According to my own experience, the traveling Englishman is a quiet, well-bred, reticent man, brandy-and-soda proof (I have seen him drink a dozen of an evening without a droop of an eyelid); and if he has any positive convictions of the superiority of that section of the Anglo-Saxon race to which he belongs,--and he invariably has,--he keeps them to himself, certainly in the public smoking-room of a steamer filled with men of a dozen different nations. The outbreak, as well as the effect of the incentive, was therefore as unexpected as it was unusual. The check-suit man, however, was not constructed along these lines. The spirit of old Hennessy was in his veins, the stored energy of many sodas pressed against his tongue, and an explosion was inevitable. No portion of these excitants, strange to say, had leaked into his legs, for outwardly he was as steady as an undertaker. He began again, his voice pitched in a high key:-- "Talk of coercing England! Why, we've got a hundred and forty-one ships of the line, within ten days' sail of New York, that could blow the bloody stuffin' out of every man Jack of 'em. And we don't care a brass farthing what Uncle Sam says about it, either." His two friends tried to keep him quiet, but he broke out again on Colonization and American Treachery and Conquest of Cuba; and so, being desirous to read in peace, I nodded to the Doctor and Todd, picked up my book, and drew up a steamer chair on the deck outside, under one of the electric lights. I had hardly settled myself in my seat when a great shout went up from the smoking-room that sent every one running down the deck, and jammed the portholes and doors of the room with curious faces. Then I heard a voice rise clear above the noise inside: "Not another word, sir; you don't know what you are talking about. We Americans don't rob people we give our lives to free." I forced my way past the door, and stepped inside. The Englishman was being held down in his chair by his two friends. In his effort to break loose he had wormed himself out of his coat. Beside their table, close enough to put his hand on any one of them, stood the Doctor, a curious set expression on his face. Todd was outside the circle, standing on a sofa to get a better view. Towering above the Englishman, his eyes burning, his shaggy hair about his face, his whole figure tense with indignation, was the man with the empty sleeve! Close behind him, cool, polite, straight as a gendarme, and with the look in his eye of a cat about to spring, stood the young baron. As I reached the centre of the mêlée, wondering what had been the provocation and who had struck the first blow, I saw the baron lean forward, and heard him say in a low voice to one of the Englishmen, "He is so old as to be his fadder; take me," and he tapped his chest meaningly with his fingers. Evidently he had not fenced at Heidelberg for nothing, if he did have pink cheeks and pipestem legs.