"Whatever you say or do," he continued, "whatever you think or believe, never deny the superlatives of the Wide-path.

If asked if you ever saw a street so crowded, although there be room to wheel a regiment, swear it is stifling; if required to name another promenade so free from interruption, protest, by your soul, that the place is a desert! Say what you will of the institutions of the country--" "How!" I exclaimed; "of the sacred rights of monikins ?" "Bedaub them, and the mass of the monikins, too, with just as much filth as you please.

Indeed, if you wish to circulate freely in genteel society, I would advise you to get a pretty free use of the words, 'jacobins,' 'rabble,' 'mob,' 'agrarians,' 'canaille' and 'democrats'; for they recommend many to notice who possess nothing else.

In our happy and independent country it is a sure sign of lofty sentiment, a finished education, a regulated intellect, and a genteel intercourse, to know how to bespatter all that portion of your fellow-creatures, for instance, who live in one-story edifices." "I find all this very extraordinary, your government being professedly a government of the mass!" "You have intuitively discovered the reason--is it not fashionable to abuse the government everywhere?
Whatever you do, in genteel life, ought to be based on liberal and elevated principles; and therefore, abuse all that is animate in Leaplow, the present company, with their relatives and quadrupeds, excepted; but do not raise your blaspheming tongue against anything that is inanimate! Respect, I entreat of you, the houses, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, and, above all, in Bivouac, respect the Wide-path! We are a people of lively sensibilities, and are tender of the reputations of even our stocks and stones.

Even the Leaplow philosophers are all of a mind on this subject." "King!" "Can you account for this very extraordinary peculiarity, brigadier ?" "Surely you cannot be ignorant that all which is property is sacred! We have a great respect for property, sir, and do not like to hear our wares underrated.