d, or their sale was confirmed.
The tea and coffee pots were almost, without exception, pronounced
worthless; for although well enough calculated for a long voyage on the
Mississippi, they could never have been meant to hold boiling
Mississippi water. The wonderful Palmyra salve proved to be neither more
nor less than a compound of hog's lard and gunpowder, with the juice of
tobacco and walnut leaves--a mixture that might perhaps have been useful
for the destruction of vermin, but the efficacy of which as an antidote
to freckles and lockjaw was at least problematical. The teapots, the
ointment, and some spices, amongst which wooden nutmegs cut an important
figure, were duly consigned to the keeping of the Mississippi kelpies;
while the dollars that had been paid for them were retransferred from
the pockets of the Yankee to those of the credulous purchasers. Finally,
Mr Bundle himself, in consideration of the truly republican stoicism
with which he witnessed the execution of the judgment pronounced on his
wares, was invited with much ceremony to regale himself with a
"go-the-whole-hog-cocktail," an honour which he accepted and replied to
in a set speech, at the conclusion of which he enquired whether the
honourable society by whose sentence he had been deprived of the larger
portion of his merchandise, could not recommend him to a schoolmaster's
place in one of their respectable settlements. I almost wondered that he
did not treat us to a Methodist sermon as a preparation for our
slumbers. He seemed the right man to do it. He exactly answered to the
description given of the Yankees by Halleck, in his Connecticut:--

----"Apostates, who are meddling
With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence, and peddling,
Or wandering through southern climates teaching
The A, B, C, from Webster's spelling-book;
Gallant and godly, making love and preaching,
And gaining by what they call hook and crook,
And what the moralists call overreaching,
A decent living. The Virginians look
Upon them with as favourable eyes
As Gabriel on the devil in Paradise."

There was a deafening "Hurrah for the honourable Mistress Howard!" as
the party of backwoodsmen walked off towards the gentlemen's cabin; and
then things became quieter. I had invited the bears to drink a glass to
Mrs Howard's health, and had told the steward to put down to my account
the slings and cocktails they might consume. Mrs Dobleton, whose