"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 yourselves 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 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 win-
