great uncle got his knowledge of diplomacy up-stairs or in the kitchen.  The fruits of my research would neither be interesting here, nor serve the object I have in view.  Enough is it to know that he would now and then get into a funny vein, and in the outpouring of his child-like enthusiasm, let out some exceedingly rich jokes, touching the manner in which certain gentlemen paid their, to him, most fashionable debts.  And, although the old man did at first seem himself to enjoy the recital, he was as sure to end in a great passion.  And with every deference to the feelings of certain of Mr. Pierce’s gentry, who have so recently figured upon the stage of London and Paris fashionable life, I may add that he would testily declare nothing would so please him as to cudgel every diplomatic dandy that brought disgrace upon his country abroad and left his countrymen to bear the smart.  Indeed, he once honestly admitted that foreigners were just foolish enough to look for exponents of our national character among our representatives.  If they were not inclined to form the most exalted opinion of it through that test, it was because they never once took into consideration the nature of the accomplishments necessary to our office-holders, at the door of which the blame lay.  My great-uncle said that it was not that two or three conducted themselves in a manner unbecoming their positions, but, that, representing us in a national capacity, they saddled the responsibility on their honester fellow-countrymen.  This, to me, had something about it I could not clearly understand; but I have since thought that if my eccentric uncle had lived to this day, and been in possession of his crutch, a reckoning with General Pierce had been the result.  Either he had made the splinters fly, or that worthy gentleman’s ear tingle with certain facts relative to the manner in which his gentry have strutted upon the stage we have before mentioned.  I say this of the old man because his regard for the feelings of the nation was almost equal to his reverence for the diplomatic body.  And I am sure he, in the earnestness of his soul, had prayed Mr. Pierce to take into his pious consideration the means of remedying an evil so gross as that of his diplomatists making it the fashion of paying their debts with that sacred character the comity of nations has granted all missions.  He would have told General Pierce that he was but a man, whose little day would soon pass on the wheel of time, but that the country had a name to maintain among the nations, an exacting posterity to account to!  Will his men in the bye-ways have done anything to which it may recur with pride?  The stages we have twice named can answer.

“The story of Mr. Secretary Bolt, as facetiously related by my great-uncle, when in one of his funny moods, may not be inappropriate here, inasmuch as it bears a strong resemblance to certain realities perpetrated at this day, but which my habitual modesty forbids me transcribing here.