From these chapters all about men I return with pleasure to my young lady, rebel though she is. Before she had been twenty-four hours in New Orleans she discovered that it was by no means so delightful a place as of old, and she had become quite indignant at the federals, to whom she attributed all this gloom and desolation. Why not? Adam and Eve were well enough until the angel of the Lord drove them out of Paradise. The felon has no unusual troubles, so far as he can see, except those which are raised for him by the malignity of judges and the sheriff. Miss Ravenel was informed by the few citizens whom she met, that New Orleans was doing bravely until the United States Government illegally blocked up the river, and then piratically seized the city, frightening away its inhabitants and paralyzing its business and nullifying its prosperity. One old gentleman assured her that Farragut and Butler had behaved in the most unconstitutional manner. At all events somebody had spoiled the gayety of the place, and she was quite miserable and even pettish about it.

"Isn't it dreadful!" she said, bursting into tears as she threw herself into the arms of her aunt, Mrs. Larue, who, occupying the next house, had rushed in to receive the restored exile.

She had few sympathies with this relation, and never before felt a desire to overflow into her bosom; but any face which had been familiar to her in the happy by-gone times was a passport to her sympathies in this hour of affliction.

"C'est effrayant," replied Mrs. Larue. "But you are out of fashion to weep. We have given over that feminine weakness, ma chÈre. That fountain is dry. The inhumanities of these Yankee Vandals have driven us into a despair too profound for tears. We do not flatter Beast Butler with a sob."

Although she talked so strongly she did not seem more than half in earnest. A half smile lurked around her lips of deep rose-color, and her bright, almond-shaped black eyes sparkled with interest rather than with passion. By the way, she was not a venerable personage, and not properly Lillie's aunt, but only the widow of the late Mrs. Ravenel's brother, not more than thirty-three years of age and still decidedly pretty. Her complexion was dark, pale and a little too thick, but it was relieved by the jet black of her regular eye-brows and of her masses of wavy hair. Her face was oval, her nose, straight, her lips thin but nicely modeled, her chin little and dimpled; her expression was generally gay and coquettish, but amazingly variable and capable of running through a vast gamut of sentiments, including affection, melancholy and piety. Though short she was well built, with a deep, healthy chest, splendid arms and finely turned ankles. She did not strike a careless observer as handsome, but she bore close examination with advantage. The Doctor instinctively suspected her; did not think her a safe woman to have about, although he could allege no overtly wicked act against her; and had brought up Lillie to be shy of her society. Nevertheless it was impossible just now to keep her at a distance, for he would probably be much away from home, and it was necessary to leave his daughter with some one.

In politics, if not in other things, Mrs. Larue was as double-faced as Janus. To undoubted secessionists she talked bitterly, coarsely, scandalously against the northerners. If advisable she could go on about Picayune Butler, Beast Butler, Traitor Farragut, Vandal Yankees, wooden-nutmeg heroes, mudsills, nasty tinkers, nigger-worshippers, amalgamationists, &c. &c. from nine o'clock in the morning when she got up, till midnight when she went to bed. At the same time she could call in a quiet way on the mayor or the commanding General to wheedle protection out of them by playing her fine eyes and smiling and flattering. Knowing the bad social repute of the Ravenels as Unionists, she would not invite them into her own roomy house; but she was pleased to have them in their own dwelling next door, because they might at a pinch serve her as friends at the Butler court. On the principle of justice to Satan, I must say that she was no fair sample of the proud and stiff-necked slaveholding aristocracy of Louisiana. Neither was she one of the patriotic and puritan few who shared the Doctor's sympathies and principles. As she came of an old French Creole family, and her husband had been a lawyer of note and an ultra southern politician, she belonged, like the Ravenels, to the patrician order of New Orleans, only that she was counted among the SoulÉ set, while her relatives had gone over to the Barker faction. She had not been reduced to beggary by the advent of the Yankees; her estate was not in the now worthless investments of negroes, plantations, steamboats, or railroads, but in bank stock; and the New Orleans banks, though robbed of their specie by the flying Lovell, still made their paper pass and commanded a market for their shares. But Mrs. Larue was disturbed lest she might in some unforeseen manner follow the general rush to ruin; and thus, in respect to the Vandal invaders, she was at once a little timorous and a little savage.

