with his conversation.

This noble and distinguished gentleman possessed in a brother an exact
and perfect opposite to himself. Captain Obadiah Belford was a West
Indian, an inhabitant of Kingston in the island of Jamaica. He was a
cursing, swearing, hard-drinking renegado from virtue; an acknowledged
dealer in negro slaves, and reputed to have been a buccaneer, if not an
out-and-out pirate, such as then infested those tropical latitudes in
prodigious numbers. He was not unknown in New Hope, which he had
visited upon several occasions for a week or so at a time. During each
period he lodged with his brother, whose household he scandalized by
such freaks as smoking his pipe of tobacco in the parlor, offering
questionable pleasantries to the female servants, and cursing and
swearing in the hallways with a fecundity and an ingenuity that would
have put the most godless sailor about the docks to the blush.

Accordingly, it may then be supposed into what a dismay it threw
Colonel Belford when one fine day he received a letter from Captain
Obadiah, in which our West Indian desperado informed his brother that
he proposed quitting those torrid latitudes in which he had lived for
so long a time, and that he intended thenceforth to make his home in
New Hope.

Addressing Colonel Belford as "My dear Billy," he called upon that
gentleman to rejoice at this determination, and informed him that he
proposed in future to live "as decent a limb of grace as ever broke
loose from hell," and added that he was going to fetch as a present for
his niece Belinda a "dam pirty little black girl" to carry her
prayer-book to church for her.

Accordingly, one fine morning, in pursuance of this promise, our West
Indian suddenly appeared at New Hope with a prodigious quantity of
chests and travelling-cases, and with so vociferous an acclamation that
all the town knew of his arrival within a half-hour of that event.

When, however, he presented himself before Colonel Belford, it was to
meet with a welcome so frigid and an address so reserved that a douche
of cold water could not have quenched his verbosity more entirely. For
our great man had no notion to submit to the continued infliction of
the West Indian's presence. Accordingly, after the first words of
greeting had passed, he addressed Captain Obadiah in a strain somewhat
after this fashion:

"Indeed, I protest, my dear brother Obadiah, it is with the heartiest
regrets in the world that I