As the middle-aged man
glanced over the New-York dailies, he ventured an anathema upon the
abominations of Gotham.
The patriotic pride of a genuine New-Yorker never deserts him. Lorrimer
discovered that the maligner of his city was a Bostonian, and a stormy
debate ensued.
As between cat and dog, so is the hostility which divides the residents of
these two towns. So the conversation became at once spirited, and
eventually spiteful.
Boston pointed with sarcastic finger to the close columns heavily laden
with iniquitous recitals, the result of a reporter's experience of one day
in the metropolis.
New York, with icy imperturbability, rehearsed from memory the recent
revelations of matrimonial and clerical delinquencies which had given the
City of Notions an unpleasant notoriety.
Boston burst out in eloquent denunciation of the Bowery assassin's knife.
New York was placidly pleased to revert to a tale of bloodshed in the
abiding-place of Massachusetts authority, the State Prison.
Boston fell back upon the garrote,--"the meanest and most diabolical
invention of Five-Point villany,--a thing unknown, Sir, and never to be
known with us, while our police system lasts!"
New York quietly folded together a paper so as to reveal one particular
paragraph, which appeared in smallest type, as seeking to avoid
recognition. Boston read as follows:--
"The garroting system of highway robbery, which has been so fashionable for
some time past in New York, and which has so much alarmed the people of
that city, has been introduced in Boston, and was practised on Thomas
W.
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