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- 11586
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11548
- text
- orthodox Calvinist can with any adequacy appreciate the sublime
disinterestedness of their patriotism, since from his point of view, not
alone did our heroes jeopardise their lives for us, but mortally
endangered their souls. And for what? Oh futility! in the attempts to
terrorise enemies who, being our own countrymen, of course, refused to
be terrified, though in the end fate, working through force, made them
succumb.
Though of all men Jack be the least exclusive as to the company he
keeps, and is anything but bumptious in his manner, there have not been
wanting detractors who have insinuated a charge against him rather
serious in a democratic community, namely, not alone a tendency to the
aristocratic in general, but a weakness for certain gewgaws, that savour
of the monarchical. True, at certain grand banquets, where as an
honorary guest he sits at the high table, banquets more especially of
those national societies wherewith our cosmopolitan city abounds--the
St. Denis, St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, St. George, St. Andrew; on these
occasions the Major a little lays himself open to invidious suspicion by
wearing on his left lapel the eagle wings in gold of the Cincinnati, a
venerable order whereof he who still reigns ‘first in the hearts of his
countrymen’ was the original head. This decoration descended to the
Major from his great-grandfather, a South Carolinian, a white-haired
captain of infantry at the battle of Saratoga Springs, who therefore,
being eligible as a Revolutionary officer, was enrolled in the order
upon its formation just after the Peace.
Now, an inherited badge of the Cincinnati, every American, however ultra
in his democracy, must allow to be something of which no other American
need be ashamed. As the Major himself once demanded, and with some
animation--‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his
hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the
Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the
last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’
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