I am nobody in particular, which I am repeatedly assured is a great honour and which has never once been redeemable at any counter. I buy my flour by the pound because I cannot afford it by the barrel, I pay what is asked because there is nowhere else to ask, and I read the gentlemen in this paper explaining to one another what I can bear. I have no era worth recording; there has always been somebody like me and there always will be, and we are invariably mentioned, warmly, in the final paragraph. When a duty is laid, I am the fellow it is laid upon. I write when the explanations stop matching the price of bread.
The General asked to be argued with. I have never been invited to argue with a General before, and I find I have been saving something up. He says the duty falls…