port has it. We never know much, you see, about these common people.
They are a sort of trash we can make nothing of, and they get terribly
low now and then." Madame Montford's swelling breast heaves, her
countenance wears an air of melancholy; again she nervously lays aside
the cloud-like skirts of her brocade dress. "Have you not," she
inquires, fretting her jewelled fingers and displaying the massive gold
bracelets that clasp her wrists, "some stronger evidence of her death?"
Mr. Snivel says he has none but what he gathered from the negroes and
poor mechanics, who live in the by-lanes of the city. There is little
dependence, however, to be placed in such reports. Madame, with an air
of composure, rises from her chair, and paces twice or thrice across the
room, seemingly in deep study. "Something," she speaks, stopping
suddenly in one of her sallies--"something (I do not know what it is)
tells me she yet lives: that this is the child we see, living an
abandoned life."

"As I was going on to say, Madame," pursues Mr. Snivel, with great
blandness of manner, "when our white trash get to living with our
negroes they are as well as dead. One never knows what comes of them
after that. Being always ready to do a bit of a good turn, as you know,
I looked in at Sam Wiley's cabin. Sam Wiley is a negro of some
respectability, and generally has an eye to what becomes of these white
wretches. I don't--I assure you I don't, Madame--look into these places
except on professional business. Sam, after making inquiry among his
neighbors--our colored population view these people with no very good
opinion, when they get down in the world--said he thought she had found
her way through the gates of the poor man's graveyard."

"Poor man's graveyard!" repeats Madame Montford, again resuming her
chair.

"Exactly! We have to distinguish between people of position and those
white mechanics who come here from the North, get down in the world, and
then die. We can't sell this sort of people, you see. No keeping their
morals straight without you can. However, this is not to the point. (Mr.
Solomon Snivel keeps his eyes intently fixed upon the lady.)

"I sought out the old Sexton, a stupid old cove enough. He had neither
names on his record nor graves that answered the purpose. In a legal
sense, Madame, this would not be valid testimony, for this old cove
being only too glad to get rid of our poor, and the fees into his
pocket, is not very parti