Mr. Hotchkiss, after leaving the Union League, had decided not to wait for his co-worker, whom he knew as Boring. So far as he was concerned, he had no fears. He knew, of course, that he was playing with fire, but what of that? He had the Government behind him, and he had two companies of troops within call. What more could any man ask? More than that, he was doing what he conceived to be his duty. He belonged to that large and pestiferous tribe of reformers, who go through the world without fixed principles. He had been an abolitionist, but he was not of the Garrison type. On the contrary, he thought that Garrison was a time-server and a laggard who needed to be spurred and driven. He was one of the men who urged John Brown to stir up an insurrection in which innocent women and children would have been the chief sufferers; and he would have rejoiced sincerely if John Brown had been successful. He mistook his opinions for first principles, and went on the theory that what he thought right could not by any possibility be wrong. He belonged to the Peace Society, and yet nothing would have pleased him better than an uprising of the blacks, followed by the shedding of innocent blood. In short, there were never two sides to any question that interested Hotchkiss. He held the Southern people responsible for American slavery, and would have refused to listen to any statement of facts calculated to upset his belief. He was narrow-minded, bigoted, and intensely in earnest. Some writer, Newman, perhaps, has said that a man will not become a martyr for the sake of an opinion; but Newman probably never came in contact with the whipper-snappers of Exeter Hall, or their prototypes in this country--the men who believe that philanthropy, and reform, and progress generally are worthless unless it be accompanied by strife, and hate, and, if possible, by bloodshed. You find the type everywhere; it clings like a leech to the skirts of every great movement. The Hotchkisses swarm wherever there is an opening for them, and they always present the same general aspect. They are as productive of isms as a fly is of maggots, and they live and die in the belief that they are promoting the progress of the world; but if their success is to be measured by their operations in the South during the reconstruction period, the world would be much better off without them. They succeeded in dedicating millions of human beings to misery and injustice, and warped the minds of the whites to such an extent that they thought it necessary to bring about peace and good order by means of various acute forms of injustice and lawlessness.