The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South will smile at the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to such a full-blown, thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the colonel, who carries childish extravagances in his very dress; but he will judge hastily.  We have seen this gaudy efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with solid diamonds.  The careful economist North puts his superfluous thousands in government bonds, or gambles them away in Erie stocks, because he likes the increase of Jacob’s speckled sheep.  The Southerner invests his in diamonds because he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market value.  There is method, too, in the colonel’s associations, and all his acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable.

His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings his way to Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers.  He goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard manure, if possible, before February is over.  He follows the shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins to fail him.  He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in the local paper.  He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his opinions.  He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for deficient labor.  He buys “bull-tongues,” “cotton-shovels,” “fifteen-inch sweeps,” “twenty-inch sweeps,” “team-ploughs with seven-inch twisters,” and a “finishing sweep of twenty-six inches.”  He hears of other inventions, and orders them.  The South is flooded with a thousand quack contrivances now, about as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of nut-crackers; but the colonel buys them.  He is going to dispense with the hoe.  That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars are gone.  But he writes cheerfully.  It is his nature to be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his merchant—­and draws.  The labor gets worse and worse.  In the indolent summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals.  Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop.  Maybe the merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, but the colonel writes back assuring letters that it is only the grasshopper, and the grasshopper has helped more than hurt—­and draws.  Then possibly the army-worm comes sure enough, and cripples him.  But he keeps up his courage—­and draws.  The five thousand dollars appear to have been employed in digging or building a sluice through which a constant current of currency flows from the city to Rottenbottom and Millefleur.  The merchant has gone into bank, and the tide flows on.  At last the planter writes:  “The most magnificent crop ever raised on Red River, just waiting for the necessary hands to gather it in!” Of course the necessary sums are supplied, and at last the crop gets to market.  It finds the market low, and declining steadily week by week.  The banks begin to press:  money is tight, as it is now while I write.  The crop is sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning the house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel Beverage is bankrupt.