Mr. Pomposity subsided somewhat, and I proceeded to talk United States to him. "You say I'm wrong. Perhaps I am; but how in Halifax"-- I think I said Halifax; anyhow we'll let it go at that--"how in Halifax did you find it out? Who installed you as infallible pope in the realm of intellect and declared it rank folly to run counter to the ideas that roost in your nice fat head?" He was one of those egotistical mental microbes or intellectual animalculae who imagine that a man must be in the wrong if he disagrees with him. And the woods are so full of that class of fellows that the fool-killer has become discouraged and jumped his job. Those who chance to think alike get together and form a political party, a society or a sect and take it for granted that they've got all the wisdom of the world grabbed--that beyond their little Rhode Island of intellect are only gibbering idiots and plotting knaves. When a man fears to subject his faith to the crucible of controversy; when he declines to submit his ideas to the ballistae and battering-rams of cold logic, you can safely set it down that he's either a hopeless cabbage-head or a hypocritical Humbug--that he's a fool or a fraud, is full of buncombe or bile. It is a difference of opinion that keeps the world from going to the dogs. Independence of thought, doubt of accepted dogmas, the spirit of inquiry--the desire to KNOW --is the mighty lever that has lifted man so far above the brute level that he has begun to claim kinship with the Creator. Yet we say to our brother, "Thou fool," because he takes issue with us on the tariff, or the proper time in the moon to plant post-holes--even insist on sending people to perdition who cannot see "the plan of salvation" thro' our little sectarian telescope. Men of a mind flock together just like so many gabbling geese, or other foolish fowl of a feather, each group waddling in the wake of some flat-headed old gander, squawking when he squawks and fluttering when he flies. Because I decline to get in among the goslings and be piloted about the intellectual goose-pond, I'm told that I have no POLICY. Well, I hope I haven't. If I thought I had I'd take something for it, dontcherknow! When I cannot live among my fellows without surrendering my independence-- forswearing freedom of speech and liberty of thought; without having to play the canting hypocrite or go hungry--to fawn like a flea-bitten fice to win public favor--I'll make me a suit of leather, take to the woods and chop bee trees. I'd rather my babes were born in a cane-brake and reared on bark and wild berries, with the blood of independence burning in their veins, than spawned in a palace and brought up bootlicks and policy players. . . .