world had given up literature, and, following the example set by the New York Corporation, taken itself very generally to the trade of President-making. Wilkins, whose publications were so highly respectable that they invariably remained on his shelves, and had in more than one instance become so weighty that they had dragged the house down, thought the pretty feet of some few of the female characters in this volume a little too much exposed to suit the delicate sensibilities of his fair readers. Applejack, than whose taste none could be more exquisite, and who only wanted to feel a manuscript to tell whether it would do to publish it, made it a point, he said, not to publish novels with characters in them that would drink to excess. As for the very fast firm of Blowers & Windspin, celebrated for flooding the country with cheap books of a very tragic character, why, it had work enough on hand for the present. Blowers was blessed with a wife of a literary turn of mind, which was very convenient, inasmuch as all the novels with which the house astonished the world were submitted to her, and what she could not read she was sure to pass a favorable judgment upon. The house had in press four highly worked up novels of Mrs. Blowers’ own, Mr. Blowers said,—all written in the very short space of six weeks. She was a remarkable woman, and extraordinary clever at novels, Blowers concluded with an air of magnificent self-satisfaction. These works, having been written by steam, Mr. Windspin, the unior partner, was expected to put into the market with a very large amount of high pressure. Our friends in South Carolina, we knew, would be anxious to see what we had written of them in this volume, and we have made and shall continue to make it a point to gratify them: hence our haste in this instance. Conscious, too, that life is the great schoolmaster, and that public taste is neither to be regulated by a few, nor kept at any one point, we caught up a publisher with only one candidate for the “White House” on his shoulders, and with his assistance, now respectfully submit this our humble effort. NEW YORK, Sept., 1856. JUSTICE IN THE BY-WAYS. CHAPTER I. TOM SWIGGS’ SEVENTH INTRODUCTION ON BOARD OF THE BRIG STANDFAST. It is in the spring of 1847 this history commences.