He is the key of our ingenuity.

He pays his dues; he will not pay the additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or two ahead of the day we live in, unless he is frightened.

But scarcely anything less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him.
Consequently the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past measure: his hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, his implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note.

His bursts of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden Panic within his bosom) are awful to his friends.

Particular care must be taken after he has begun to cool and calculate his chances of security, that he do not gather to him a curtain of volunteers and go to sleep again behind them; for they cost little in proportion to the much they pretend to be to him.