THE SOUTHERN COLONEL.
Strolling, one morning in 1847, into a Virginia barroom, I accosted a little, puffy-looking man with "Major, can you"—whereupon, drawing up like a bantam, he snapped out, "You're mistaken; I am a colonel;" the colonel being in those days as peculiar to Southern society as the cross to southern constellations. I proceeded to anatomize this representative specimen.
Where he obtained his title no one knew. Some thought it hereditary, his grandfather having been a colonel in the Revolution; others supposed it to have been won by conducting the Mexican campaign in the columns of the Warrior, after the manner of modern editors; and a few ignorant souls believed he had been born with it in his mouth, instead of a silver spoon. As to the man himself, his great-great-grandmother was a Huguenot; his grandissimo-grandfather came over with Lafayette, and when he made affirmation on "my stars and garters," he was supposed to have reference to certain insignia of nobility, heirlooms in the family from the time of Charlemagne. He had not stature enough for tallness, nor bulk enough for breadth, in his figure resembled the wooden soldiers in the panorama of Bunker Hill, who ran down hill at every fire without moving their legs, and, like a kangaroo, had small feet and head in proportion. He made his front hair into a curl, hanging over his nose, like an index finger, and signed his initials with astonishing flourish, G. B. A., usually rendered by the boys "Great Big Ayres." He spent the winter dormant, like a polar bear, and, in summer, like chaste Diana, followed the hunt, took his morals from Tom Paine, and was, as he said of himself, neither a good Christian nor a bad infidel. He entered Government service in his youth, got drunk, and had been in that condition ever since, varied by occasionally getting gloriously drunk. The only difference between him and a sot was drinking his liquors genteelly from his own cellar, and lying in bed when a sot lies in the gutter. When he was beastliest, he made frequent allusions to the cooling board, referring to a revel, in which, having covered himself with glory, he awoke from a dead drunk to find himself arrayed in his shroud, since which he has been in the habit of designating himself a resurrectionist. He sported an immense diamond, represented to be one of the honors awarded him by Government, and loaded himself with rings, chains, and charms, which gave him resemblance to the show figure in a jeweller's window. He had a passion for the drama, was forever posting to the city to inspect debutantes and prima donnas, was a connoisseur of women, and considered a young girl, who knew "the times that try men's souls" to be a quotation from Tom Paine, the most astonishing specimen that had ever come under his observation. He was the victim of scandal, and usually finished his anathemas on the village gossips by wishing that they were in "Father Abraham's bosom or some other old gentleman's." He attended all the fashionable soirees, and might generally be heard informing his friends that the next piece on the programme "is brandy smash and cocktails." He had a habit of mistaking his quotations, and had been known to declare, in his fits of drunken aberration, that he could say with John Quincy Adams, "I still live." At last accounts he had joined a rebel company, which mustered twelve guns and an officer for every private. A. Jack Stone.
The
Continental Monthly.
The readers of the Continental are aware of the important position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, or preserved itself so completely from the narrow influences of party or of faction. In times like the present, such a journal is either a power in the land or it is nothing. That the Continental is not the latter is abundantly evidenced by what it has done—by the reflection of its counsels in many important public events, and in the character and power of those who are its staunchest supporters.
Though but little more than a year has elapsed since the Continental was first established, it has during that time acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention to the following facts:
1. Of its political articles republished in pamphlet form, a single one has had, thus far, a circulation of one hundred and six thousand copies.
2. From its literary department, a single serial novel, "Among the Pines," has, within a very few months, sold nearly thirty-five thousand copies. Two other series of its literary articles have also been republished in book form, while the first portion of a third is already in press.