The conversation between niece and youthful aunt was interrupted by a call from Mrs. and Miss Langdon, two stern, thin, pale ladies in black, without hoops, highly aristocratic and inexorably rebellious. They started when they saw the young lady; then recovered themselves and looked on her with unacquainted eyes. Miss Larue made haste, smiling inwardly, to introduce her cousin Miss Ravenel.

Ah, indeed, Miss Ravenel! They remembered having met Miss Ravenel formerly. But really they had not expected to see her in New Orleans. They supposed that she had taken up her residence at the north with her father.

Lillie trembled with mortification and colored with anger. She felt with a shock that sentence of social ostracism had been passed upon her because of her father's fidelity to the Union. Was this the reward that her love for her native city, her defence of Louisiana in the midst of Yankee-land, had deserved? Was she to be ignored, cut, satirized, because she was her father's daughter? She rebelled in spirit against such injustice and cruelty, and remained silent, simply expressing her feelings by a haughty bow. She disdained to enter upon any self-defence; she perceived that she could not, without passing judgment upon her much adored papa; and finally she knew that she was too tremulous to speak with good effect. The Langdons and Mrs. Larue proceeded to discuss affairs political; metaphorically tying Beast Butler to a flaming stake and performing a scalp dance around it, making a drinking cup of his skull, quaffing from it refreshing draughts of Yankee blood. Lillie remembered that, disagreeably loyal as the New Boston ladies were, she had not heard from their lips any such conversational atrocities. She did not sympathize much when Mrs. Langdon entered on a lyrical recital of her own wrongs and sorrows. She was sorry, indeed, to hear that young Fred Langdon had been killed at Fort Jackson; but then the mother expressed such a squaw-like fury for revenge as quite shocked and rather disgusted our heroine; and moreover she could not forget how coolly she had been treated merely because she was her dear father's daughter. She actually felt inclined to laugh satirically when the two visitors proceeded to relate jointly and with a species of solemn ferocity how they had that morning snubbed a Yankee officer.

"The brute got up and offered us his seat in the cars. I didn't look at him. Neither of us looked at him. I said—we both said—'We accept nothing from Yankees.' I remained—we both remained—standing."

Such was the mild substance of the narrative, but it was horrible in the telling, with fierce little hisses and glares, sticking out from it like quills of the fretful porcupine. Miss Ravenel did not sympathize with the conduct of the fair snubbers, and I fear also that she desired to make them feel uncomfortable.

"Really," she observed, "I think it was right civil in him to give up his seat. I didn't know that they were so polite. I thought they treated the citizens with all sorts of indignities."

To this the Langdons vouchsafed no reply except by rising and taking their departure.

"Good-day, Miss Ravenel," they said. "So surprised ever to have seen you in New Orleans again!"

Nor did they ask her to visit them, as they very urgently did Mrs. Larue. It seemed likely to Lillie that she would not find life in New Orleans so pleasant as she had expected. Half her old friends had disappeared, and the other half had turned to enemies. She was to be cut in the street, to be glared at in church, to be sneered at in the parlor, to be put on the defensive, to be obliged to fight for herself and her father. Her temper rose at the thought of such undeserved hardness, and she felt that if it continued long she should turn loyal for very spite.

Doctor Ravenel, returning from his interview with Colburne, met the Langdon ladies in the hall, and, although they hardly nodded, waited on them to the outer door with his habitual politeness. Lillie caught a glimpse of this from the parlor, and was infuriated by their incivility and his lack of resentment.

"Didn't they speak to you, papa?" she cried, running to him. "Then I would have let them find their own way out. What are you so patient for?"

"My dear, I am merely following the Christian example set me by these low Yankees whom we all hate so," said papa, smiling. "I have seen a couple of officers shamefully insulted to-day by a woman who calls herself a lady. They returned not a word, not even a look of retaliation."

"Yes, but—" replied Lillie, and after a moment's hesitation, concluded, "I wouldn't stand it."

"We must have some consideration, too, for people who have lost relatives, lost property, lost all, however their folly may have deserved punishment."

"Havn't we lost property?" snapped the young lady.

"Do you ask for the sake of argument, or for information?"

"Well—I should really like to know—yes, for information," said Lillie, deciding to give up the argument, which was likely to be perplexing to a person who had feelings on both sides.

"Our railroad property," stated the Doctor, "won't be worth much until it is recovered from the hands of the rebels."

"But that is nearly all our property."

"Except this house."

"Yes, except the house. But how are we to live in the house without money?"

"My dear, let us trust God to provide. I hope to be so guided as to discover something to do. I have found a friend to-day. Captain Colburne will be here this evening."

