"I'm discharged out of gratitude, sir. But for me the firm would have been insolvent-burst up-no help for it; and, to-day, Warford, Leppy & Co. stands in New York-in the world—A 1. And who's to be thanked for it? Mr. Warford, you know me of old; so I needn't tell you, Ropey's the chap!"

Mr. Warford listened patiently to Ropey's story (which he told after his own fashion), desired him to be at the store at a certain hour, within a day or two, and he would plead his case with the firm to get him reinstated.

Ropey thought the thing settled, the big wheel had been put in motion, the smaller ones would have to work with it; his place as a little wheel would be filled by Ropey. With Ropey in again, the machinery would work to perfection. On the day appointed, he was waiting for Mr. Warford, and entered the store at the same time as Mr. Warford.

"Oh! here you are, Ropey; come along with me."

"Good morning to you, this time, Mr. Dolan," said Ropey, as he strutted past his redoubtable foe.

The result of Mr. Warford's intercession was, as might be expected, a severe reprimand, and reinstatement in office.

Ropey did not venture into the store until he had satisfied himself that all the clerks and porters, especially Dolan, were informed of his being again in power. He made his appearance with a handful of letters for delivery. Of the rebuke he received, he said nothing; but, placing himself in one of the gangways between the dry-goods boxes, folded his arms across his breast, and, looking Dolan steady in the face, cried, “Discharge Ropey!" Then, striking his hat firmly down on his head, he added, "Ropey's the chap!"

Ropey did not live long to enjoy his triumph. friend was with him who entreated him to turn his

During his illness a thoughts to another

world. "Why, I saved Warford, Leppy & Co.-and they know

Ropey's the chap!"

"You must believe in the-"

"Big wheel-wheel within a wheel-"

"Don't you wish to enter heaven?" said his friend.

"In course," he faintly replied.

big wheels-little whee-"

"Wheels-beggin' your par

"Then you must put your faith in—”

Ropey, interrupting-"Big wheels-leave that to me—for getting into heaven, Ropey's the chap." Shortly after, the little wheel was taken from the machine, and, contrary to Ropey's expectation, it did not stop.

A VISIT TO JEFFERSON DAVIS'S PLANTATION.

IN TWO PARTS PART II.

ANXIOUS to see what the first rays of the morning sun would reveal around the comfortable quarters which had given me rest, I arose early for this purpose. I had slept in Jefferson Davis's own sleeping-room, and naturally could not avoid reflecting how he must have slept upon the bed of thorns made for him in the rebel capital, and how often and deeply he must have sighed to exchange his dim prospects of glory, and with it his dread of infamy, for the peaceful home which he had forsaken; and, with detestation of his treason, my pity for the man was even greater.

From a general view, the place looked a terrestrial paradise, from which those put there to dress and to till it had been driven out or had fled. Breakfast taken, I went first with the young ladies to the negro quarters. Mr. Davis had probably not carefully studied some points in the life of the great prototype of patriarchs; for Abraham, when once the property and rights of his friends were violently as-ailed, armed all his servants, three hundred and eighteen in number, whom he seems to have specially trained beforehand for such emergencies, pursued and punished the offenders, and restored the captured person's goods. This patriarch of the Mississippi and his friends had gone forth to avenge an organized violation of their rights, leaving their servants at home to care for the plantations. The masters made sorry work in the war, as did the servants also in the planting. The issue might have been different had these people always followed the patriarchal example, to labor with their servants at home, and then lead the latter forth with them to war, when they had grievances calling for redress.

The dwellings of these laborers, standing as they did mainly in two rows, with about the width of a street between them, and covered with thin glistening coats of snowy whiteness, had a cheerful aspect. The structures themselves were as substantial as most farmers in the North make for their swine, but not so good as they provide for their horses and cows; still, to the credit of the lord let it be said, they were as good as any thing on the plantation, except his own mansion, and looked as if they might be the abodes of comfort; and as to good barns and other out-houses of any kind, they do not belong to the region.

1

The interest attaching to these huts centered in the occupants. There was one who, for his age and the reference made to him as an oracle, might have been called the patriarch of the plantation. The memory of this old man distinctly embraced the battle of Eutaw Springs, which was fought on the 8th of September, 1781, near his master's plantation in South Carolina. If then grown to manhood, as he supposed, he must have been at least one hundred years old at the time of our visit. His sole occupation was to sit by the fire, or elsewhere, according to the weather. It might have been an interesting question in what sense this man's soul still lived in his body. It had, at least, so far withdrawn its attention from some parts of the bodily system, that injury could make considerable progress without detection. An ague chill he could feel, but in attempting to drive it off, he had drawn so near to the fire as to have seriously burnt both knees without perceiving it, giving the latter reason to complain of the unequal distribution of his care over the body-that in attending to the chill which crept over his back, he had thrust his knees into the fire. Among the various fabrics and patterns which entered into his pantaloons, the original could not be detected; perhaps both this and a dozen of its carliest successors were already extinct. It would doubtless be conceded that he occupied the same body when our country was in the throes of its first birth in the war of the Revolution, and in those of its second, in the war of the great slave rebellion, though no particle of its matter is the same; and so this body also may be wearing the same clothes as then, though no thread of the original remains. But I leave this momentous question, with all its difficulties, to the metaphysicians, to whom it properly belongs.

