Heralds of Empire

There comes a time when every life must choose whether to laugh or weep over trivial pains, and when a cut may be broken on the foil of that glancing mirth which the good Creator gave mankind to keep our race from going mad. It came to me on the night of narrator's arrival on the wharves of Boston Town. Through the streets of London before the shoutings of a rabble rout was whipped an old, white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the head of a regicide—all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlessly erect, singing a psalm.