“Who’s your man for President?” my interlocutor continued, rather roughly.

I had heard in conversation, without giving the fact much attention, that an election for President was to take place in a few days.  These struggles of commonplace individuals for the privilege of residing in a vulgar town like Washington were without interest to me.  So I answered,—­

“Oh, any of them.  They are all alike to me.”

“You don’t mean to say,” here another of the party loudly broke in, “that Breckenridge and Lincoln are the same to you?”

The young man wore long hair and a black dress-coat, though it was morning.  His voice was nasal, and his manner intrusive.  I crushed him with a languid “Yes.”  He was evidently abashed, and covered his confusion by lighting a cigar and smoking it with the lighted end in his mouth.  This is a habit of many persons in the South, who hence are called Fire-Eaters.

Mellasys Plickaman here changed the subject to horses, which I do understand, and my visitors presently departed.

  “How happily the days of Thalaba went by!”

as the poet has it.  My Saccharissa and myself are both persons of a romantic and dreamy nature.  Often for hours we would sit and gaze upon each other with only occasional interjections,—­“How warm!” “How sleepy!” “Is it not almost time for lunch?” As Saccharissa was not in herself a beautiful object, I accustomed myself to see her merely as a representative of value.  Her yellowish complexion helped me in imagining her, as it were, a golden image which might be cut up and melted down.  I used to fancy her dresses as made of certificates of stock, and her ribbons as strips of coupons.  Thus she was always an agreeable spectacle.

So time flew, and the sun of the sixth of November gleamed across the scaly backs of the alligators of Bayou La Farouche.

In three days I was to be made happy with the possession of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) on the nail,—­excuse the homely expression,—­great expectations for the future, and the hand of my Saccharissa.

For these I exchanged the name and social position of a Chylde, and my own, I trust, not unattractive person.

I deemed that I gave myself away dirt-cheap,—­excuse again the colloquialism; the transaction seems to require such a phrase,—­for there is no doubt that Mr. Mellasys was greatly objectionable.  It was certainly very illogical; but his neighbors who owned slaves insisted upon turning up their noses at Mellasys, because he still kept up his slave-pen on Touchpitchalas Street, New Orleans.  Besides,—­and here again the want of logic seems to culminate into rank absurdity,—­he was viewed with a purely sentimental abhorrence by some, because he had precluded a reclaimed fugitive from repeating his evasion by roasting the soles of his feet before a fire until the fellow actually died.  The fact, of coarse, was unpleasant, and the loss considerable,—­a