“This, sir, is the metal that wins my heart forever! O precious gold! I admire and adore thee as much as either Bradshaw, Prynne, or any other villain of the same stamp, who, for the sake of thee, would sell his Redeemer again, were he now upon earth. This is that incomparable medicament, which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster; it is truly catholic in operation, and somewhat of kin to the Jesuit’s powder, but more effectual. The virtues of it are strange and various; it maketh justice deaf as well as blind; and takes out spots of the deepest treasons as easily as Castile soap does common stains; it alters a man’s constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso’s transfusion of blood can do in seven years. It is a great alexipharmic, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them; it miraculously exalts and purifies the eye-sight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors: it is a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction and schism as certainly as rats are destroyed by common arsenic: in a word, it makes fools wise men, and wise men fools, and both of them knaves. The very color of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is, in a decent manner, and in a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the above-mentioned cures, and many others too numerous to be here mentioned.” The captain, having finished his panegyric upon the virtues of the glittering metal, pulled out his pistol, and again addressed the serjeant, saying, “You and your infernal crew have a long while run on, like Jehu, in a career of blood and impiety, falsely pretending that zeal for the Lord of Hosts has been your only motive. How long you may be suffered to continue in the same course, God only knows. I will, however, for this time, stop your race in a literal sense of the word.” And without farther delay, he shot all the six horses that were in the carriage, and left Bradshaw to ponder upon the lesson he had received.