"It isn't. As soon as I touch European soil I shall reform."




XVI.

That was not the first time General Triscoe had silenced question of his
opinions with the argument he had used upon Eltwin, though he was seldom
able to use it so aptly. He always found that people suffered, his belief
in our national degeneration much more readily when they knew that he had
left a diplomatic position in Europe (he had gone abroad as secretary of
a minor legation) to come home and fight for the Union. Some millions of
other men had gone into the war from the varied motives which impelled
men at that time; but he was aware that he had distinction, as a man of
property and a man of family, in doing so. His family had improved as
time passed, and it was now so old that back of his grandfather it was
lost in antiquity. This ancestor had retired from the sea and become a
merchant in his native Rhode Island port, where his son established
himself as a physician, and married the daughter of a former slave-trader
whose social position was the highest in the place; Triscoe liked to
mention his maternal grandfather when he wished a listener to realize
just how anomalous his part in a war against slavery was; it heightened
the effect of his pose.

He fought gallantly through the war, and he was brevetted
Brigadier-General at the close. With this honor, and with the wound which
caused an almost imperceptible limp in his gait, he won the heart of a
rich New York girl, and her father set him up in a business, which was