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"The guard! make way for the lobsters!" cried several persons at once. "Oh, ho! here's the lobsters!" "The fire-eaters!" "The Arab devourers!" "Come for their dromedary!" In the midst of these noisy jests, two soldiers and a corporal advanced with much difficulty. Their bayonets and the barrels of their guns were alone visible above the heads of this hideous and compact crowd.
They "speak for Buncombe," are Barn-Burners, Old Hunkers, Hard Shells, Soft Shells, Log-Rollers, Pipe-Layers, Woolly Heads, Silver Grays, Locofocos, Fire-Eaters, Adamantines, Free Soilers, Freedom Shriekers, Border Ruffians. They spring from a bon-mot or a retort. The log-cabin and hard-cider watchwords were born of a taunt, like the "Gueux" of the Netherlands.
Yancey, their orator, upbraided Douglas and his followers with cowardice because they did not dare to tell the North that slavery was right. In that strange way the question of right and wrong was forced again upon the man who strove to ignore it. Senator Pugh, of Ohio, spokesman for Douglas, answered the fire-eaters. "Gentlemen of the South," he cried, "you mistake us! You mistake us!
I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders, bristling like a bantam which has been challenged. "We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our trail," Dave said gravely. "Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman?
Jack had won the name of being dangerous, for he had crippled one man with a blow and nearly killed a tipsy fool who volunteered to fight him. A harmless but good-for-nothing sheep-herder who loafed about the place got very drunk one night and offended some fire-eaters.
Now, for a very brief period this saliva, which is just the same as a film of water on the hand, resists the fire. But professional fire-eaters do not depend on saliva alone. They use a chemical solution, and this is what Joe did when he drank something from a glass. What that chemical solution was, Joe kept as a closely guarded professional secret.
Meantime I began to perceive an odor which forcibly recalled to me the asphaltum-kettles of the lively Boulevards of Paris. "Wait awhile, Fire-Eaters," said Plickaman, "the tar isn't quite ready yet." The tar! What had that viscous and unfragrant material to do with the present interview? "I won't read you what he says of me," resumed the Colonel. "Yes, out with it!" exclaimed all.
"I fear it was my fault," admitted Parmalee. "Mr. Drew accidentally knocked my cane out of my hand, and I flew off at a tangent and was nasty about it when he apologized." "Nothing mor'n that?" said Tyke, with relief. "You young fire-eaters shouldn't have such hair-trigger tempers." "Shake hands now and forget it," admonished the captain genially.
The Fire-eaters were their friends, and the gifts of fortune were theirs. The Galloping Plough made all the waste places fertile; and the water of the Thirsty Well rose and ran in rivers through the land; and over the walls of their palace, where they had planted it, grew the flower of the Burning Rose.
Powell himself, though not proof against exposure, seems to have been proof against its effects, for he kept on the even tenor of his way for sixty years, and at the end of his life was still exhibiting. Whatever the reason, the eighteenth century fire-eaters, like too many magicians of the present day, kept to the stereotyped programmes of their predecessors.
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