he Union. While the Government at
Washington has shown the utmost forbearance, they have manifested the
greatest insolence, as well as disregard of the most sacred rights of
the Union. An Absalom the most willful and impetuous of his father's
family, and yet the most caressed and indulged, requites every debt of
parental kindness by seeking through treachery and the prostitution of
all his privileges to raise an insurrection in the household of David,
and turn away through craft the hearts of the people from their rightful
lord. So like Absalom, South-Carolina first unfurls the banner of
treason and war among the sister States, desperately resolved to secure
her selfish aggrandizement even at the price of the ruin of the country,
but like Absalom, also, she is destined to experience a reverse as
ignominious and as fatal.

_A STORY OF MEXICAN LIFE_

VIII.

'My neighbor gazed at the stranger with bewilderment, and remained
speechless. There was, nevertheless, nothing in his outward mien to give
rise to so much emotion. He was a robust and rather handsome fellow, of
about twenty-five, bold, swaggering, and free and easy in his
deportment--a perfect specimen of the race of half-breeds so common in
Mexico. His skin was swarthy, his features regular, and his beard
luxuriant and soft as silk. His eyes were large and black as sloes, his
teeth small, regular, and white as ivory, and his whole countenance,
when in repose, wore an expression which won confidence rather than
excited distrust. But when conversing, there was an indefinable
craftiness in his smile, and a peculiar cunning in the twinkle of his
eye, that often strikes the traveler in Mexico, as pervading all that
class who are accustomed to making excursions into the interior. His
costume, covered with dust, and torn in many places, led me to infer
that he had only just returned from some long journey.

'After waiting, with great politeness, for some few seconds, to allow
Arthur time to address him, and finding he waited in vain, the Mexican
opened the conversation:

''I fear your excellency will scold me for delaying so long on the road;
but how could I help it? I am more to be pitied than blamed--I lost
three horses--at monte--and if it had not been by good luck that the ace
turned up when I staked my saddle and bridle, I should not be here even
now; but the ace won; I bought a fresh horse--and here I am.'

''What success?' inquired Arthur, with a look of i