'The colonel occasionally boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest information for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to board here, I believe, with a view to the little percentage which attaches to those good offices; and which the hostess deducts from his weekly bill.

I don't offend you, I hope ?' he added, seeing that Martin reddened.
'My dear sir,' returned Martin, as they shook hands, 'how is that possible! to tell you the truth, I--am--' 'Yes ?' said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.
'I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,' said Martin, getting the better of his hesitation, 'to know how this colonel escapes being beaten.' 'Well! He has been beaten once or twice,' remarked the gentleman quietly.

'He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw our danger and disgrace.

Perhaps you don't know that Franklin, in very severe terms, published his opinion that those who were slandered by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient remedy in the administration of this country's laws or in the decent and right-minded feeling of its people, were justified in retorting on such public nuisances by means of a stout cudgel ?' 'I was not aware of that,' said Martin, 'but I am very glad to know it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially'-- here he hesitated again.
'Go on,' said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin's throat.
'Especially,' pursued Martin, 'as I can already understand that it may have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely on any question which was not a party one in this very free country.' 'Some courage, no doubt,' returned his new friend.

'Do you think it would require any to do so, now ?' 'Indeed I think it would; and not a little,' said Martin.
'You are right.