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Governments rise and fall, familiar names and reputations are juggled about like numbered balls in a shaker, come to the top to be submerged again in a new 'emeute'. There are conferences and conferences without end.

The American war had ceased to be popular; it had become the graveyard of military reputations; it promised no glory to either sailor or soldier. Now that the correspondence of the negotiators at Ghent was made public, the reading public might very easily draw the conclusion that the Ministry was prolonging the war by setting up pretensions which it could not sustain.

For there was no more adroit or experienced trial attorney in the courts than my little hook-nosed partner. Even down-town attorneys with almost national reputations as corporation lawyers would call him in as associate counsel in important cases in which a criminal element was involved.

John Law planned his dazzling "Mississippi Scheme," by which all Frenchmen were to become millionaires. Only, unfortunately, the bubble burst, and the industrious were ruined instead. England had its "South Sea Bubble," with the same madness of speculation, vanishing fortunes, and blasted reputations.

Several honest dogs fell under suspicion, not because there was anything whatever against their reputations, but simply because they had the misfortune to be big enough and strong enough to kill a sheep if they wanted to, and the brooding backwoods mind, when troubled, will go far on the flimsiest evidence. Of all the wrathful settlers the most furious was Brace Timmins.

They had the deck pretty much to themselves. It was only four o'clock, too early for the appetite-stimulating walk before dinner, and their fellow passengers were basking in the sunshine, stretched out on their chairs in two even rows like so many mummies on exhibition. Some were reading, some were dozing. Two or three were under the weather, completely prostrated, their bilious complexion of a deathly greenish hue. At each new roll of the ship, they closed their eyes as if resigned to the worst that might happen and their immediate neighbours furtively eyed each of their movements as if apprehensive of what any moment might bring forth. A few couples were flirting to their heart's content under the friendly cover of the lifeboats which, as on most of the transatlantic liners, were more useful in saving reputations than in saving life. The deck steward was passing round tea and biscuits, much to the disgust of the ill ones, but to the keen satisfaction of the stronger stomached passengers who on shipboard never seem to be able to get enough to eat and drink. On the bridge, the second officer, a tall, handsome man with the points of his moustache trained upwards

Weel, then, what I'm meaning is that those great actors and actresses, before they come to the halls to show us old timers what's what, and how to get applause, have a solid record of hard work behind them. And still some of them think the halls are different, and that there they'll be clapped and cheered just because of their reputations.

The travellers along the different roads that led into the interior of the island formed themselves into little knots, in which the policy of the great national events they had just been commemorating, and the manner they had been treated by the different individuals selected to take the lead in the offices of the day, were freely handled, though still with great deference to the established reputations of the distinguished parties most concerned.

That is the kind of underground machinery which manufactures false reputations and genuine hatreds. On the other hand, I should like to know if we are not at liberty to have a good time together, and say the pleasantest things we can think of to each other, when any of us reaches his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth or eightieth birthday.

The chief promoters of the revolution were Pisander, Antiphon, and Theramenes, all of them men of good birth and with high reputations for ability and judgement.