to the vindictiveness of a persecutor, whose unrelenting malignity was kept up during that long space of time.  It was merely a breach of limitation between merchants, the rights of which should be governed by commercial custom.  Shannon had, amassed about twenty thousand dollars by hard industry; his health was waning, and he resolved to retire with it to his native county.  The gem proved too glaring for the lynx eye of a “true Carolinian,” who persuaded him to invest his money in cotton.  Moved by flattering inducements, he authorized a factor to purchase for him upon certain restrictions, which, unfortunately for himself, were not drawn up with regard to legal enforcement-one of those singular instruments between a merchant and an inexperienced man which a professional quibbler can take advantage of.  Cotton was at the tip-top, and very soon Shannon was presented with an account of purchase, and draft so far beyond his limits, that he demurred, and rejected the purchase entirely; but some plot should be laid to entrap him.  The factor undertook the force game, notified him that the cotton was held subject to his order, and protested the draft for the appearance of straightforwardness.  Cotton shortly fell to the other extreme, the lot was “shoved up” for sale on Shannon’s account, Shannon was sued for the balance, held to bail, and in default committed to prison.  His confinement and endurance of it would form a strange chapter in the history of imprisonment for debt.  Carrying his money with him, he closed the door of his cell, and neither went out nor would allow any one but the priest to enter for more than three years; and for eleven years and seven months he paced the room upon a diagonal line from corner to corner, until he wore the first flooring, of two-and-a-quarter-inch pine, entirely through.

I might go on and tell of many others, whose poverty was well known, and yet suffered years of imprisonment for debt; but I find I have digressed.  I must relate an amusing affair which took place this morning between Manuel Pereira, the steward of the English brig Janson, which put into this port in distress, and the jailer.  He is the man about whom so much talk and little feeling has been enlisted—­a fine, well-made, generous-hearted Portuguese.  He is olive-complexioned—­as light as many of the Carolinians—­intelligent and obliging, and evidently unaccustomed to such treatment as he receives here.

Manuel appeared before the jailer’s office this morning with two junks of disgusting-looking meat, the neck-bones, tainted and bloody, in each hand.  His Portuguese ire was up.  “Mister Poulnot, what you call dis?  In South Carolina you feed man on him, ah?  In my country, ah yes! we feed him to dog.  What you call him?  May-be somethin’ what me no know him.  In South Carolina, prison sailor when he shipwreck, starve him on nosin’, den tell him eat this, ah!  I sails ’round ze world, but never savage man gives me like zat to eat!  No, I starve ’fore I eat him, be gar!  Zar, you take him,” said he, throwing the pieces of meat upon the floor in disdain.