ely
wounded, but may survive.' He is now at home, slowly recovering. What he
saw and did while serving in Kentucky and Tennessee, I may at some
future time narrate to the reader.

In relating actual events, a writer cannot in all cases visit artistic
justice on each one of his characters; for, in real life, retribution
does not always appear to follow crime. But, whatever _appearances_ may
be, who is there that does not feel that virtue is ever its own reward,
and vice its own punishment? and what one of my readers would exchange
'a quiet conscience, void of offence toward God and toward man,' for the
princely fortune of John Hallet--who is still the great merchant, the
'exemplary citizen,' the 'honest man'?

LAST WORDS.

Whoever comes before the American people in a time of great _deeds_ like
this, with mere _words_, should have no idle story to tell. He should
have something to say; some fact to relate, or truth to communicate,
which may awaken his countrymen to a true estimate of their interests,
or a true sense of their duties.

The writer of these articles _has_ something to say; some facts to
relate which have not been told; some truths to communicate about
Southern life and society, which the public ought to know. Some of these
facts, gathered during sixteen years of intimate business and social
intercourse with the planters and merchants of the South, he has
endeavored to embody in this volume.

He has woven them into a story, but they are nevertheless facts, and
all, excepting one, occurred under his own observation. That one--the
death of old Jack--was communicated to him as a fact, by his friend, Dr.
W. H. Holcombe, of Waterproof, La., now an officer in the confederate
army.

The author does not mean to say that his story is true as a connected
whole. It is not. In it, persons are brought into intimate relations who
never had any connection in life; events are grouped together which
happened at widely different times; and incidents are described as
occurring in the vicinity of Newbern--the slave auction, for
instance--parts of which occurred in Alabama, parts in Georgia, and
parts in Louisiana. But all of the characters he has described _have_
lived, and all of the events he has related _have_ transpired. He would,
however, not have the reader believe that all he says of himself is
true. Some of it is; some of it is not. The story needed some one to
revolve around; and, as he began by using the pers