"You 'pears to be sick, sah. Bettah take some fresh air, sah."
"Lost! Lost! Lost!" he cried. "Everything Lost!"
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE LITTLE PARTNER.
It was a lovely sunny afternoon, two days after the occurrence narrated in the preceding chapter. Canal Street was crowded with the wealth and beauty and fashion of the Crescent City. Fair-haired daughters of the North swept by in pleasing contrast to the black-eyed beauties of the far South. Men lounged through the crowd who looked like pictures from some old canvas; with dark, swarthy, oval faces, and eyes of midnight darkness. The delicate physique of the octoroon, the creamy tint of a still lighter-tainted blood, the voluptuous forms of the griff, the olive-hued creole, and the clear pink and white of the Anglo-Saxon southron, blended in an ever-moving, ever-shifting panorama of life that entranced the eye and bewildered the sense of the stranger within the city's gates.
A tall, square-shouldered, handsome young man floated along in the living stream. He was dressed in the height of fashion, yet with the pleasing restrictions of good taste and good sense. He strolled along with the easy careless step of one accustomed to seeing and being seen. Many were the admiring flashes dark voluptuous eyes cast upon him, many the smiles he received. But he paid but little heed to the homage. His face, though bronzed, was pale, and there was a weary, restless, unsatisfied look in his eye that illy comported with his bearing.
It was our friend, Benjamin Cleveland, rehabilitated, revamped, repolished, reset, rehumanized, and restored to society. So much for good clothes. Clothes do not make the man, but a man is unmade without them. They introduce him to society and keep him in it afterward. We like to rebel against their tyranny, and say contemptuous things about them, but we fear, honor, and obey them all the same. It is a pity he could not have clothed that restless, unsatisfied eye. For it but too plainly indicated that our hero's thoughts were not pleasant or satisfactory ones. Which indeed they were not, for at that identical moment Ben was wishing himself at the Hotel de Log, in the old livery of poverty and trampdom, and the old liberty of vagabondage. He sighed for the "foot-path." He longed to be a tramp again. His good clothes felt queer and uncomfortable. They were shackles upon his actions. He did not possess them, but they possessed him. In his rags he could have sat on the curbstone and taken a rest, with no one to give him particular notice. He dared not do it now. As a tatterdemalion he could have stuck his hands in his pockets, leaned against a lamppost with crossed legs and enjoyed the scene. Now—he was on exhibition himself. The first night he attempted to sleep in a bed he laid awake a long time, and ultimately had to get up and roll himself in a blanket on the floor, with the washbasin for a pillow, before sleep would come to him. He had no hopes, no aspirations, no promptings to be or to do. He seriously thought of resuming tramping as a profession. A panacea for a mind diseased. A balm for the wounds of his disappointments. A trunk full of his clothing had been forwarded to New Orleans, and his wardrobe was satisfactory. He had four hundred dollars in his pocket. All the money he had in the world. What was he to do? He did not know, and did not care. He had lost the woman he loved—for whom had he to labor? Himself? Bah! The "foot-path" was a luxury and a release. He was half inclined to lock his trunk and send it to some charitable institution for the benefit of the inmates, go on one tremendous spree with his four hundred dollars, and when the last cent was used up start out on the tramp.
While these thoughts were looking out of his eyes he nearly ran against a ragged boy, who was lounging on the sidewalk.
"Why, Tommy!" he cried in surprise. "You here in New Orleans!"
But Tommy drew back and looked at him distrustfully.