"I should like to know your husband, madam."
"Well, sir; if you've got plenty of money, he will be glad to make your acquaintance."
"Does he ever go home?"
"Lord bless you, yes! He always comes home at one o'clock in the morning, after he gets through dealing faro. He has not missed a single night since we were married—going on five years. We own a farm in this vicinity, and if business continues good with him next year we shall retire to it, and never live in the city again."
All the following day I journeyed through deep forests of heavy drooping foliage, with pendent tufts of gray Spanish moss. The beautiful Cherokee rose everywhere trailed its long arms of vivid green; all the woods were decked with the yellow flowers of the sassafras and the white blossoms of the dogwood and the wild plum. Our road stretched out in long perspective through great Louisiana everglades, where the grass was four feet in hight and the water ten or twelve inches deep.
Feeling Toward President Lincoln.
It was the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. One of our passengers remarked:
"I hope to God he will be killed before he has time to take the oath!"
Another said:
"I have wagered a new hat that neither he nor Hamlin will ever live to be inaugurated."