er and
brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life.
Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey,
Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as
the fancy of the brilliant editor of the _Examiner_ was apparently
changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither
played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational
excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so
willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where
the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest
the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family.

That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front
room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of
the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome
mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The
dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which
Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of "old
Memminger," that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury,
who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill.
Over the mantel in the bachelor's chamber hung a miniature on ivory,
"the most beautiful I have ever seen," said the doctor, an unknown
beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a
wondrously accomplished lady of title and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had
known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of
curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room,
whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head
and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon
the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the
necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel,
suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times
to buy one?" "---- it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive
answer.

On a second floor passage was an object which must have excited more
envy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capable
of arousing--a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars a
pound--the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of this
stately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinking
habit. A little room cut off from a passage in the third story wa