"That?" the neighbor replied, "that's--oh, I forget his name--but he's the President of the St. George's Society, I think. He's an Englishman--that is, he was; I suppose he's been naturalized--but then you can never tell about Englishmen, can you? They will live in a place for years, and they will be Britons to the backbone all the time." "Who is the presiding officer?" was the next question. "Don't you know _him_?" the neighbor retorted. "Why, that's Crowninshield Eliot, the lawyer. He used to be President of the New England Society. He's a clever man and he makes a rattling good speech sometimes, but then he's mighty uncertain. He may speak well or he may make a bad break. A speech from him is a regular grab-bag--you never know what you are going to have. But things don't get rusty when he is around, I tell you. You can rely on him to wake all the other speakers up. And I guess we shall have some fun before we get through; it isn't often you see so many representative New-Yorkers together; it's really a typical gathering." The young man made no response to this, being for the moment busy with his own ironic thoughts. "Now there's a man who will make the fur fly if he gets a chance," continued the loquacious neighbor, "that tall, thin, dignified-looking man, with the black goatee and mustache; that's Colonel Fairfax. He's Secretary of the Southern Society--all rebels, you know, but reconstructed by this time, most of them. He's District Attorney for the second term now, and you ought to hear him talk to a jury. He could get a verdict against the angel Gabriel for stealing the silver trumpet. When I was on the grand jury last year he--" Here the young man's neighbor interrupted himself to say, "Hello, hello! that is odd, isn't it? Right next to Colonel Fairfax is the man who was foreman of our grand jury; I didn't catch sight of him till that waiter took away that candy Statue of Liberty. See him? The bald one with the scar on his jaw; it's a bullet wound he got at Shiloh. That's S. Colfax Morrison; he was major of the 200th Ohio, but he's been living in New York for ten years now at least. That's 'the Ohio idea' they talk about: to come to New York to live as soon as they can. I was born in Ohio myself." And the talker let his loquacity taper off into a laugh, in which the young man joined courteously.