stooned around the
bottles. "Yes, all the Pesaras are dead years gone; and only this blood
of the vine is left of them."

"But you _don't_ sell that wine!" gasps the colonel. "Egad! you don't
sell it to those--people--up stairs!"

"I did _once_"--and mine host sighs. "A great cotton man came
down. He was a king on the river--he wanted the best! Money was nothing
to him, so I whispered of this, and said twenty dollars the bottle!
And, Colonel, he didn't--_like it!_"

"Merciful heaven!" the colonel waxes wroth.

"So Francois there sent him a bottle of that _Xeres_ in the outer bin
yonder--we sell it to you for two dollars the bottle--and he said
_that_ was wine!"

But of the other family--who live in an American hurry and eat by
steam--was the goblin diner of whom a friend told me in accents of awe.
One day, at the St. Charles, a resident stopped him on the way to their
accustomed table:

"Have you seen these people eat?" he asked. "No? Then we'll stop and
look. This table is reserved for the up-river men who have little time
in the city and make the most of it. While they swallow soup, a nimble
waiter piles the nearest dishes around them, without regard to order or
quality. They eat fish, roast and fried, on the same plate, swallowing
six inches of knife blade at every bolt. Then they draw the nearest pie
to them, cut a great segment in it, make three huge arcs therein with
as many snaps of their teeth; seize a handful of nuts and raisins and
rush away, with jaws still working like a flouring-mill. Ten minutes is
their limit for dinner." My friend only smiled. The other adding:

"You doubt it? Here comes a fine specimen; hot, healthy and evidently
busy. See, he looks at his watch! I'll bet you a bottle of St. Peray he
'does' his dinner within the ten."

"Done"--and they sat opposite him, watch in hand.

And that wonderful Hoosier dined in seven minutes!

CHAPTER IX.

A CHANGE OF BASE.

Whatever activity and energetic preparation there may have been
elsewhere, Pensacola was the first organized camp in the South. General
Bragg and his adjutant-general were both old officers, and in the face
of the enemy the utmost rigor of discipline prevailed. There had been
no active operations on this line, yet; but the Alabama and the
Louisiana troops collected--to the number of about nine thousand--had
already become soldiers, in all the details of camp life; and went
through it in as cheerful a spirit as if th