n twirls his hat.

The fair girl shakes her head and says, "she hopes never to need either.
But, tell me, Mr. Snivel, are you not the messenger of some one else?"
she continues.

"Well, I confess," he replies, with a bow, "its partly so and partly not
so. I came to put in one word for myself and two for the judge. Its no
breach of confidence to say he loves you to distraction. At home in any
court, you know, and stands well with the bar----"

"Love for me! He can have no love for me. I am but an outcast, tossed on
the sea of uncertainty; all bright to-day, all darkness to-morrow. Our
life is a stream of excitement, down which we sail quickly to a
miserable death. I know the doom, and feel the pang. But men do not love
us, and the world never regrets us. Go, tell him to forget me."

"Forget you? not he. Sent me to say he would meet you to-night. You are
at the house of Madame Flamingo, eh?"

"I am; and sorry am I that I am. Necessity has no choice."

"You have left Mulholland behind, eh? Never was a fit companion for you.
Can say that without offence. He is a New York rough, you know.
Charleston gentlemen have a holy dislike of such fellows."

"He has been good to me. Why should I forsake him for one who affects to
love me to-day, and will loathe me to-morrow? He has been my only true
friend. Heaven may smile on us some day, and give us enough to live a
life of virtue and love. As for the mystery that separates me from my
parents, that had better remain unsolved forever." As she says this,
they pass out of the great gate, and are on the road to the city.

A darker scene is being enacted in a different part of the city. A grim
old prison, its walls, like the state's dignity, tumbling down and going
to decay; its roof black with vegetating moss, and in a state of
dilapidation generally,--stands, and has stood for a century or more, on
the western outskirts of the city. We have a strange veneration for this
damp old prison, with its strange histories cut on its inner walls. It
has been threatening to tumble down one of these days, and it does not
say much for our civilization that we have let it stand. But the
question is asked, and by grave senators, if we pull it down, what shall
we do with our pick-pockets and poor debtors? We mix them nicely up
here, and throw in a thief for a messmate. What right has a poor debtor
to demand that the sovereign state of South Carolina make a distinction
between poverty and crime?