“And now, sir,” spoke Flora, with great softness of manner, “since fortune has been so kind as to afford me this great and unexpected pleasure of being the first introduced to one so renowned, I will propose a toast, and with your permission couple it with your name.  I propose that we drink, with three cheers:  ’All honor to him who has worthily served his country, in whose history his name will be enshrined for the benefit of unborn generations.’” Having concluded, Flora gave her glass a twirl over her head, and three cheers were given so heartily that they went directly to the major’s heart, and made him declare within himself that there could now be no doubt of his own greatness.

“Madam, upon my honor I am no flatterer, but being a military man, gallantry demands of me some acknowledgement of this compliment you have paid me, and which it would be my life’s happiest event to make, were it not that your beauty so embarrasses me.  Indeed, madam, I have, while in Mexico, led various forlorn hopes, charged the enemy’s lines, and looked a shower of bullets in the teeth without winking; and all these dangers I would repeat a dozen times rather than face the fire of your beauty, to which every hero, however great, must surrender himself a captive.”

“What you say of my beauty, I might say of your valor, than which there is to woman no stronger object of admiration.  To pay homage to valor is womanly on the part of our sex.  And never in my life have I felt, though I have seen some brave men, that I was paying homage to greatness with so much honor to myself.  I have read in the newspapers that our nation, like a sinking ship, was by you saved from inevitable fate-”

“Indeed, madam, I leave it to others to say what I have done for the nation.  But you will not find me wanting when called upon; and, as I have always said, give me but a chance, and they shall have enough of my greatness!”

“Truly, sir,” rejoined Flora, “I hold it fortunate that the nation should have found so honest a man.  But as government is something our sex take no part in, perhaps you can tell me if there be any truth in the report, that politicians have no higher aims in these days than plundering the government; and that patriotism being a thing quite unknown, the great object with our congressmen is how they can best put money in their pockets, in the pursuit of which they are so insatiable as to sell their manliness in exchange for it?”

“Since you have set me down for an honest man, madam, which is no small compliment, I will say that my wife, Polly Potter, who is something of a politician, and as true a wife as needs be, always says of me, that my honesty will be my fortune.  And as she has a queer way of expressing herself, she has many times said to me, ‘Roger, when them politicians get to strippin’ the nation to her very skin, do thou be the man to come forward and hold down the apron, and keep her shame from being altogether exposed.’  And this I have pledged her I would do, and may heaven protect her.  As for stripping the nation to the skin, or even taking away her clothes, that, though I am neither prophet nor editor, they shall never do while Major Potter has an arm and a tongue.”