[My!  Was this Rob Styles?—­This mustached and stately figure?-A slim enough cub, in my time.  How he has improved in comeliness in five-and-twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these musings, I said aloud—­

’I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn’t have done much good, because they could come back again right away.’

’If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn’t talk like that.  You dredge an alligator once and he’s convinced. It’s the last you hear of him.  He wouldn’t come back for pie.  If there’s one thing that an alligator is more down on than another, it’s being dredged.  Besides, they were not simply shoved out of the way; the most of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold; and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the Government works.’

‘What for?’

’Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides.  All the Government shoes are made of alligator hide.  It makes the best shoes in the world.  They last five years, and they won’t absorb water.  The alligator fishery is a Government monopoly.  All the alligators are Government property—­just like the live-oaks.  You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of treason—­lucky duck if they don’t hang you, too.  And they will, if you’re a Democrat.  The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you can’t touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and you’ve got to let him alone.’

‘Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?’

‘Oh, no! it hasn’t happened for years.’

‘Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?’

’Just for police duty—­nothing more.  They merely go up and down now and then.  The present generation of alligators know them as easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they break camp and go for the woods.’

After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein, and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of his chief favorite among this distinguished fleet—­and then adding—­

’That boat was the “Cyclone,”—­last trip she ever made—­she sunk, that very trip—­captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I struck.  He couldn’t ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of weather.  Why, he would make you fairly shudder.  He was the most scandalous liar!  I left him, finally; I couldn’t stand it.  The proverb says, “like master, like man;” and if you stay with that kind of a man, you’ll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live.  He paid first-class wages; but said I, What’s wages when