Time rolls! Mr. Perkins, a young lawyer, (formerly of Natchez, but who had removed to New Orleans,) comes North, and marries the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Potts, and they sail for Paris, where he discovers in her trunk the very letters that Dressel wrote her while at Mrs. Mitchell’s, in response to her “drop notes,” and also letters from Dressel that she had just received in Paris, which were enclosed in her mother’s letters from New York. Terrible scenes transpire, resembling those between Othello and Desdemona, and she flies from him in terror, and conceals herself in Paris, and writes to her father, who goes to Paris and accompanies her to America, when he immediately sends for us, and weeps in our presence, and deeply regrets that he had not adopted our advice, and driven Dressel into the street, who, with the imprudence of his own wife, in inclosing Dressel’s letters to his daughter in Paris, had plunged his family into irremediable ruin. Perkins returns and goes to the Irving House, at the corner of Chambers street and Broadway, where we had frequent interviews, when he cries like a little child, and denounces Mr. and Mrs. Potts, but defends the chastity of his wife, and regrets his passion and his furious anathema of her in Paris. The matter is thrown into the Courts, and Perkins employs Daniel Lord, William Kent, and Benjamin F. Butler, and Potts engages Wm. Curtis Noyes, Ogden Hoffman, and —— Staples, and both Perkins and Potts strive to induce us to testify in their favor, and because we peremptorily refused, and assured them we should disclose the truth on the stand, they dared not call the case for trial, lest our testimony would overwhelm both parties, and consign them to eternal odium and misery. Perkins obtained a divorce, and was elected to Congress, and married a Southern lady. Miss Potts remains single, and is a noble ornament of society. One of Mrs. Mitchell’s nieces was seduced by a monster, and had a child, and she soon became a prostitute, and her mother a lunatic. Julia Mitchell married a Southron, who professed great wealth, but proved to be a pauper, and a villain of the deepest calibre. Julia obtained a divorce, and married a Mr. Moffat, who was also supposed to be immensely affluent. Mrs. Mitchell died, and her other niece resides with Mrs. Julia Moffat. And thus ends the first Chapter of this mournful narrative.
O whence have we come?
And where shall we go?
And why are we here
To combat woe?
O come fair spirit
Through the air,
And tell us more
Of this affair.
Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1858.