Yet I
shall not soon forget how that delightful young man defrauded you of the
editorship."
Silence from Mr. Queed, the question of the editorship having already
been thoroughly threshed out between them.
"I, too, saw the gallant proceedings," resumed Nicolovius, retracing his
thought. "What an outfit! What an outfit!"
He dropped down into his easy chair by the table, removed his straw hat
with traces of a rare irritation in his manner, put on his black skull
cap, and presently purred his thoughts aloud:--
"No writer has yet done anything like justice to the old soldier cult in
the post-bellum South. Doubtless it may lie out of the province of you
historians, but what a theme for a new Thackeray! With such a fetish
your priestcraft of the Middle Ages is not to be compared for a moment.
There is no parallel among civilized nations; to find one you must go to
the Voodooism of the savage black. For more than a generation all the
intelligence of the South has been asked, nay compelled, to come and bow
down before these alms-begging loblollies. To refuse to make obeisance
was treason.
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