"Oh! will he?" said the young lady, blushing with pleasure.

It would be delightful to see any amicable visage in this city of enemies; and moreover she had never disputed that Captain Colburne, though a Yankee, was gentlemanly and agreeable; she had even admitted that he was handsome, though not so handsome as Colonel Carter. Mrs. Larue was also gratified at the prospect of a male visitor. As Sam Weller might have phrased it, had he known the lady, a man was Mrs. Larue's "particular wanity." The kitchen department of the Ravenels not being yet organized, they dined that day with their relative. The meal over, they went to their own house, Lillie to attend to housekeeping duties, and the Doctor to forget all trouble in a box of minerals. Lillie's last words to Mrs. Larue had been, "You must spend the evening with us. This Captain Colburne is right pleasant."

"Is he? We will bring him over to the right side. When he gives up the blue uniform for the grey I shall adore him."

"I don't think he will change his coat easily."

In her own house she continued to think of the Captain's coat, and then of another coat, the same in color, but with two rows of buttons.

"Who did you see out, papa?" she asked presently.

"Who did I see out? Mr. Colburne, as I told you."

"Nobody else, papa?"

"I don't recollect," he said absent-mindedly, as he settled himself to a microscopic contemplation of a bit of ore.

"Don't wrinkle up your forehead so. I wish you wouldn't. It makes you look old enough to have come over with Christopher Columbus."

It was a part of her adoration of her father that she could not bear to see in him the least symptoms of increasing age.

"I don't think that I saw a single old acquaintance," said the Doctor, rubbing his head thoughtfully. "It is astonishing how the high and mighty ones have disappeared from this city, where they used to suppose that they defied the civilized world. The barbarians didn't know what the civilized world could do to them. The conceited braggadocia of New Orleans a year ago is a most comical reminiscence now, in the midst of its speechless terror and submission. One can't help thinking of frogs sitting around their own puddle and trying to fill the universe with their roarings. Some urchin throws a stone into the puddle. You see fifty pairs of legs twinkle in the air, and the uproar is followed by silence. It was just so here. The United States pitched Farragut and Butler into the puddle of secession, and all our political roarers dived out of sight. Many of them are still here, but they keep their noses under water. By the way, I did see two of my old students, Bradley and John Akers. Bradley told me that the rebel authorities maintained a pretence of victory until the last moment, probably in order to keep the populace quiet while they got themselves and their property out of the city. He was actually reading an official bulletin stating that the Yankee fleet had been sunk in passing the forts when he heard the bang, bang, bang of Farragut's cannonade at Chalmette. Akers was himself at Chalmette. He says that the Hartford came slowly around the bend below the fort with a most provoking composure. They immediately opened on her with all their artillery. She made no reply and began to turn. They thought she was about to run away, and hurrahed lustily. Suddenly, whang! crash! she sent her whole broadside into them. Akers says that not a man of them waited for a second salute; they started for the woods in a body at full speed; he never saw such running. Their heels twinkled like the heels of the frog that I spoke of."

"But they made a good fight at the forts, papa."

"My dear, the devil makes a good fight against his Maker. But it small credit to him—it only proves his amazing stupidity."

"Papa," said Lillie after a few minutes of silence, "I think you might let those stones alone and take me out to walk."

"To-morrow, my child. It is nearly sunset now, and Mr. Colburne may come early."

A quarter of an hour later he laid aside his minerals and picked up his hat.

"Where are you going?" demanded Lillie eagerly and almost pettishly. It was a question that she never failed to put to him in that same semi-aggrieved tone every time that he essayed to leave her. She did not want him to go out unless she went in his company. If he would go, it was, "When will you come back?" and when he returned it was, "Where have you been?" and "Who did you see?" and "What did he say?" &c. &c. Never was a child so haunted by a pet sheep, or a handsome husband by a plain wife, as was this charming papa by his doating daughter.

"I am going to Dr. Elderkin's," said Ravenel. "I hear that he has been kind enough to store my electrical machine during our absence. He was out when I called on him this morning, but he was to be at home by six this evening. I am anxious to see the machine."

"Oh, papa, don't! How can you be so addled about your sciences! You are just like a little boy come home from a visit, and pulling over his playthings. Do let the machine go till to-morrow."

"My dear, consider how costly a plaything it is. I couldn't replace it for five hundred dollars."

"When will you come back?" demanded Lillie.

"By half-past seven at the latest. Bring in Mrs. Larue to help entertain Captain Colburne; and be sure to ask him to wait for me."

