e party loudly broke in,
"that Breckenridge and Lincoln are the same to you?"

The young man wore long hair and a black dress-coat, though it was
morning. His voice was nasal, and his manner intrusive. I crushed
him with a languid "Yes." He was evidently abashed, and covered his
confusion by lighting a cigar and smoking it with the lighted end in
his mouth. This is a habit of many persons in the South, who hence are
called Fire-Eaters.

Mellasys Plickaman here changed the subject to horses, which I _do_
understand, and my visitors presently departed.

"How happily the days of Thalaba went by!"

as the poet has it. My Saccharissa and myself are both persons of a
romantic and dreamy nature. Often for hours we would sit and gaze
upon each other with only occasional interjections,--"How warm!" "How
sleepy!" "Is it not almost time for lunch?" As Saccharissa was not in
herself a beautiful object, I accustomed myself to see her merely as a
representative of value. Her yellowish complexion helped me in imagining
her, as it were, a golden image which might be cut up and melted down.
I used to fancy her dresses as made of certificates of stock, and
her ribbons as strips of coupons. Thus she was always an agreeable
spectacle.

So time flew, and the sun of the sixth of November gleamed across the
scaly backs of the alligators of Bayou La Farouche.

In three days I was to be made happy with the possession of one
hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) on the nail,--excuse the homely
expression,--great expectations for the future, and the hand of my
Saccharissa.

For these I exchanged the name and social position of a Chylde, and my
own, I trust, not unattractive person.

I deemed that I gave myself away dirt-cheap,--excuse again the
colloquialism; the transaction seems to require such a phrase,--for
there is no doubt that Mr. Mellasys was greatly objectionable. It was
certainly very illogical; but his neighbors who owned slaves insisted
upon turning up their noses at Mellasys, because he still kept up his
slave-pen on Touchpitchalas Street, New Orleans. Besides,--and here
again the want of logic seems to culminate into rank absurdity,--he was
viewed with a purely sentimental abhorrence by some, because he had
precluded a reclaimed fugitive from repeating his evasion by roasting
the soles of his feet before a fire until the fellow actually died. The
fact, of coarse, was unpleasant, and the loss considerable,--a prime
field-h