us an undertaking. It matters not how carefully and discreetly he
perform the task, there will always be persons enough to question his
sincerity and cast suspicion upon his motives. What, I have already been
asked, was my motive for writing such a book as this? Why did I descend
into the repulsive haunts of the wretched and the gilded palaces of the
vicious for the material of a novel? My answer is in my book.

NEW YORK, _January 1st_, 1861.

AN OUTCAST.

CHAPTER I.

CHARLESTON.

This simple story commences on a November evening, in the autumn of
185-. Charleston and New York furnish me with the scenes and characters.

Our quaint old city has been in a disquiet mood for several weeks.
Yellow fever has scourged us through the autumn, and we have again taken
to scourging ourselves with secession fancies. The city has not looked
up for a month. Fear had driven our best society into the North, into
the mountains, into all the high places. Business men had nothing to do;
stately old mansions were in the care of faithful slaves, and there was
high carnival in the kitchen. Fear had shut up the churches, shut up the
law-courts, shut up society generally. There was nothing for lawyers to
do, and the buzzards found it lonely enough in the market-place. The
clergy were to be found at fashionable watering-places, and politicians
found comfort in cards and the country. Timid doctors had taken to their
heels, and were not to be found. Book-keepers and bank-clerks were on
Sullivan's Island. The poor suffered in the city, and the rich had not a
thought to give them. Grave-looking men gathered into little knots, at
street corners, and talked seriously of Death's banquet. Old negroes
gathered about the kitchen-table, and terrified themselves with tales of
death: timid ones could not be got to pass through streets where the
scourge raged fiercest. Mounted guardsmen patrolled the lonely streets
at night, their horses' hoofs sounding on the still air, like a solemn
warning through a deserted city.

Sisters of Mercy, in deep, dark garments, moved noiselessly along the
streets, by day and by night, searching out and ministering to the sick
and the dying. Like brave sentinels, they never deserted their posts.
The city government was in a state of torpor. The city government did
not know what to do. The city government never did know what to do. Four
hundred sick and dying lay languishing in the hospital. The city
governm