"Bah!" he said, in response to a strongly patriotic expression of his patron, which had led him to bring down one of his hands upon the disabled leg with a force causing a new tingle in that limb and a new expression of agony upon his face--"bah! All you hot-headed people, young and old, use just such language, all the while. It amounts to nothing, except that perhaps it eases your minds. Saying that 'the Union must and shall be preserved,' and prophesying all kinds of good things for the nation, amount to but very little while a set of incapables sit filling their pockets at Washington (more than half of them traitors, in my opinion), while the army is worse mismanaged than it could be if a set of school-boys led it, and while the enemies you affect to despise are really winning every thing and overrunning the whole country." "Out upon you, Dr. Pomeroy!" cried the old man, angrily. "You dare to call yourself a patriot, and talk in that manner! There are plenty of fools at Washington, but I would rather see fools there than traitors! If you are not a perfect block-head, you know that the rebels have lost twice as much as they have gained, within the past year, and that if the fight goes on in the same manner for one year more, the miserable mongrel concern will die of its own weakness! But you do not _want_ it to die--that is just what ails _you_!--you would rather see Jeff Davis in the Capitol than any loyal man who would not give all the offices to your miserable broken-down party!" "And you would rather see the whole country lying in ruins, with heaps of dead everywhere and the few who remain starving to death in the midst of them, than that the country should be in any other hands than those of your friends who do nothing else than talk about the nigger, legislate for the nigger, and fight for the nigger!" answered the doctor, still continuing his walk, and his face showing decided temper. "It is false, and you know it, Philip Pomeroy!" said the invalid, with a motion of his hand towards the big cane, which indicated that he would have liked to use it by breaking it over the doctor's head. "It is true, and _you_ know it, Robert Brand!" replied the doctor, whose temper seemed to return to its equanimity the moment he had succeeded in throwing his patient into a sufficient rage. "But you need not take so much pains to conceal your opinions, old gentleman! _I_ don't! If the country is to lie under the control of men who only legislate and fight for the nigger, who trample upon the Constitution and fill Fort McHenry and Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren with better men than themselves, who do not happen to think and act precisely as _they_ do,--why, the sooner that Jeff Davis, or any one else, gets possession, the better for all concerned." "Doctor Pomeroy, you ought to be taken and hung, with the other traitors, and I shouldn't much mind having a pull at the rope!" broke out the old man, now almost entirely beside himself with indignation.