"The devil take it, sir!" cried an old captain of an English ship-of-the-line, who was sitting near by. "What you are talking about is not war! We might as well send out a Codfish Trust to settle national disputes. In the next sea-fight we'll save ourselves the trouble of gnawing and crunching at the sterns of the enemy. We'll simply send a note aboard requesting the foreigner to be so good as to send us his rudder by bearer, which, if properly marked and numbered, will be returned to him on the conclusion of peace. This would do just as well as twisting it off, and save expense. No, sir, I will not join you in a julep! _I_ have made no alliance over new-fangled inventions! Waiter, fetch me some rum and hot water!" In the midst of the profound satisfaction with which the members of the American War Syndicate regarded the success of their labours,--labours alike profitable to themselves and to the recently contending nations,--and in the gratified pride with which they received the popular and official congratulations which were showered upon them, there was but one little cloud, one regret. In the course of the great Syndicate War a life had been lost. Thomas Hutchins, while assisting in the loading of coal on one of the repellers, was accidentally killed by the falling of a derrick. The Syndicate gave a generous sum to the family of the unfortunate man, and throughout the United States the occurrence occasioned a deep feeling of sympathetic regret. A popular subscription was started to build a monument to the memory of Hutchins, and contributions came, not only from all parts of the United States, but from many persons in Great Britain who wished to assist in the erection of this tribute to the man who had fallen in the contest which had been of as much benefit to their country as to his own. Some weeks after the conclusion of the treaty, a public question was raised, which at first threatened to annoy the American Government; but it proved to be of little moment. An anti-Administration paper in Peakville, Arkansas, asserted that in the whole of the published treaty there was not one word in regard to the fisheries question, the complications arising from which had been the cause of the war. Other papers took up the matter, and the Government then discovered that in drawing up the treaty the fisheries business had been entirely overlooked. There was a good deal of surprise in official circles when this discovery was announced; but as it was considered that the fisheries question was one which would take care of itself, or be readily disposed of in connection with a number of other minor points which remained to be settled between the two countries, it was decided to take no notice of the implied charge of neglect, and to let the matter drop. And as the opposition party took no real interest in the question, but little more was said about it.