This excellent heroism was all wasted; Neal could not find a single adversary.  Except he divided himself like Hotspur, and went to buffets, one hand against the other, there was no chance of a fight; no person to be found sufficiently magnanimous to encounter the tailor.  On the contrary, every one of his friends—­or, in other words, every man in the parish—­was ready to support him.  He was clapped on the back, until his bones were nearly dislocated in his body; and his hand shaken, until his arm lost its cunning at the needle for half a week afterwards.  This, to be sure, was a bitter business—­a state of being past endurance.  Every man was his friend—­no man was his enemy.  A desperate position for any person to find himself in, but doubly calamitous to a martial tailor.

Many a dolorous complaint did Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe.  In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances.  In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention—­but all to no purpose.  The world for once became astonishingly Christian; it paid back all his efforts to excite its resentment with the purest of charity; when Neal struck it on the one cheek, it meekly turned unto him the other.  It could scarcely be expected that Neal would bear this.  To have the whole world in friendship with a man is beyond doubt rather an affliction.  Not to have the face of a single enemy to look upon, would decidedly be considered a deprivation of many agreeable sensations by most people, as well as by Neal Malone.  Let who might sustain a loss, or experience a calamity, it was a matter of indifference to Neal.  They were only his friends, and he troubled neither his head nor his heart about them.

Heaven help us!  There is no man without his trials; and Neal, the reader perceives, was not exempt from his.  What did it avail him that he carried a cudgel ready for all hostile contingencies? or knit his brows and shook his kipjoeen at the fiercest of his fighting friends?  The moment he appeared, they softened into downright cordiality.  His presence was the signal of peace; for, notwithstanding his unconquerable propensity to warfare, he went abroad as the genius of unanimity, though carrying in his bosom the redoubtable disposition the a warrior; just as the sun, though the source of light himself, is said to be dark enough at bottom.