no restraints for the proper protection of good society.  But, Captain, their stock has a different origin, and the peculiarity which now marks our character may be traced to the offspring of early settlement.  We derived our character and sentiments from the Huguenots; they, from an uncharacterized class of coarse adventurers, whose honesty was tinctured with penal suspicion.  This, sir, accounts for the differences so marked in our character.”

The little fellow pressed this kind of conversation in the lobby of the theatre, and at the same time took the very particular pleasure of introducing the Captain to several of the young bloods, as he called them, while they walked to and from the boxes.  At length the Captain found himself in a perfect hornet’s nest, surrounded by vicious young secessionists, so perfectly nullified in the growth that they were all ready to shoulder muskets, pitchforks, and daggers, and to fire pistols at poor old Uncle Sam, if he should poke his nose in South Carolina.  The picture presented was that of an unruly set of children dictating their opinions to a hoary-headed old daddy-accusing him of pragmatism, and threatening, if he was twice as old, they’d whip him unless he did as they directed.  The knowledge of South Carolina’s power and South Carolina’s difficulties with the Federal Government he found so universally set forth as to form the atmosphere of conversation in the parlor, the public-house, the school and the bar-room, the lecture-room and the theatre.

The little man extended his invitation to a party of the bloods.  The Captain was taken by the arms in a kind of bond fellowship, and escorted into Baker’s eating-saloon, a place adjacent to the theatre, and, to a man unaccustomed to the things that are in Charleston, a very rowdy place.  This is considered by Charlestonians one of the finest places in the Southern country; where good suppers and secession (the all-engrossing subjects with Charles-tonians) form the only important element of conversation.  It may be set down as a fact, that among seven-tenths of the people of Charleston, the standard of a gentleman is measured according to his knowledge of secession and his ability to settle the question of hot suppers.  We say nothing of that vigorous patriotism so often manifested in a long string of fulsome toasts that disgrace the columns of the Mercury and Courier.

At Baker’s the place was literally crowded with all kinds and characters, graded from the honorable judge down to the pot-boy; a pot-pouri of courtesy and companionship only exhibited in England on the near approach of elections.  The reader may think this strange, but we can assure him that distinctions are strangely maintained; an exclusive arrogance being observed in private life, while a too frequent and general resort to bar-rooms has established plebeianism in public.  Voices were sounding at all parts of the counter, and for as many different voices as many