so grossly and falsely sent abroad concerning him." But the enemy had
ten guns to Paine's one, and served them with all the fierceness of
party-hate. A shower of abusive missiles rattled incessantly about his
ears. However thick-skinned a man may be, and protected over all by the
_oes triplex_ of self-sufficiency, he cannot escape being wounded by
furious and incessant attacks. Paine felt keenly the neglect of his
former friends, who avoided him, when they did not openly cut him. Mr.
Jefferson, it is true, asked him to dinners, and invited the British
minister to meet him; at least, the indignant Anglo-Federal editors
said so. Perhaps he offered him an office. If he did, Paine refused it,
preferring "to serve as a disinterested volunteer." Poor old man! his
services were no longer of much use to anybody. The current of American
events had swept past him, leaving him stranded, a broken fragment of a
revolutionary wreck.

When the nine days of wonder had expired in Washington, and the
inhabitants had grown tired of staring at Paine and of pelting him with
abuse, he betook himself to New York. On his way thither, he met with an
adventure which shows the kind of martyrdom suffered by this political
and religious heretic. He had stopped at Bordentown, in New Jersey, to
look at a small place he owned there, and to visit an old friend and
correspondent, Colonel Kirkbride. When he departed, the Colonel drove
him over to Trenton to take the stage-coach. But in Trenton the Federal
and Religious party had the upperhand, and when Paine applied at the
booking-office for a seat to New York the agent refused to sell him one.
Moreover, a crowd collected about his lodgings, who groaned dismally
when he drove away with his friend, while a band of musicians, provided
for the occasion, played the Rogue's March.

Among the editorial celebrities of 1803, James Cheetham, in New York,