It didn't happen to strike the Colonel favorably.

He had a little red-blooded manhood in him.
"Sell you them things to make a colation out of ?" the Colonel replied.
"Walk up to that table, Mr.Peckham, and help yourself! Fill your pockets; Mr.Peckham! Fetch a basket, and our hired folks shall fill it full for ye! Send a cart, if y' like, 'n' carry off them leavin's to make a celebration for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this:--as sure 's my name's Hezekiah Spraowle, you 'll be known through the taown 'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as the Principal of the Broken-Victuals Institoot!" Even provincial human-nature sometimes has a touch of sublimity about it.

Mr.Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come upon the "hard pan," as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's character, before he thought of it.

A militia-colonel standing on his sentiments is not to be despised.

That was shown pretty well in New England two or three generations ago.