“Pardon me, Mr. Whatcheecallem; it can’t be done—it would be suicidal, with the sharpest kind of a knife. Whatcheecallem, you don’t understand the grand movement of the nineteenth century—you are not up to snuff as to the vital principle of human progression—the propulsive force has not yet been demonstrated to your benighted optics. The sun is up, sir; the hill-tops of intellect glow with its brightness, and even the level plain of the world’s collective mediocrity is gilded by its beams; but you, sir, are yet in the foggy valley of exploded prejudice, poking along with a tuppenny-ha’penny candle—a mere dip. Suppress sauciness! why, my dear bungletonian, sauciness is the discovery of the age—the secret of advancement! We are saucy now, sir, not by the accident of constitution—temperament has nothing to do with it. We are saucy by calculation, by intention, by design. It is cultivated, like our whiskers, as a superadded energy to our other gifts. Without sauciness, what is a newsboy? what is an editor? what are revolutions? what are people? Sauce is power. Sauce is spirit, independence, victory, everything. It is, in fact,—this sauce, or ‘sass,’ as the vulgar have it,—steam to the great locomotive of affairs. Suppress, indeed! No, sir; you should regard it as part of your duty as a philanthropist and as a patriot to encourage this essence of superiority in all your countrymen; and I’ve a great mind to write you an article on that subject instead of the other, for this conversation has warmed up my ideas so completely that justice will not be done to the community till they, like you, are enlightened on this important point.” St. Sebastian Sockdolager, now having a leading article for _The National Pop-gun and Universal Valve Trumpet_ clearly in his mind, was not a creature to be trifled with. An editor in this paroxysm, however gentle in his less inspired moments, cannot safely be crossed, or even spoken to. It is not wise to call him to dinner, except through the keyhole; and to ask for “more copy,” in general a privileged demand, is a risk too fearful to be encountered. St. Sebastian’s eye became fixed, his brow corrugated, his mouth intellectually ajar. “But, sir, the nuisance,” said Sappington. “Don’t bother!” was the impatient reply, and the brow of St. Sebastian Sockdolager grew black as his own ink. “The boys, sir, the boys!—am I to be worried out of my life and soul?” The right hand of St. Sebastian Sockdolager fell heavily upon the huge pewter inkstand—the concatenation of his ideas had been broken—he half raised himself from his chair and glanced significantly from his visitor to the door. “Mizzle!” said he, in a hoarse, suppressed whisper. The language itself was unintelligible—the word might have been Chaldaic, for all that Sapid knew to the contrary; but there are situations in which an interpreter is not needed, and this appeared to be one of them. Sapid never before made a movement so swiftly extemporaneous.