In another question I felt a deeper interest. This man was a preacher. What was his inner life? his system of God and man, and their relations, of the universe and the life to come? Had he any thing more connected than the fragments which he threw out in his disjointed utterances? His Scripture texts were doubtless the echoes of echoes, repeated, until in many of them no traces of the originals remained. Sometimes, indeed, their force was retained, but again they could only be identified as whimsical caricatures, or not at all. The echo re-utters the syllable which is last in the listener's mind; so the old man's texts say just what his heart feels. He might as well make his words, as to give to Bible words his heart's meaning. The teachings of the Book, whose central truth he had so long proclaimed, had just begun to reach him more directly than ever before. A fair young girl from the North was daily reading to him from the Bible;

but it was too late. No news from earth or heaven could give him more distinct or other images than those already in his mind. Born to a worse than Egyptian bondage, after sighing during his long and weary life for freedom, he had never apprehended the meaning of that word. His mental range of view did not take in the earthly "land of promise" just opening before his people. Objects like men as trees walking presented themselves to his blurred vision, and he fancied that a landscape of wondrous beauty was just before him, brought somehow by that strange movement in the land, of which his dying senses caught the rumbling sound. In the Scripture lessons read to him, the words Canaan, Shiloh, Bethel, Jerusalem, love, joy, peace, heaven, and a hundred others, were all synonyms. The distinctions of the language which he had so poorly learned were fast fading away, and these, together with the organs to utter the words, and the need of their use, were about to yield to higher powers of emotion and more perfect media of expression. As the hordes, entranced by the fervid appeals and glowing descriptions of Peter the Hermit, and others of that day, were not clear as to the Holy Land to be sought, whether it were in heaven or on earth, or suspended somehow between the one and the other, so this man, confused at the din of war, and the perpetual stir and moving to and fro of those around him, was not quite certain of his whereabouts and his whither, and perhaps almost felt that he must be at the moment of passing the boundary line of the two worlds, and was perhaps seeing in those about him figures belonging to both.

It would be profitable for the so-called enlarged and disciplined mind to review his Christianity by the side of that of the unlettered slave. The central facts and truths are the same-God's paternity, man's sin, Christ's mediation. But the one has connected with this a thrilling history extending back six thousand years, culminating nearly two thousand years ago at Jerusalem, which history, as it exists in his mind, is illustrated and adorned by its alliance with philosophy, science, and art, and thus forming a grand and beautiful system, which, however, no man's life is long enough to master in detail. The other has a few precepts of the Master, with no distinct history, geography, or science; he merely embellishes the central truths with the traditions of African fetichism, and illustrates and impresses them by the experiences of the corn and cotton fields-experiences which have taught him God's paternal character as we can never learn it from Thus compared, our superiority over our swarthy brethren is not such as ought to make us feel proud of our attainments.

ours.

I shall leave further observations to be made upon these huts, to be grouped with others of the same kind, and turn to the mansion of the Anglo-American lord. Shall pilgrimages hereafter be made thither, as to Mount Vernon? We might, indeed, seem to have set the example; but our purpose was more to see the contraband camps. But there is quite enough of the old rebel leaven in the South to lead to such worship. It shows itself in the utter disregard of the laws of taste and sound policy. Who could have thought that, the cause once lost, men would still be found to rejoice in proclaiming their prominence in the rebellion? Who, after accepting in good faith the defeat and its consequences, and craving pardon of the Government, should delight in keeping before the country reports of battles and the achievements of statesmanship, all to the advantage of their own men? Who would suppose that one would be found willing to allude to the subject unless from necessity? And yet, in the legislative bodies and in political and literary periodicals, they seem to glory in such references. Instead, however, of making Davis Bend another Mount Vernon, perhaps the very pride which they still feel in the cause may tend to Mr. Davis's depreciation as its leader and loser-as the blaster of the hopes and prospects of the “Land they love."* There will be few pilgrimages to that shrine.

The neatness and comfort of even a substantial farm-house, to say nothing of a genteel residence in the North, were quite wanting. The building is too low for the ground it covers. But the large veranda, spacious halls, high ceilings, and marble jambs, though all else were awkward and out of taste, seemed in harmony with the ideas and plans of the late occupant. The furniture was not that used by Mr. Davis. I did not learn whither that had gone. A single piece was said to have belonged to the plantation, though it had probably not been used before as parlor furniture. This was a pair of iron fetters, of several times the weight which could be needed for any purpose but to frighten the poor laborers. I learned nothing of the use to which this had been put. The negroes spoke rather kindly of their old master, but they may have deemed the use of such an instrument kind treatment compared with something done by others. Unless a few of these shall be kept in memory of extinct institutions, they will soon be forgotten. I have even cherished so tender a concern for the feelings of our Southern brethren, as to doubt whether we ought thus to per

* The name of a monthly magazine, published in North Carolina, which furnishes a favorable specimen of the views here referred to.