t from the shoulder, and
"split himself well," as the French phrase it, when he gave point, or
went back in guard. He was, in fact, a crack boxer, fencer, and gymnast.
Pugilism was the fashion with the young bloods of Gotham at that time,
especially such of them as had any tendency to politics: and among these
boys of nineteen, there were not a few who would have tackled a fancy
man in his prime, and at no great odds either, their great agility
making up for their want of downright strength. Travis's friend and
senior by one year, George Purcell (who afterwards served with credit as
a volunteer in the Mexican war, and ultimately became a judge in
California), had on one occasion, when threatened with the vengeance of
a stalwart Bowery boy, sought out the democratic champion in the very
midst of his personal and political friends, and challenged him to
single combat; which challenge being promptly accepted, he polished off
the young butcher in good style and short order--the other b'hoys, with
that love of fair play which honorably distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon
race all over the world, remaining impartial spectators of the fight.
Travis had never equalled this feat, but he _had_ seen a good deal of
low life and hard knocks on the sly, proper and fashionable as he always
appeared in public by daylight.

Now, on the morning of this very day, as we were saying, Travis, while
lounging up Broadway, suddenly encountered a youth of about his own age,
but a very different style and type. He was short and thickset,
swaggering, and almost sailor-like in his gait, and wore the usual dress
of the American snob playing gentleman--that is to say, a black
dress-coat and trousers, and a black satin vest. His ungloved right hand
sustained a walking-stick, which might, on a pinch, have done duty as a
bed-post; his left was buried in his trousers' pocket.

It was Travis's cousin, Lefferts Lloyd. Half Knickerbocker, half Welsh
in his extraction, he descended directly from some of the oldest
settlers of the island, and by rights, his should have been the
fashionable, and the Travises (who were altogether _novi homines_) the
unfashionable branch of the family. But fortune, or the taste of the
Lloyds themselves, had willed it otherwise; with equal means, they
resided in a region east of the Bowery, well nigh _terra incognita_ to
the set in which the Travises moved. Lefferts himself was very much one
of the people; he eschewed all vanities of