I
confess they were all too much for me at first. They borrowed my
cash, they shared my confidence, they taxed my credulity, and I
saw the truth at last.
'Tom's breaking down,' said a co-labourer on the staff one day.
'How is that?' I enquired.
'Served me a mean trick.'
'Indeed!'
'Deceived me,' said he sorrowfully.
'Lied, I suppose?'
'No. He told the truth, as God's my witness.'
Tom had been absolutely reliable up to that time.
Chapter 36
Those were great days in mid autumn. The Republic was in grave
peril of dissolution. Liberty that had hymned her birth in the last
century now hymned her destiny in the voices of bard and orator.
Crowds of men gathered in public squares, at bulletin boards, on
street corners arguing, gesticulating, exclaiming and cursing.
Cheering multitudes went up and down the city by night, with
bands and torches, and there was such a howl of oratory and
applause on the lower half of Manhattan Island that it gave the
reporter no rest. William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, John A.
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