“Suppose that they should fight?” inquired Lord John. “Well, two heads are better than one,” replied the facetious Palmerston. “And so are two customers,” rejoined Lord John, wiping his nose with a cotton pocket-handkerchief. And forthwith they issued a proclamation of neutrality in the name of the Queen, whose heart was no more in its sentiments than her hand in its composition. It was thought at the time by many people to be very smart; and so it was very smart, altogether too smart. It was a state fiction,—a fancy creation, looking in legal phrase as if all the English were bent on rushing into the prophesied something,—a buffalo-hunt, a Long Island race, or steamboat explosion;—for what the little flurry was about, or would be when the solemn state warning was given, no one knew,—unless they were violently restrained by the British government. It was the unnecessarily vehement declaration of the very disinterested old maid to the unsuspecting, quiet young man, quite innocent of such audacious thoughts as her fears excited and suggested: “Now, if you kiss me I shall resist. I shall. Don’t you try it. Now, there, don’t come towards me. Don’t make such a noise, for everybody will hear you. Hands off. Don’t try it. I shall scream. Quit now. Don’t disturb the neighborhood. Hands off, I tell you. I won’t have anything to do with it.” The warning was as piquant and promotive of the practice deprecated, as the landlord’s to the ostler, never to grease the teeth of traveller’s horses, for if he should they could not eat oats. The strikers in Arkansas and North Carolina, in May, contrived somehow to get up delegates to meet those from the other Southern States at Richmond, the newly selected gathering-place of Confederated counsellors. The insurrection commenced to grow. The warned boy began seriously to think of the audacity from which he was so solemnly conjured to desist. Federal war stores, magazines, and naval materials were handed over to the new State claimants by their loose-wristed custodians, who, although educated by the Federal government, generously gave away her property on the principle of that testator, who requested his own debtors, forthwith after his decease, to pay what they owed to his executors, and nobly forgave his creditors the debts which he owed them. Floydism became as fashionable South as cotton, butternut-colored clothing and long hair. Just as the tree was bent the Twiggs inclined. At Little Rock, Pensacola, Portsmouth, Virginia, and in Texas, large masses of stores, cannon, guns, and naval materials were transferred, like the allegiance of the officers in charge, to the strange African fetich. It looked as if the American people were moving out of the lower story of their large, constitutional bazaar into the upper lofts, and were giving away generously a part of the expensive fixtures to the new incoming tenant.