SUCKER STATE.

"Boys," said Bill Hughes," go up to my store and roll down a bar'l of m'lasses: we'll sweeten this hunter of Kentuckey."

"He's gin many a hog the ear-ache," said another.

Harris said not a word, but his eyes looked the fierce rage that burned within him, while his teeth were hard set and lips compressed. The barrel of molasses was brought and the head stove in.

"Now, boys, pick cotton like Mississip' niggers, while we peal him," said Riley.

Peal'd, and with hands and feet tied, Riley and Hughes lifted him and dipped him candlewise several times into the thick molasses.

"Now, then, shut pan, ole feller, or ye'll get sweetened inside and out," said Hughes, as Harris's feet cut a half circle in the air, and his head disappeared down in the barrel.

"You cussed suckers, will you strangle me?" he sputtered out when his head came to daylight.

"Wal, yes, putty much, not quite, I reckon," said one of the Regulators; and down went the bushy head again.

"Thar, you is sweetened!" said Riley. "Now, boys, we'll gin him a dressin'," and the little patches of cotton were plastered on thick.

"Thar, you look like a 'spectable white man, Hank Harris! A gen'lman in disguise," said Hughes.

"Jist rite for them Orleans fancy-dress and masquerade balls," said another.

"If you don't keep a carriage, you shall travel by rail-road," said Bill Riley, as they seated him on the edge of the rail, and tied his hands and feet, and, with one on each side, trotted him about the village, giving him rather more jolting, however, than, as a passenger on a rail-road, he might expect.

"Thar, boys, we'll gin him a chance to pay his rent in Kentuck, and make swankey of the Ohio," said Hughes, as they placed him in a skiff, which they rowed to a sandbar near the other shore; here they tied him to an old snag, and placed his rifle (without a flint) and a knife beside him, and left him there the Ohio River rising eight inches an hour. As they started for the shore, the Regulators sang out

"You won't shoot nary nuther hog, Hank Harris!"

"Nor gouge ole Uncle Nat, I reckon." "You won't hick'ry your wife much more, ole hoss!"

"Who's buzzards' bait now, Hank Harris?" "I'll gin yer dogs a pill as 'ill settle their stomicks for 'em, Hank."

SUCKER STATE.

"Buffalo fish is great on cotton, you know, Harris !"

seen.

The next morning, the bar was covered, also the snag, and Hank Harris was not to be The Regulators visited his cabin; his family and "plunder" were gone. He would have undoubtedly been left to perish on the bar, but for his wife, who, notwithstanding his treatment of her, clung to him to the last. She went to him after dark, released him, took him home, cleansed and clothed him, and, packing up, they floated out of the Ohio and down the muddy Mississippi, and we never saw them again. Some six months after, a steam-boat got aground on the "Little Chain," about two miles above C- -a, and I took my little dug-out and paddled to her, to get some good cigars and hear the news from below. From the clerk I learned that a man answering Hank Harris's description had been killed in a fight with the blacklegs at "Natchez-underthe-Hill,"

XI.

A MODEST ESTIMATE OF OUR OWN
COUNTRY.

WHAT nation presents such a spectacle as ours, of a confederated government, so complicated, so full of checks and balances, over such a vast extent of territory, with so many varied interests, and yet moving so harmoniously! I go within the walls of the capitol at Washington, and there, under the starspangled banners that wave amid its domes, I find the representatives of three territories, and of twenty-four nations-nations in many senses they may be called-that have within them all the germ and sinew to raise a greater people than many of the proud principalities of Europe, all speaking one language-all acting with one heart, and all burning with the same enthusiasm-the love and glory of our common country,-even if parties do

exist, and bitter domestic quarrels now and then arise.

I take my map, and I mark whence they come. What a breadth of latitude, and of longitude too,-in the fairest portion of North America! What a variety of climate, and then what a variety of production! What a stretch of sea-coast, on two oceans with harbours enough for all the commerce of the world! What an immense national domain, surveyed, and unsurveyed, of extinguished, and unextinguished Indian titles within the states and territories, and without, estimated, in the aggregate, to be 1,090,871,753 acres, and to be worth the immense sum of 1,363,589,69 dollars,750,000,000 acres of which are without the bounds of the states and the territories, and are yet to make new states and to be admitted into the Union! Our annual revenue, now, from the sales, is over three millions of dollars. Our national debt, too, is already more than extinguished, and yet within fifty-eight years, starting with a population of about three millions, we have fought the war of independence, again not ingloriously struggled with the greatest naval power in the world, fresh with laurels won on sea and land, and now we have a population of over