"Doctor, I ought to thank you for the pleasure you afforded me the other evening. I haven't had such a treat in a long time. 'Pears to me you might make lots o' money going about delivering that lecture. It was capital. You did get off some of the funniest anecdotes I ever heard, and I assure you I was really very much entertained." "Entertained, sir! Dammit, sir, do you take me for a mountebank?" exclaimed the doctor, swelling with rising indignation. It required very many apologies and explanations on Mr. Mumbie's part to allay the ire of the physician, who continued, after parting with his interlocutor, to mutter to himself as he went along: "Entertained him! Am I, Basil Wattletop, a buffoon? Does he attempt to patronize me? The insolence of these Yankee upstarts is really something perfectly amazing! It's almost beyond belief." Unfortunately, his dignity that day was destined to be subjected to further ruffling, for as he neared the Archimedes Works he caught sight of the proprietor thereof, who was lounging as usual on the door-step of his "office," with his hands in his pockets. No man, we will venture to say, that kept his hands as often pocketed, ever earned so much money as George Gildersleeve; but if his hands were idle, his eyes were busy and everywhere. A more vigilant pair of optics never lodged in a human head. "Now, that fellow," soliloquized the doctor, alluding to George, "has sense enough to know that he springs from the lees. He don't attempt to ape his betters or to patronize them, and his rudeness and ignorance are far less offensive than the insufferable pretensions of that snob Mumbie--um--um." "Hold up, Major," broke in George, hailing the doctor stentoriously. "Step over here a moment. Foreman of my finishing-shop split his thumb to-day in a lathe, and I want you to look at it." The doctor was in doubts whether to respond to an appeal so unceremoniously conveyed. He decided, however, after a short debate with himself, to cross over to the counting-room and examine the injured man. The hurt being dressed and pronounced but a slight affair, he was about to leave when George Gildersleeve must needs engage him in a discussion, which gradually drifted into the delicate subject of the comparative merits of Englishmen and Americans. At this time there were sputterings in Congress, and in the newspapers, in regard to a fresh "outrage" perpetrated by the navy of Great Britain on our flag, and the general expression was that we were not "going to stand it."