`Keep cool, Jefferson,' said the colonel gravely. `Don't bust! oh you Europeans! After that, let's have a glass of wine!' So saying, he got down from the table, and produced, from a basket outside the door, a bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
`Mr. Jefferson Brick, sir,' said the colonel, filling Martin's glass and his own, and pushing the bottle to that gentleman, `will give us a sentiment.'
`Well, sir!' cried the war correspondent, `Since you have concluded to call upon me, I will respond. I will give you, sir, The Rowdy Journal and its brethren; the well of Truth, whose waters are black from being composed of printers' ink, but are quite clear enough for my country to behold the shadow of her Destiny reflected in.'
`Hear, hear!' cried the colonel, with great complacency. `There are flowery components, sir, in the language of my friend?'
`Very much so, indeed,' said Martin.
`There is to-day's Rowdy, sir,' observed the colonel, handing him a paper. `You'll find Jefferson Brick at his usual post in the van of human civilisation and moral purity.'
The colonel was by this time seated on the table again. Mr. Brick also took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and they fell to drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he read the paper, and then at each other. When he laid it down, which was not until they had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked him what he thought of it.
`Why, it's horribly personal,' said Martin.
The colonel seemed much flattered by this remark; and said he hoped it was.
`We are independent here, sir,' said Mr. Jefferson Brick. `We do as we like.'
`If I may judge from this specimen,' returned Martin, `there must be a few thousands here, rather the reverse of independent, who do as they don't like.'
`Well! They yield to the popular mind of the Popular Instructor, sir,' said the colonel. `They rile up, sometimes; but in general we have a hold upon our citizens, both in public and in private life, which is as much one of the ennobling institutions of our happy country as --'
`As nigger slavery itself,' suggested Mr. Brick.
`En -- tirely so,' remarked the colonel.
`Pray,' said Martin, after some hesitation, `may I venture to ask, with reference to a case I observe in this paper of yours, whether the Popular Instructor often deals in -- I am at a loss to express it without giving you offence -- in forgery? In forged letters, for instance,' he pursued, for the colonel was perfectly calm and quite at his ease, `solemnly purporting to have been written at recent periods by living men?'
`Well, sir!' replied the colonel. `It docs, now and then.'
`And the popular instructed; what do they do?' asked Martin.
`Buy 'em:' said the colonel.
Mr. Jefferson Brick expectorated and laughed; the former copiously, the latter approvingly.
`Buy 'em by hundreds of thousands,' resumed the colonel. `We are a smart people here, and can appreciate smartness.'
`Is smartness American for forgery?' asked Martin.
`Well!' said the colonel, `I expect it's American for a good many things that you call by other names. But you can't help yourself in Europe. We can.'
`And do, sometimes,' thought Martin. `You help yourselves with very little ceremony, too!'
`At all events, whatever name we choose to employ,' said the colonel, stooping down to roll the third empty bottle into a corner after the other two, `I suppose the art of forgery was not invented here sir?'
`I suppose not,' replied Martin.
`Nor any other kind of smartness I reckon?'
`Invented! No, I presume not.'
`Well!' said the colonel; `then we got it all from the old country and the old country's to blame for it, and not the new 'un. There's an end of that. Now, if Mr. Jefferson Brick and you will be so good as to clear, I'll come out last, and lock the door.'
Rightly interpreting this as the signal for their departure, Martin walked down-stairs after the war correspondent, who preceded him with great majesty. The colonel following, they left the Rowdy Journal Office and walked forth into the streets: Martin feeling doubtful whether he ought to kick the colonel for having presumed to speak to him, or whether it came within the bounds of possibility that he and his establishment could be among the boasted usages of that regenerated land.
It was clear that Colonel Diver, in the security of his strong position, and in his perfect understanding of the public sentiment, cared very little what Martin or anybody else thought about him. His high-spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess. Nothing would have delighted the colonel more than to be told that no such man as he could walk in high success the streets of any other country in the world: for that would only have been a logical assurance to him of the correct adaptation of his labours to the prevailing taste, and of his being strictly and peculiarly a national feature of America.
They walked a mile or more along a handsome street which the colonel said was called Broadway, and which Mr. Jefferson Brick said `whipped the universe.' Turning, at length, into one of the numerous streets which branched from this main thoroughfare, they stopped before a rather mean-looking house with jalousie blinds to every window; a flight of steps before the green street-door; a shining white ornament on the rails on either side like a petrified pine-apple polished; a little oblong plate of the same material over the knocker whereon the name of `Pawkins' was engraved, and four accidental pigs looking down the area.
The colonel knocked at this house with the air of a man who lived there; and an Irish girl popped her head out of one of the top windows to see who it was. Pending her journey down-stairs, the pigs were joined by two or three friends from the next street, in company with whom they lay down sociably in the gutter.