text:  He dropped his voice and spoke with a faint but clear tone which formed a remarkable contrast to his usually bold and even harsh enunciation: "Sir " said he in this half-whispered voice "before I join these gentlemen in their worship I must know what deity presides in their temple; I must see that the incense which fumes before its altar is taken from the sacred repositories of the constitution not the smuggled importation of foreign fabrications of revolt--that pernicious compound of civil mischief and mad metaphysics--which instead of consummating and purifying the sacrifice only poisons the air