When he quitted the house Lillie went to the window and watched him until he was out of sight. She always had a childish aversion to being left alone, and solitude was now particularly objectionable to her, so forsaken did she feel in this city where she had once been so happy. After a time she remembered Captain Colburne and the social duties of a state of young ladyhood. She hurried to her room, lighted both gas-burners, turned their full luminosity on the mirror, loosened up the flossy waves of her blonde hair, tied on a pink ribbon-knot, and then a blue one, considered gravely as to which was the most becoming and finally took a profile view of the effect by means of a hand-glass, prinking and turning and adjusting her plumage like a canary. She was conscientiously aware, you perceive, of her obligation to put herself in suitable condition to please the eye of a visitor. She was not a learned woman, nor an unpleasantly strong-minded one, but an average young lady of good breeding—just such as most men fall in love with, who wanted social success, and depended for it upon pretty looks and pleasant ways. By the time that these private devoirs were accomplished Mrs. Larue entered, bearing marks of having given her person a similar amount of fastidious attention. Each of these ladies saw what the other had been about, but neither thought of being surprised or amused at it. To their minds such preparation was perfectly natural and womanly, and they would have deemed the absence of it a gross piece of untidiness and boorishness. Mrs. Larue put Lillie's blue ribbon-knot a little more off her forehead, and Lillie smoothed out an almost imperceptible wrinkle in Mrs. Larue's waist-belt. I am not positively sure, indeed, that waist-belts were then worn, but I am willing! to take my oath that some small office of the kind was rendered.

Of course it would be agreeable to have a scene here between Colburne and Miss Ravenel; some burning words to tell, some thrilling looks to describe, such as might show how they stood with regard to each other—something which would visibly advance both these young persons' heart-histories. But they behaved in a disappointingly well-bred manner, and entirely refrained from turning their feelings wrong side outwards. With the exception of Miss Ravenel's inveterate blush and of a slightly unnatural rapidity of utterance in Captain Colburne, they met like a young lady and gentleman who were on excellent terms, and had not seen each other for a month or two. This is not the way that heroes and heroines meet on the boards or in some romances; but in actual human society they frequently balk our expectations in just this manner. Melo-dramatically considered real life is frequently a failure.

"You don't know how pleasant it is to me to meet you and your father," said Colburne. "It seems like New Boston over again."

The time during which he had known the Ravenels at New Boston was now a pasture of very delightful things to his memory.

"It is pleasant to me because it seems like New Orleans," laughed Miss Lillie. "No, not much like New Orleans, either," she added. "It used to be so gay and amusing! You have made an awfully sad place of it with your patriotic invasion."

"It is bad to take medicine," he replied. "But it is better to take it than to stay sick. If you will have the self-denial to live ten years longer, you will see New Orleans more prosperous and lively than ever."

"I shan't like it so well. We shall be nobodies. Our old friends will be driven out, and there will be a new set who won't know us."

"That depends on yourselves. They will be glad to know you, if you will let them. I understand that the Napoleonic aristocracy courts the old out-of-place oligarchy of the Faubourg St. Germain. It will be like that here, I presume."

Mrs. Larue had at first remained silent, playing off a pretty little game of shyness; but seeing that the young people had nothing special to say to each other, she gave way to her sociable instincts and joined in the conversation.

"Captain Colburne, I will promise to live the ten years," she said. "I want to see New Orleans a metropolis. We have failed. You shall succeed; and I will admire your success."

The patriotic young soldier looked frankly gratified. He concluded that the lady was one of the far-famed Unionists of the South, a race then really about as extinct as the dodo, but devoutly believed in by the sanguine masses of the North, and of which our officers at New Orleans were consequently much in search. He began to talk gaily, pushing his hair up as usual when in good spirits, and laughing heartily at the slightest approach to wit, whether made by himself or another. Some people thought that Mr. Colburne laughed too much for thorough good breeding.

"I feel quite weighted by what you expect," he said. "I want to go to work immediately and build a brick and plaster State-house like ours in New Boston. I suppose every metropolis must have a State-house. But you mustn't expect too much of me; you mustn't watch me too close. I shall want to sleep occasionally in the ten years."

"We shall look to see you here from time to time," rejoined Mrs. Larue.

"You may be sure that I shan't forget that. There are other reasons for it besides my admiration for your loyal sentiments," said Colburne, attempting a double-shotted compliment, one projectile for each lady.

