of the bad feeling, in the first place, and, thanks to my education, of illiterate language, in the second.  It has pleased my friend Mr. Yellowboy—­if he will still allow me to call him so—­for I appeal to you all whether it becomes those who sit under this hallowed roof to disagree—­it has pleased him, I say, to bring charges against me, to some of which I certainly must plead guilty—­if guilt there be in it.  It has pleased him to charge me with the unbrotherly crime, the unchristian crime, the un-orange crime’—­here he smiled more blandly at every term, and then brought his smiling eye to bear on his antagonist—­’of lifting him out of the channel about twelve o’clock at night, where he lay—­I may say so among ourselves—­in state of most comfortable, but un-orange-like intoxication.’

“The audience now being mostly drunk, were tickled with this compliment to their sobriety, and cheered and shouted for more than a minute.  ’Go on Cantwell!  By Japers, you’re no blockhead!’

“’Under Providence, and with all piety I say it, he will vanquish the yallow sinner over there.’

“‘Brother Cantwell,’ observed Mr. M’Slime, ’go on—­the gift is not withheld.’

“Another smiling bow to M’Slime, as much as to say, ’I know it’s not—­I feel it’s not.’

“’This, gentlemen, and dear brothers, was my crime—­I acted the good Samaritan towards him—­that was my crime.  May I often commit it!’

“‘Is that your pretended charity, sir?’ said Yellowboy, whose temper was sorely tried by the other’s calmness; ’don’t you know, sir, that you cannot become the Samaritan unless I become the drunkard? and yet you hope often to commit it!’

“No notice whatsoever taken of this.

“’—­But perhaps there was still a greater crime in this affair.  I allude to the crime of having, after the account of his frailty had taken wind through the whole country, ventured to defend it, or rather to place it in such a light as might enable the public to place it to the account of mere animal exhaustion, independent of the real cause.  And I have reason to know, that to a very enlarged extent I succeeded—­for many persons having heard of the circumstance in its worse and most offensive sense, actually came to my office—­’

“‘Yes, after you had made it public, as far as you could.’

“’—­To my office, to inquire into it.  And I assure you all, gentlemen, that from motives at once of the Christian and the Orangeman, I merely informed them that the gentleman had certainly had, about the time specified, a very severe fit—­I did not add of intoxication—­oh the contrary, I charitably stopped there, and now it would appear that this forbearance on my part is another crime.  But even that is not all.  The occasion which called forth the paragraph in the paper which I have honor to conduct, was one which I shall just allude to.  Some time ago there was inserted in the True Blue a short article headed ’Susanna and the Elder,’ in which certain vague and idle reports, fabricated by some person who bears enmity to a most respectable Christian gentleman, who honors us this moment with his presence—­’