight, succumb.  There’s a proverb,—­a wise one,—­Napoleon’s, ’God is on the side of the strongest battalions.’”

“A lie,—­exploded at Waterloo.  There’s another proverb, ’One on the side of God is a majority.’  How about that?”

“Transcendental humbug.”

“A truth demonstrated at Wittenberg.”

“Are you aching for the martyr’s palm?”

“I am afraid not.  On the whole, I think I’d rather enjoy life than quarrel with it.  But”—­with a sudden blaze—­“I feel to-day like fighting the world.”

“Hey, presto! what now, young’un?”

“I don’t wonder you stare”—­a little laugh.  “I’m talking like a fool, and, for aught I know, feeling like one, aching to fight, and knowing that I might as well quarrel with the winds, or stab that water as it flows by.”

“As with what?”

“The fellow I’ve just been getting a good look at.”

“What manner of fellow?”

“Ignorant, selfish, brutal, devilish.”

“Tremendous! why don’t you bind him over to keep the peace?”

“Because he is like the judge of old time, neither fears God nor respects his image,—­when his image is carved in ebony, and not ivory.”

“What do you call this fellow?”

“Public Opinion.”

“This big fellow is abusing and devouring a poor little chap, eh? and the chap’s black?”

“True.”

“And sometimes the giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide.  Am I stating it all correctly?”

“All correctly.”

“And you’ve been watching this operation when you had better have been minding your own business, and getting excited when you had better have kept cool, and now want to rush into the fight, drums beating and colors flying, to the rescue of the small one.  Don’t deny it,—­it’s all written out in your eyes.”

“I sha’n’t deny it, except about the business and the keeping cool.  It’s any gentleman’s business to interfere between a bully and a weakling that he’s abusing; and his blood must be water that does not boil while he ‘watches the operation’ as you say, and goes in.”

“To get well pommelled for his pains, and do no good to any one, himself included.  Let the weakling alone.  A fellow that can’t save himself is not worth saving.  If he can’t swim nor walk, let him drop under or go to the wall; that’s my theory.”

“Anglo-Saxon theory—­and practice.”

“Good theory, excellent practice,—­in the main.  What special phase of it has been disturbing your equanimity?”