At that imputation of loyal sentiments Lillie could hardly restrain a laugh; but Mrs. Larue, not in the least disconcerted, bowed and smiled graciously.

"I am sorry to say," he continued, "that most of the ladies of New Orleans seem to regard us with a perfect hatred. When I pass them in the street they draw themselves aside in such a way that I look in the first attainable mirror to see if I have the small-pox. They are dreadfully sensitive to the presence of Yankees. They remind me of the catarrhal gentleman who sneezed every time an ice-cart drove by his house. Seriously they abuse us. I was dreadfully set down by a couple of women in black this morning. They entered a street car in which I was. There were several citizens present, but not one of them offered to give up his place. I rose and offered them mine. They no more took it than if they knew that I had scalped all their relatives. They surveyed me from head to foot with a lofty scorn which made them seem fifty feet high and fifty years old to my terrified optics. They hissed out, 'We accept nothing from Yankees,' and remained standing. The hiss would have done honor to Rachel or to the geese who saved Rome."

The two listeners laughed and exchanged a glance of comprehension.

"Offer them your hand and heart, and see if they won't accept something from a Yankee," said Mrs. Larue.

Colburne looked a trifle disconcerted, and because he did so Miss Ravenel blushed. In both these young persons there was a susceptibility, a promptness to take alarm with regard to hymenial subjects which indicated at least that they considered themselves old enough to marry each other or somebody, whether the event would ever happen or not.

"I suppose Miss Ravenel thinks I was served perfectly right," observed Colburne. "If I see her standing in a street car and offer her my seat, I suppose she will say something crushing."

He preferred, you see, to talk apropos of Miss Ravenel, rather than of Mrs. Larue or the Langdons.

"Please don't fail to try me," observed Lillie. "I hate to stand up unless it is to dance."

As Colburne had not been permitted to learn dancing in his younger days, and had felt ashamed to undertake it in what seemed to him his present fullness of years, he had nothing to say on the new idea suggested. The speech even made him feel a little uneasy: it sounded like an implication that Miss Ravenel preferred men who danced to men who did not: so fastidiously jealous and sensitive are people who are ever so slightly in love.

In this wandering and superficial way the conversation rippled along for nearly an hour. Colburne had been nonplussed from the beginning by not finding his young lady alone, and not being able therefore to say to her at least a few of the affecting things which were in the bottom of his heart. He had arrived at the house full of pleasant emotion, believing that he should certainly overflow with warm expressions of friendship if he did not absolutely pour forth a torrent of passionate affection. Mrs. Larue had dropped among his agreeable bubbles of expectation like a piece of ice into a goblet of champagne, taking the life and effervescence out of the generous fluid. He was occupied, not so much in talking or listening, as in cogitating how he could bring the conversation into congeniality with his own feelings. By the way, if he had found Miss Ravenel alone, I doubt whether he would have dared say any thing to her of a startling nature. He over-estimated her and was afraid of her; he under-estimated himself and was too modest.

Lillie had repeatedly wondered to herself why her father did not come. At last she looked at her watch and exclaimed with anxious astonishment, "Half past eight! Why, Victorine, where can papa be?"

"At Doctor Elderkin's without doubt. Once that two men commence on the politics they know not how to finish."

"I don't believe it," said the girl with the unreasonableness common to affectionate people when they are anxious about the person they like. "I don't believe he is staying there so long. I am afraid something has happened to him. He said he would certainly be back by half past seven. He relied on seeing Captain Colburne. I really am very anxious. The city is in such a dreadful state!"

"I will go and inquire for him," offered Colburne. "Where is Doctor Elderkin's?"

"Oh, my dear Captain! don't think of it," objected Mrs. Larue. "You, a federal officer, you would really be in danger in the streets at night, in this unguarded part of the city. You would certainly catch harm from our canaille. Re-assure yourself, cousin Lillie. Your father, a citizen, is in no peril."

Mrs. Larue really believed that the Doctor ran little risk, but her main object in talking was to start an interest between herself and the young officer. He smiled at the idea of his being attacked, and, disregarding the aunt, looked to the niece for orders. Miss Ravenel thought that he hesitated through fear of the canaille and gave him a glance of impatience bordering disagreeably close on anger. Smarting under the injustice of this look he said quietly, "I will bring you some news before long," inquired the way to the Elderkin house, and went out. At the first turning he came upon a man sitting on a flight of front-door steps, and wiping from his face with his handkerchief something which showed like blood in the gaslight.

