Before the Wayanda had reached the old battleground where what we would now call a sharp skirmish added the 8th of January to our public holidays, and gave the country one of its most famous Presidents, she was met by a tug containing a number of the officials, and some of the prominent lawyers of the city, come down to welcome the Chief Justice. Among them were natives of the South, and gentlemen whose interests were all wrapped up in New Orleans. But a day or two, before the city papers had published Mr. Chase’s remarks to the Charleston negroes, and much angry comment had been excited by this “desecration of the judicial ermine” and the sanction given to the claims of the negroes for suffrage; yet nothing could have exceeded the cordiality of his reception. His host was a young sugar-planter, born here, and inheriting large estates and many slaves from his father. Fortunately for the young man, much of his boyhood had been spent abroad, and when, at the age of seventeen, the sudden death of his father recalled him from St. Petersburg and made him a millionaire, he was measurably free from the ideas which slavery steadily instilled. When the Emancipation Proclamation came, his plantations were in the exempted parishes; but he was clear-sighted enough to see the inevitable end, and sagacious enough to recognize it as already practically accomplished. He gathered his slaves together, told them that henceforth they might consider themselves free, and proposed a bargain for their services, if they were willing to remain at their old places. They stipulated for rations, and an average of between eight and ten dollars wages per month, which was promptly paid. They have been working steadily ever since, and Mr. May now states that, in spite of the demoralizing effects of the war, to say nothing of the actual ravages of guerrillas, his principal plantation has been as profitable under the free-labor system as it was formerly, when labor cost him nothing. Like most of the wealthy sugar-planters, Mr. May keeps up his town house, and, indeed, spends the greater part of his time in the city, where, for a year or two past, official duties have required his presence. At the age of twenty-three, he holds the position of United States Treasurer, appointed thereto mainly for the reason that he was the most responsible loyal Southerner then to be found in the city. Even he had served for a season in the Rebel service—to have stayed out of it, he says, would have been to have sacrificed his property—but he contrived to get back as soon as New Orleans fell, and was among the very first to present himself before General Butler to take the oath of allegiance.