"What is the news from France? Do be serious!"
"In New York some Frenchmen, seeing their flag insulted by Englishmen who
took it down from the liberty-cap, went upstairs to the room of an English
officer named Codd, seized his regimental coat and tore it to pieces."
"I'm glad of it! It was a very proper action!"
"But, madam, the man Codd was perfectly innocent!"
"No matter! His coat was guilty. They didn't tear him to pieces; they tore
his coat. Are there any new books at the stores?"
"A great many! I have spent part of the last three days in looking over
them. You can have new copies of your old favourites, Joseph Andrews, or
Roderick Random, or Humphrey Clinker. You can have Goldsmith and Young, and
Chesterfield and Addison. There is Don Quixote and Hudibras, Gulliver and
Hume, Paley and Butler, Hervey and Watts, Lavater and Trenck, Seneca and
Gregory, Nepos and even Aspasia Vindicated--to say nothing of Abelard and
He1oise and Thomas a Kempis. All the Voltaires have been sold, however, and
the Tom Paines went off at a rattling gait. By the way, while on the subject
of books, tell the major that we have raised five hundred dollars toward
buying books for the Transylvania Library, and that as soon as my school is
out I am to go East as a purchasing committee. What particularly interests
me is that I am going to Mount Vernon, to ask a subscription from President
Washington. Think of that! Think of my presenting myself there with my
tricoloured cockade --a Kentucky Jacobin!"
"The President may be so occupied with the plots of you Kentucky jacobins,"
she said, "that he will not feel much like supplying you with more
literature." Then she added, looking at him anxiously, " And so you are
going away?"
"I'm going, and I'm glad I'm going. I have never set eyes on a great man. It
makes my heart beat to think of it. I feel as a young Gaul might who was
going to Rome to ask Caesar for gold with which to overthrow him. Seriously,
it would be a dreadful thing for the country if a treaty should be ratified
with England. There is not a democratic society from Boston to Charleston
that will not feel enraged with the President. You may be sure that every
patriot in Kentucky will be outraged, and that the Governor will denounce it
to the House."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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