"Is that you, Doctor?" he said. "Are you hurt? What has happened?"

"I have been struck.—Some blackguard struck me.—With a bludgeon, I think."

Colburne picked up his hat, aided in bandaging a cut on the forehead, and offered his arm.

"It doesn't look very bad, does it?" said Ravenel. "I thought not. My hat broke the force of the blow. But still it prostrated me. I am really very much obliged to you."

"Have you any idea who it was?"

"Not the least. Oh, it's only an ordinary New Orleans salutation. I knew I was in New Orleans when I was hit, just as the shipwrecked man knew he was in a Christian country when he saw a gallows."

"You take it very coolly, sir. You would make a good soldier."

"I belong in the city. It is one of our pretty ways to brain people by surprise. I never had it happen to me before, but I have always contemplated the possibility of it. I wasn't in the least astonished. How lucky I had on that deformity of civilization, a stiff beaver! I will wear nothing but beavers henceforward. I swear allegiance to them, as Baillie Jarvie did to guid braidcloth. A brass helmet would be still better. Somebody ought to get up a dress hat of aluminum for the New Orleans market."

"Oh, papa!" screamed Lillie, when she saw him enter on Colburne's arm, his hat smashed, his face pale, and a streak of half-wiped blood down the bridge of his nose. She was the whitest of the two, and needed the most attention for a minute. Mrs. Larue excited Colburne's admiration by the cool efficiency with which she exerted herself—bringing water, sponges and bandages, washing the cut, binding it up artistically, and finishing the treatment with a glass of sherry. Her late husband used to be brought home occasionally in similar condition, except that he took his sherry, and a great deal of it too, in advance.

"It was one of those detestable soldiers," exclaimed Lillie.

"No, my dear," said the Doctor. "It was one of our own excellent people. They are so ardent and impulsive, you know. They have the southern heart, always fired up. It was some old acquaintance, you may depend, although I did not recognize him. As he struck me he said, 'Take that, you Federal spy.' He added an epithet that I don't care to repeat, not believing that it applies to me. I think he would have renewed the attack but for the approach of some one, probably Captain Colburne. You owe him a word of thanks, Lillie, particularly after what you have said about soldiers."

The young lady held out her hand to the Captain with an impulse of gratitude and compunction. He took it, and could not resist the temptation of stooping and kissing it, whereupon her white face flushed instantaneously to a crimson. Mrs. Larue smiled knowingly and said, "That is very French, Captain; you will do admirably for New Orleans."

"He doesn't know all the pretty manners and customs of the place," remarked the Doctor, who was not evidently displeased at the kiss. "He hasn't yet learned to knock down elderly gentlemen because they disagree with him in politics. They are awfully behind-hand at the North, Mrs. Larue, in those social graces. The mudsill Sumner was too unpolished to think of clubbing the brains out of the gentleman Brooks. He boorishly undertook to settle a question of right and justice by argument."

"You must'nt talk so much, papa," urged Lillie. "You ought to go to bed."

Colburne bade them good evening, but on reaching the door stopped and said, "Do you feel safe here?"

Lillie looked grateful and wishful, as though she would have liked a guard; but the Doctor answered, "Oh, perfectly safe, as far as concerns that fellow. He ran off too much frightened to attempt any thing more at present. So much obliged to you!"

Nevertheless, a patrol of the Tenth Barataria did arrive in the vicinity of the Ravenel mansion during the night, and scoured the streets till daybreak, arresting every man who carried a cane and could not give a good account of himself. In a general way, New Orleans was a safer place in these times than it had been before since it was a village. I may as well say here that the perpetrator of this assault was not discovered, and that the adventure had no results except a day or two of headache to the Doctor, and a considerable progress in the conversion of Miss Ravenel from the doctrine of state sovereignty. Women, especially warm-hearted women offended in the persons of those whom they love, are so terribly illogical! If Mr. Secretary Seward, with all his constitutional lore and persuasive eloquence, had argued with her for three weeks, he could not have converted her; but the moment a southern ruffian knocked her father on the head, she began to see that secession was indefensible, and that the American Union ought to be preserved.

"It was a mere sporadic outbreak of our local light-heartedness," observed Ravenel, speaking of the outrage. "The man had no designs—no permanent malice. He merely took advantage of a charming opportunity. He saw a loyal head within reach of his bludgeon, and he instinctively made a clutch at it. The finest gentlemen of the city would have done as much under the same temptation."