ly respectable and very
authentic old "Courier," a line or two, in which the fashionable world
was thrown into a flutter by the announcement that Prince Grouski and
his wealthy bride left yesterday, _en route_ for Europe. This bit of
gossip the "New York Herald" caught up and duly itemised, for the
benefit of its upper-ten readers, who, as may be easily imagined, were
all on tip-toe to know the address of visitors so distinguished, and
leave cards.

Mrs. Swiggs has (we must return to her mission) scarcely set foot on
shore, when, thanks to a little-headed corporation, she is fairly set
upon by a dozen or more villanous hack-drivers, each dangling his whip
in her face, to the no small danger of her bonnet and spectacles. They
jostle her, utter vile imprecations, dispute for the right of carrying
her, each in his turn offering to do it a shilling less. Lady Swiggs is
indeed an important individual in the hands of the hack-drivers, and by
them, in a fair way of being torn to pieces. She wonders they do not
recognize her as a distinguished person, from the chivalric State of
South Carolina. The captain is engaged with his ship, passengers are
hurrying ashore, too anxious to escape the confinement of the cabin;
every one seems in haste to leave her, no one offers to protect her from
the clutches of those who threaten to tear her into precious pieces. She
sighs for Sister Slocum, for Mr. Hadger, for any one kind enough to
raise a friendly voice in her behalf. Now one has got her black box,
another her corpulent carpet-bag--a third exults in a victory over her
band-box. Fain would she give up her mission in disgust, return to the
more aristocratic atmosphere of Charleston, and leave the heathen to his
fate. All this might have been avoided had Sister Slocum sent her
carriage. She will stick by her black-box, nevertheless. So into the
carriage with it she gets, much discomfited. The driver says he would
drive to the Mayor's office "and 'ave them ar two coves what's got the
corpulent carpet-bag and the band-box, seed after, if it wern't that His
Honor never knows anything he ought to know, and is sure to do nothing.
They'll turn up, Mam, I don't doubt," says the man, "but it's next to
los'in' on 'em, to go to the Mayor's office. Our whole corporation, Mam,
don't do nothin' but eats oysters, drinks whiskey, and makes
presidents;--them's what they do, Marm." Lady Swiggs says what a pity so
great a city was not blessed with a bigge