something of a gentleman himself. Accordingly he replied to Mr. Grabster, in a note more curt than courteous, that it was impossible to comply with his request. So the indignant host was obliged to content himself for the time with ordering _The Sewer_ to abuse the incognito. Before many days, however, he obtained the desired information through another source, in this wise. Oldport had its newspaper, of course. Every American village of more than ten houses has its newspaper. Mr. Cranberry Fuster, who presided over the destinies of _The Oldport Daily Twaddler_, added to this honorable and amiable occupation the equally honorable and amiable one of village attorney. Though his paper was in every sense a small one, he felt and talked as big as if it had been _The Times_, or _The Moniteur_, or _The Blunder and Bluster_. He held the President of the United States as something almost beneath his notice, and was in the habit of lecturing the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and other foreign powers, in true Little Pedlington style. Emboldened by the impunity which attended these assaults, he undertook to try his hand on matters nearer home, and boldly essayed one season to write down the polka and redowa as indecent and immoral. But here he found, as Alexander, Napoleon, and other great men, had done before him, that there is a limit to all human power. He might better have tried to write off the roof of the Bath Hotel, which was rather a fragile piece of work, and might have been carried away by much less wind than usually served to distend the columns of _The Twaddler_. The doughty Tom Edwards snapped his heels, so to speak, in the face of the mighty editor, and the exclusives continued to polk more frantically than ever in the teeth of his direst fulminations. One practical effect, however, these home diatribes had, which his luminous sallies on foreign affairs altogether failed to effect--they put money into his pocket. The next thing Americans like to hearing themselves well praised, is to hear somebody, even if it be themselves, well abused; and accordingly, on the mornings when Mr. Fuster let out an anti-polka article, the usually small circulation of his small sheet was multiplied by a very large factor--almost every stranger bought a copy, the million to see the abuse of the fashionables, the fashionables to see the abuse of themselves.