I deemed this scene a token that my engagement was absolutely terminated.

There was no longer any reason why I should degrade myself by remaining in this vulgar society.  I withdrew into the thickets of the adjoining wood and there for a time abandoned myself to melancholy reminiscences.

Presently I heard footsteps.  I turned and saw a black approaching, bearing the homely viand known as corn-dodger.  He offered it.  I accepted it as a tribute from the inferior race to the superior.

I recognized him as one whose fustigation had so revived my crapulous spirits in the morning.  He seemed to bear no malice.  Malignity is perhaps a mark of more highly developed character.  I, for example, possess it to a considerable degree.

The black led me to a lair in the wood.  He took my half-eagles from my tar.  He scraped and cleansed me by simple methods of which he had the secret.  He clothed me in rude garments.  Gunny-bag was, I think, the material.  He gave me his own shoes.  The heels were elongated; but this we remedied by a stuffing of leaves.  He conducted me toward the banks of Bayou La Farouche.

On our way, we were compelled to pass not far from the Mellasys mansion.  There was a sound of revelry.  It was night.  I crept cautiously up and peered into the window.

There stood the Reverend Onesimus Butterfut, since a prominent candidate for the archbishopric of the Southern Confederacy.  Saccharissa, more over-dressed than usual, and her cousin Mellasys Plickaman, somewhat unsteady with inebriation, stood before him.  He was pronouncing them man and wife,—­why not ogre and hag?

How fortunate was my escape!

As my negro guide would not listen to my proposal to set the Mellasys establishment on fire while the inmates slept, I followed him to the banks of the Bayou.  He provided me with abundant store of the homely food already alluded to.  He launched me in a vessel; known to some as a dug-out, to some as a gundalow.  His devotion was really touching.  It convinced me more profoundly than ever of the canine fidelity and semi-animal characteristics of his race.

I floated down the Bayou.  I was picked up by a cotton-ship in the Gulf.  I officiated as assistant to the cook on the homeward voyage.

At the urgent solicitation of my mother, I condescended, on my return, to accept a situation in my Uncle Bratley’s cracker-bakery.  The business is not aristocratic.  But what business is?  I cannot draw the line between the baker of hard tack—­such is the familiar term we employ—­and the seller of the material for our product, by the barrel or the cargo.  From the point of view of a Chylde, all avocations for the making of money seem degrading, and only the spending is dignified.

As my conduct during the Mellasys affair has been maligned and scoffed at by persons of crude views of what is comme il faut, I have drawn up this statement, confident that it will justify me to all of my order, which I need not state is distinctively that of the Aristocrat and the Gentleman.