“You must banish from your mind these despairing thoughts,” replies the young man, laying his right hand approvingly on Tom’s head.  “First, Tom,” he pursues, “be to yourself a friend; second, forget the error of your mother, and forgive her sending you here; and third, cut the house of Madame Flamingo, in which our chivalry are sure to get a shattering.  To be honest in temptation, Tom, is one of the noblest attributes of our nature; and to be capable of forming and maintaining a resolution to shake off the thraldom of vice, and to place oneself in the serener atmosphere of good society, is equally worthy of the highest commendation.”

Tom received this in silence, and seemed hesitating between what he conceived an imperative demand and the natural inclination of his passions.

“Give me your hand, and with it your honor-I know you yet retain the latent spark-and promise me you will lock up the cup—­”

“You’ll give a body a furlough, by the way of blowing off the fuddle he has on hand?”

“I do not withhold from you any discretionary indulgence that may bring relief—­”

Tom interrupts by saying, “My mother, you know!”

“I will see her, and plead with her on your behalf; and if she have a mother’s feelings I can overcome her prejudice.”

Tom says, despondingly, he has no home to go to.  It’s no use seeing his mother; she’s all dignity, and won’t let it up an inch.  “If I could only persuade her—­” Tom pauses here and shakes his head.

“Pledge me your honor you’ll from this day form a resolution to reform, Tom; and if I do not draw from your mother a reconciliation, I will seek a home for you elsewhere.”

“Well, there can’t be much harm in an effort, at all events; and here’s my hand, in sincerity.  But it won’t do to shut down until I get over this bit of a fog I’m now in.”  With child-like simplicity, Tom gives his hand to the young man, who, as old Spunyarn enters the cell to, as he says, get the latitude of his friend’s nerves, departs in search of Mrs. Swiggs.

Mrs. Swiggs is the stately old member of a crispy old family, that, like numerous other families in the State, seem to have outlived two chivalrous generations, fed upon aristocracy, and are dying out contemplating their own greatness.  Indeed, the Swiggs family, while it lived and enjoyed the glory of its name, was very like the Barnwell family of this day, who, one by one, die off with the very pardonable and very harmless belief that the world never can get along without the aid of South Carolina, it being the parthenon from which the outside world gets all its greatness.  Her leading and very warlike newspapers, (the people of these United States ought to know, if they do not already,) it was true, were editorialized, as it was politely called in the little State-militant, by a species of unreputationized Jew and Yankee; but this you should know-if you do not already, gentle reader-that it is only because such employments are regarded by the lofty-minded chivalry as of too vulgar a nature to claim a place in their attention.