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Updated: September 29, 2025
I never beheld there my fancy realized of a band of gleeful negroes hoeing cane to the music of the banjo. There are no wild bandanna-trees, and no tame ones, either. The slaves of Mr. Mellasys never danced, except under the whip of a very noisome person who acted as overseer. There were no sleek and sprightly negresses in gay turbans, and no iced eau sucré.
Derby Deblore, my other self, my Pylades, my Damon, my fidus Achades in New York; but, unless they found Derby and compelled him to testify, they could not alienate my Saccharissa. I gave her a touching glance, as Mellasys Plickaman closed his reading of my private papers.
For these I exchanged the name and social position of a Chylde, and my own, I trust, not unattractive person. I deemed that I gave myself away dirt-cheap, excuse again the colloquialism; the transaction seems to require such a phrase, for there is no doubt that Mr. Mellasys was greatly objectionable.
It was certainly very illogical; but his neighbors who owned slaves insisted upon turning up their noses at Mellasys, because he still kept up his slave-pen on Touchpitchalas Street, New Orleans.
Indeed, our general views of life harmonized. "I dare say you have heard," said Mellasys, "from some of the bloated aristocrats of my section that I was a slave-dealer once." "Such a rumor has reached me," rejoined I. "And I was surprised to find, that, in some minds of limited intelligence and without development of the logical faculty, there was a prejudice against the business."
But, alas! we have no hereditary legislators; and though I feel myself competent to wear the strawberry-leaves, or even to sit upon a throne, I have not been willing to submit to the unsavory contacts of American political life. Mr. Mellasys Plickaman took advantage of my ignorance. When several gentlemen of the neighborhood were calling upon me in the absence of Mr.
"Ah! a Southerner!" said I. "Pray, allow the harmless weed to serve as a token of amity between our respective sections." Mr. Mellasys grasped my hand. "Take a drink, Mr. ?" said he. "Bratley Chylde," rejoined I, filling the hiatus, "and I shall be most happy." The name evidently struck him. It was a combination of all aristocracy and all plutocracy.
To marry the daughter of the great sugar-planter of Louisiana I would have taken medicines far more unpalatable and assafoetidesque than any thus far offered. Meanwhile Mr. Mellasys Plickaman, cousin of my betrothed, had changed his tactics and treated me with civility and confidence. We drank together freely, sometimes to the point of inebriation.
I am aware that a rival has rights, and that a defeated suitor may, according to the code, calumniate and slander the more fortunate one. I have done so myself. But it seems to me that there should be limits; and I cannot but think that Mr. Mellasys Plickaman overstepped the limits of fair play, when he took advantage of my last night's inebriety to possess himself of my journal and letters.
He was evidently abashed, and covered his confusion by lighting a cigar and smoking it with the lighted end in his mouth. This is a habit of many persons in the South, who hence are called Fire-Eaters. Mellasys Plickaman here changed the subject to horses, which I do understand, and my visitors presently departed. "How happily the days of Thalaba went by!" as the poet has it.
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