the politician-who, to please his fashionable wife, a northern lady of great beauty, has just moved from the country into the city, keeps up an unmeaning conversation.  In the lefthand corner, seated on an ottoman, and regarding the others as if a barrier were placed between them, are two men designated gamblers.  Your Southern gentleman is, with few exceptions, a votary of the exciting vice; but he who makes it his profession severs the thread that bound him to society.  And there sits not far from these members of the sporting fraternity, the tall, slender figure of a man, habited in the garb of a quaker.  He regards everything about him with the eye of a philosopher, has a flowing white beard, a mild, playful blue eye, a short but well-lined nose, a pale oval face, an evenly-cut mouth, and an amiable expression of countenance.  He intently watches every movement of the denizens, and should one accost him, he will answer in soft, friendly accents.  He seems known to Madame Flamingo, whom he regards with a mysterious demeanor, and addresses as does a father his child.  The old hostess gets no profit of his visits, for “he is only a moralist,” she says, and his name is Solon —­; and better people love him more as more they know him.

Madame Flamingo has returned, followed by a colored gentleman in bright livery, bearing on a silver tray two seductive bottles of the sparkling nectar, and sundry rich-cut goblets.  “There! there!” says the old hostess, pointing to the centre-table, upon which the colored man deposits them, and commences arranging some dozen glasses, as she prepares to extract the corks.  Now she fills the glasses with the effervescing beverage, which the waiter again places on the tray, and politely serves to the denizens, in whose glassy eyes, sallow faces, coarse, unbared arms and shoulders, is written the tale of their misery.  The judge drinks with the courtesan, touches glasses with the gambler, bows in compliment to the landlady, who reiterates that she keeps the most respectable house and the choicest wine.  The moralist shakes his head, and declines.

And while a dozen voices are pronouncing her beverage excellent, she turns suddenly and nervously to her massive, old-fashioned side-board, of carved walnut, and from the numerous cut glass that range grotesquely along its top, draws forth an aldermanic decanter, much broken.  Holding it up to the view of her votaries, and looking upon it with feelings of regret, “that,” she says, “is what I got, not many nights since, for kindly admitting one-I don’t know when I did such a thing before, mind ye!—­of the common sort of people.  I never have any other luck when I take pity on one who has got down hill.  I have often thought that the more kind I am the more ungrateful they upon whom I lavish my favors get.  You must treat the world just as it treats you-you must.”