Mr. Buchanan, a Northern man, had fulfilled the prediction. Henry Clay had said that Northern workingmen were "mudsills, greasy mechanics and small-fisted farmers." These mudsills had been talking of voting themselves farms; but it would be much more appropriate if they would vote themselves masters. Southern laborers were blessed with kind masters, and Mr. Buchanan and the St. Cloud _Visiter_ were most anxious that Northern laborers should be equally well provided for. When the paper was read, there was a cry of "Sold! Sold! Lowrie had sold himself instead of buying the _Visiter_." At first there was a laugh, then a dead stillness of dread, and men looked at me as one doomed. CHAPTER XXXVIII. BORDER RUFFIANISM. In Lowrie's first ebulition of wrath, he vowed vengeance, but an intimate friend of his, who had been a Democrat in Pittsburg, begged him to do nothing and said: "Let her alone, for God's sake! Let her alone, or she will kill you. I know her, and you do not. She has killed every man she ever touched. Let her alone!" But Lowrie knew it was too late for letting alone, and sent me a verbal message, by one he knew I would believe, that I must stop or the consequences would be fatal. Stopping was no part of my plan, and so I told his messenger. The second number of Buchanan's organ explained how it was that I became a supporter of a policy I had so long opposed. Gen. Lowrie owned Northern Minnesota, land and inhabitants, bought folks up as fast as they came to it, and had bought me. He was going to support the _Visiter_ great power and glory, if it gave satisfaction as a democratic organ. I would work hard for the money, and it would be odd if any one gave Mr. Buchanan a more enthusiastic support than I. Indeed, I was his only honest supporter. All the others pretended he was going to do something quite foreign to his purpose, while I was in his confidence. The one sole object of his administration was the perpetuation and spread of slavery, and this object the _Visiter_ would support with the best arguments in its power. This was vitriol dressing on a raw wound, and the suppression of the _Visiter_ was expected by Judge Lynch. Brave men held their breath to see me beard the lion in his den, not knowing my armor as I did. Then came an announcement with a great flourish of trumpets of a lecture on "Woman," by the Hon. Shepley, the great legal light and democratic orator of Minnesota. The lecture was delivered in due time to a densely packed house, and was as insulting as possible. The lecture divided women into four classes--coquettes, flirts, totally depraved, and strong-minded. He painted each class and found some redeeming trait in all save the last.