When I went again to my own lair of labor, I found Noah waiting. I had grown to delight in our cool gentleman of the red hair, the jet eyes, and the sharp Spanish swords. “And now,” said I, and greeting my visitor, “how runs the world away?” “There are things talked about our taverns,” said Noah, “and the corridors of Congress, whereof it might be proper the President should hear. The more, since the conversations have him for their motive.” “Let us journey down the hall and tell him,” said I. “No,” returned Noah; “you may enlighten him later, since there comes no call for hurry. I dislike to dodge in and out or play hide and seek with a president; it is not seemly. And the fact that our friend would tolerate, and might even encourage the familiarity on my personal part, offer best reasons why I should avoid it.” “You make yourself too modest,” said I. None the less I was touched to admiration with this decent sense of the proprieties on Noah's part. It stood a pity it found imitation by so few. “What is it to be, then?” I asked. “You need not be told,” said Noah, “how the President's note to the Vice-President, added to Rhetz's report of the White House views on Nullification, Secession, and kindred hangman topics, has made a flutter. Your Palmetto folk who plot for Nullification fear the President. Being so far right, they then step aside for error; they fall to fond imaginings that, for all his violence of phrase to Rhetz, the President, in return, fears them. They believe, were he to count their power, he would not dare them to any last-ditch opposition. Then, too, the leaders are not wholly satisfied with the Rhetz returns. Thus a situation is framed where some stronger light on the President's intentions, together with the true news of those lengths to which he stands ready to go, and whether an ultimate resort would call for rifles and then the gallows, is deeply to be desired. And these tavern conversations and talks of the corridors have for their object the President's development along the lines exhibited.” “And this is highly the natural thing,” said I. “Have our anxious ones invented any trap wherewith to catch that word they seek?”