You needn't mind
pulling up the seat of your pantaloons; I'm not noticing. What in
the ---- are you doing here, looking like a muddy Lazarus in the
painted cloth?'

''Bill,' said George to the Tennesseean confidentially, and his
tones would have moved a heart of stone: 'Bill, you always was a
friend of mine. I know'd you a long while ago, and honored
you--cuss me, if I didn't. I said you was a man bound to rise. I
told Jimmy Polk so--me and Jimmy was familiar friends. I intended
to get up a biographical notice of you in the _Democratic Review_,
but that ---- Corby stopped it I'm glad to see you; I'll swear I
am.'

''Of course, old fellow,' said the charitable Tennesseean, more in
pity of his tones than even of the flattering eloquence: 'but what
is the matter?'

''Matter!' said George; 'the d----d Lincolnites have seized
Bowling-Green, Fort Donelson, and have by this time taken
Nashville. Why,' continued he, in a burst of confidence, 'when I
left, hacks was worth a hundred dollars an hour, and, Polk, (in a
whisper,) I didn't have a d----d cent.'

'The touching pathos of this last remark was added to by the
sincere vehemence with which it was uttered, and the mute
eloquence with which he lifted up a ragged flap in the rear of his
person that some envious rail or brier had torn from its position
of covering a glorious retreat.

''Not a d----d cent,' repeated he; 'and, Polk, I walked that
hard-hearted town up and down, all day, with bomb-shells dropping
on the street at every lamp-post--I'll swear I did--trying to
borrow some money; and Polk, do you think, there wasn't a
scoundrel there would lend any thing, not even Harris, and he got
the money out of the banks, too?'

''No?' said Polk, who dropped in a word occasionally, as a sort of
encourager.

''Bill,' repeated Sanders: 'Bill, I said you was a friend of
mine--and a talented one--always said so, Bill. I didn't have a
red, and I've walked forty-five miles in the last day, by the
mile-stones, and I haven't had any thing to buy a bit to eat;
and,' he added with impassioned eloquence, 'what is a cursed sight
worse, not a single drop to drink.'

'This is complete. It is unnecessary to tell how the gallant and
clever Tenneseean took the wayfarer home, gave him numerous, if
not innumerable, drinks, and