The latter publicist is a personage of ice-cold ideas, and lists ingratitude at the top of the virtues. There be folk--descended, doubtless, of ancestors that heated the pincers and turned the thumbikins, and worked the straining rack for the Inquisitions as mere day laborers at torture--who delight in doing mean, hateful, punishing things to their fellow mortals, if they may but call such doing “duty.” They will weep hypocritically while burning a victim, and aver, between sobs, that they pile the fagots and apply the torch only from a “sternest conviction of duty.” The word “duty,” like the venom of a serpent, is ever in their mouths; by it they break hearts, destroy hopes, create blackness, blot out light, forbid happiness, foster grief, and plant pain in breasts innocent of every crime save that of helping them. Statesman Adams--heart as hollow as a bell and quite as brazen--is one of these. He demonstrates his purity by refusing his obligations, and proves himself great by turning his back on his friends. Made up of a multitude of littlenesses, he offers no trait of breadth or bigness as an offset. He is not wise; he is not brave; he is not generous; he is not--even in wrongdoing--original. He will guide by some maxim; or he will permit himself to be posed by a proverb; and, while ever breathlessly respectable, he is never once right. As President he proposes for himself an inhuman goodness, and declares that he will remove no one from office on “account of politics”--a catch phrase which has protected incompetency in place in every age. Although he is so fond of them, Statesman Adams, in taking the latter snow-white position, overlooks an aphorism that will be vital while time lasts. He forgets that “The President who makes no removals will himself be removed.” “Strike, lest you be stricken!” murmured Queen Elizabeth, as seizing the pen she signed the warrant of block and axe for Scottish Mary, and it might be well and wise for Statesman Adams to wear in constant mind that illustrious example. The thought is vain. Statesman Adams ignores his friends, consults his foes, and offers a base picture of the ungrateful that draws the public's honest wrath his way. Wizard Lewis is no one to miss such opportunities to upbuild the General's fortunes at the expense of the enemy; and so the General grows each day stronger, while Statesman Adams--who hopes to succeed himself--owns less and less of strength. The currents of time flow swiftly now, and four years go by--four years wherein the old friendly far-seeing fox, Colonel Burr, in his Nassau Street burrow, teaches the General's leaders intrigue as a pedagogue teaches the alphabet to his pupils. And day after day the purblind Adams, with the purblind Clay at the elbow of his hopes and fears, sets traps against his own prospects, and does his unwitting best or worst to destroy himself. Then comes the canvass: the General against Statesman Adams, who courts a reelection.