totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other, strike a
guesswork blow or two, and fall exhausted once more.

I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endure it
as long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank
confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the
black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last.

Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for such
as have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw people enjoy
anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the
same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They lost themselves
in frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main' is an inhuman sort of
entertainment, there is no question about that; still, it seems a much
more respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the
cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is
not the fox's case.

We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day. I believe I
enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more
than I remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The
grand-stand was well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New
Orleans. That phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern
reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty
times a day, or twenty thousand times a day; or a million times a
day--according to the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million
times a day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and women
that often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that
single one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him.
There is a kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that
pleases his gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the
early times, we should have had no references to 'much people' out of
him. No, he would have said 'the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee'
assembled to hear the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men
and women of the South are sick enough of that phrase by this time, and
would like a change, but there is no immediate prospect of their getting
it.

The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery
style; wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average
correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a
trained hand; but the average correspondent hurls