But, he was rich, and I poor.

He a potato, the growth of the soil; I, though generally admitted a plant of more promise and pretension--I was an exotic! He was a patrician--one of the small nobility--a growth, _sui generis_, of the place--" "Damn your law-phrases! stop with that, if you please." "Well, well! he was one of the great men; I was a poor plebeian, whose chief misfortune, at that time, consisted in my not having a father or a great-grandfather a better man than myself! His money did the work, and I was bought and beat out of my election, which I considered certain.

I then acquired knowledge of two things.

I learned duly to estimate the value of the democratic principle, when I beheld the vile slaves, whose votes his money had commanded, laughing in scorn at the miserable creature they had themselves put over them.

They felt not--not they--the double shame of their doings.