Pending her journey downstairs, the pigs were joined by two
or three friends from the next street, in company with whom they lay
down sociably in the gutter.
'Is the major indoors?' inquired the colonel, as he entered.
'Is it the master, sir?' returned the girl, with a hesitation
which seemed to imply that they were rather flush of majors in that
establishment.
'The master!' said Colonel Diver, stopping short and looking round at
his war correspondent.
'Oh! The depressing institutions of that British empire, colonel!' said
Jefferson Brick. 'Master!'
'What's the matter with the word?' asked Martin.
'I should hope it was never heard in our country, sir; that's all,' said
Jefferson Brick; 'except when it is used by some degraded Help, as new
to the blessings of our form of government, as this Help is. There are
no masters here.'
'All "owners," are they?' said Martin.
Mr Jefferson Brick followed in the Rowdy Journal's footsteps without
returning any answer. Martin took the same course, thinking as he went,
that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their moral
elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render better
homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the oven of a
Russian Serf.
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