ll of virtue and nobility!"

The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments,
which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that
interior lives with me to this day; and I grow faint with the memory of
that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncovered, and at last
the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes.

Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But,
whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am
certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and
still live!

When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I
had been to college; I had studied Burke's "Peerage"; I had been once to
New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact station in noble
British life to which that suit of clothes belonged. I could; I saw it
all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I dared not look my poor
deluded female relatives in the face.

"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big buttons
betoken?" cried all three.

"_It is a suit of servant's livery!_" gasped I, and fell back with a
shudder.

That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful
garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there, perturbed
body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!

"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"

UP THE ST. MARY'S.

If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal
Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister. If not in all respects the
ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and
as black as our good-looking Color-Sergeant, but more heavily built and
with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more
meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the
spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and
accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond
all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have
talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who
could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep
exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more
thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its
social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him
nothing, and he taught me much.