use for. Hung on a little post, and over a pair of rather
suspicious-looking buckskin breeches, is a rusty helmet, which he
sincerely believes was worn by a knight of the days of William the
Conqueror. A little counter to the left staggers under a pile of musty
old books and mustier papers, all containing valuable matter relating to
the old Continentals, who, as he has it, were all Carolinians. (Dispute
this, and he will go right into a passion.) Resting like good-natured
policemen against this weary old counter are two sympathetic old
coffins, several second-hand crutches, and a quantity of much-neglected
wooden legs. These Mr. McArthur says are in great demand with our first
families. No one, except Mr. Soloman Snivel, knows better what the
chivalry stand in need of to prop up its declining dignity. His dirty
little shelves, too, are stuffed with those cheap uniforms the State so
grudgingly voted its unwilling volunteers during the Revolution.[1]
Tucked in here and there, at sixes and sevens, are the scarlet and blue
of several suits of cast-off theatrical wardrobe he got of Abbott, and
now loans for a small trifle to Madame Flamingo and the St. Cecilia
Society--the first, when she gives her very seductive _balmasques_; the
second, when distinguished foreigners with titles honor its costume
balls. As for Revolutionary cocked hats, epaulettes, plumes, and
holsters, he has enough to supply and send off, feeling as proud as
peacocks, every General and Colonel in the State--and their name, as
you ought to know, reader, is legion.

[Footnote 1: See Senator Sumner's speech in Congress on Plantation
manners.]

The stranger might, indeed, be deceived into the belief that Absalom
McArthur's curiosity shop was capable of furnishing accoutrements for
that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State
prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves,
(if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan
force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent,
and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a
model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we
have, in the very best nature of a modern historian, endeavored to
enlighten the barbarian world outside of South Carolina as to the
terrible consequences which might accrue to the Union did this noble
little army assume any other than a standing character. Now that