XI.

A YANKEE CARD-TABLE.*

WHEN I was about leaving New Orleans, standing upon the Levee, waiting for my luggage, I was thus addressed by a long, lean, down-Easter:

Say yeou, which of these things slips up fust ?"

"What?" said I.

"Which of these things slips up fust ?"

tr
"Do you mean which steamboat goes up

first ?"

"Yes, I'll be darned if I don't."

the river

That one," said I pointing to the nearest.

*By G. H. Hill.

"I'm in an awful hurry to git eout of this. It is so thundering hot, and I smell the yeller fever all reound."

This individual had a very intellectual forehead, measuring about an inch and a quarter in height, and punched in at the sides to match. His eyes were set deep in their sockets, and something like a pig's, only the colour was not as good. His nose pushed boldly out, as it started from the lower part of his forehead, as though it meant to be something, but when it had reached half its destination, it bent suddenly in like a parrot's beak. His upper lip was long and thin, and was stretched on a sort of rack, which was made by a couple of supernumerary teeth, which stuck out very prominently. His chin, too modest to attempt a rivalry with his projecting lip, receded backwards towards the throat, so that, to look at him in front, you did not perceive that he had any chin at all. His hair was very light and bristly. A snuff-coloured coat of domestic manufacture adorned the upper part of his person. It was an ancient affair. The velvet was worn from the collar in several places, but which was carefully patched with red flannel, being the nearest approach to the original colour of the collar that could be found in

his domestic menagerie of reserved rags. The buttons, which one would naturally look for at the bottom of the waist, had wandered up between his shoulders. The coat was remarkably long, extending from high up on the shoulders to the lower part of the calves of his legs. He was slightly roundshouldered, so that when he stood right up, a small lady might have found shelter in a rain storm in the vacancy left beween the coat and the back. His pants, to common observers, would have been called too short, but he denied this, averring that his legs were too long for his trowsers. On his arm hung an old-fashioned camblet cloak, with the lining of green baize hanging about a quarter of a yard below the edge of the camblet. He said this was no fault of the lining, anyhow; "it got wet, and t'other shrunk a leetle, but the lining stuck to it like blazes." The Yankee was exceedingly anxious to secure his passage by the first boat, and he sang out to some person :

"Say, yeou, where is the Captain of this consarn. Say, yeou, (to some one else,) I want the Captain. Look here, Nigger, show a feller the Captain. Look here, you black sarpint, don't stick out your lips at me. Wal, I swow, I'll give anybody three cents that will show me the Captain."

The Captain, hearing the noise, stepped forward, and told the Yankee if he wished to see the Captain, he was commander of the boat.

"Dew tell? Wal, I swan, you have got a kind of commanding way about you, that's a fact." "What do you wish ?" said the Captain." "Wal, I want a bathe."

"Very well, jump into the river, there is plenty of water."

"Well, don't I tell you to jump in, you can swim across if you like; we shall not start just yet."

"I want a bathe to lie down in. Now do you know what I mean, darn you?"

"Oh, you want a berth ?"

"Wal, darn you, didn't I say bathe? I know what I'm about, I guess."

"I will accommodate you as far as I can," said the Captain, "but I've nothing but a mattrass to offer, and that is upon the cabin floor."

"Dew tell."

"It is the only one that is vacant, and the cabin floor is covered with them, so you had better secure it at once."

"Wal, then, I guess I'd better turn right in."

I omitted to mention that he carried a valise in his hand. Some one rather impertinently asked him what he had in it.

"Wal," said he, "I don't know that it's any of your business, but I don't mind telling on you. There is two shirts, one clean, t'other dirty; a pair of pants about as good as new, only a leetle worn here and there, and a pair of pistols. D'ye want I should take 'em out and show you?"

When he went down to turn in, he put the valise under his head, wrapped his old cloak around him, and threw himself, as he said, "into the arms of omnibus." The mattrasses on the other side of him, were occupied by some rough Kentucky boatmen. In the middle of the night, these men got up and commenced playing cards. No table being handy, they made use of the back of our Yankee friend for one, and chalked the reckoning of the game upon the camblet cloak, which surrounded the body of the unconscious sleeper. They became interested in the game, and began to lay down their cards with a might of fist, and earnestness of manner, which soon roused up our sleeping friend. He attempted to rise, but was held down by one of the party, who exclaimed: