as they always are at sales, to attract the buyer.
I gave a groan at the thought of buying and
selling human hearts and brains; and to keep
down any more philanthropic groans (rather
dangerous demonstrations in the slave states),
I went to the bar, and called for a "corpse
reviver;" a medicinal and potent drink indeed
for persons troubled with philanthropic scruples.

The bar-keeper—who, in America, generally
asserts all the rights of a gentleman—leaning
across the marble counter, with a bunch of mint
in one hand and a tin cup full of the most
silvery and glittering ice in the other, begged
leave to introduce me to Mr. Quackenboss, a
cotton-planter of Bâton Rouge. We both took
off our felt hats and shook hands; for
Americans hate all cold formalities, and are generally
your friends or your enemies in a minute;
despising your philosophical indifferentists.

After "glasses round," a necessary commencement
of most American bar-room friendships,
my new friend invited me to walk with him to
Good Children-street, on the Pontchartrain-
road.

We walked off together. My new friend was
a pale-faced, brown-skinned person, with clear
hazel eyes, and a black fringe beard. He wore
a suit of black, and, over his black satin wrinkly
waistcoat, hung an enormous watch-chain that
resembled a gold bridle. With the exception of
this error in dress, and this extraordinary
infatuation for our modern melancholy and ugly
evening dress, which gave him the look of an owl
by daylight, Mr. Quackenboss was an amusing
and a wide-minded planter. He had been all over
South America, and had been for years in Liverpool.
He had deeply examined all the bearings
of the cotton question; he had studied the old
and new cotton-fields of England; and all the
bearings of the war upon our future supply;
he could explain to me the intentions of the
Southerners to trade direct with England, and
the prospects our Manchester men had of obtaining
cotton in sufficient quantities from India and
Australia.

But now we are at his house let me describe
it. It is not near the Hôtel de Ville and the
French quarter of the city; it is not near the
public gardens where the bananas cast forth
their great arching green leaves; no, it is quite
in the suburb, near the Second Bayou; a great
shapeless road, ankle deep in white dust, lies
before it, fringed by those loathsome open
drains that are the curse of New Orleans, and
the chief originators of the yellow fever. In
this road negro children roll and scramble, and
pigs rout and grunt. Before Mr. Quackenboss's
house there is a row of huge mangolia-trees, at
this time covered with tufts of pink and
scarlet flowers, which contrast prettily with the
small dark myrtle-green leaves. My hospitable
friend pushes open a wicket-gate, and we pass
up a garden-walk, and enter the cool verandah'd
house. Mrs. Quackenboss and the little
Quackenbosses are on a visit to Cuba, so we are alone.
My friend claps his hands, and a negro boy
appears, receives an order, and returns in a few
minutes with two bottles of German wine, a
bowl of sparkling ice, a box of cigars, and some
tumblers.

My friend gave a sigh of satisfaction, took up
with an air of reflection a feather fan of Mrs.
B.'s that lay on the table, spat three times at a
special knot on the floor, and, throwing his feet
over the back of a very high chair, began to
open the conversation on the subject of the
cotton supplies of England.

I asked Mr. Quackenboss if there were many
English cotton agents at that time in New
Orleans?

"A crowd—perfect crowd," said Mr. Quackenboss;
"and I reckon, if old Abe is left out in
the cold (this was before Abraham Lincoln's
election), as we Southerners hope he will be,
we Southern cotton men will have a good time
of it with the English trade. Let us once pass
a law to hang every darned Yankee (Northern
men are all called Yankees in the South), and
we New Orleaners, I tell you, mister, will have
a good time of it, with the great staple production
of that stupendous and chawing up river
the Mississippi."

I asked my enthusiastic cotton-planting friend
if he thought that the freedom of the South
would surely bring free trade.

"Sure as Sam Walker's in Memphis, we
shall get free trade, and send our own cotton to
England in our own ships, without any darned
Yankee setting finger on it, and cutting off half
our profits. Still, I don't say, mister, that the
Northerners ain't right in their way, for those
taxes of theirs on trade prevent foreign competition
with their own manufacturers; but we
producers have other views on these things, and all
we want is a good free market for our cotton to
tempt more purchasers. Perhaps you are not
aware that Mr. Rufus Stoat, one of the most
remarkable men of the present day, and at present
an actuary at No. 3, Opelousas-street, has given
it as his opinion that Louisiana cotton can be
sent from our levee in this very city to
Manchester, and brought back made up in prints,
cheaper than it now reaches us from the Northern
mills. This idea has fired our chivalrous and
en-lightened minds in the South—has fired our
minds—yes, sir."

I bowed and sipped my hock. My Southern
friend's theories were sanguine; but I made
allowances for the enthusiasm of election time.

"I fear, Mr. Quackenboss," said I, "that
your quarrel with the North is somewhat like
the nose falling out with the mouth in the old
fable. The South produces, the North
manufactures. You are husband and wife: whatever
form of government you have, your interests
must ever be the same. They starve without
your cotton; you pine without their hardware,
their prints, their luxuries of all kinds. You
must have customers, they must have raw
produce."

"No, siree, we shan't; we can do very well
without them. We can get all we want straight
from England; we want none of those cold
calculating Yankees' produce. We are the chivalry