The reader will perceive one strong bait carelessly thrown out by the auriferous or folliferous colonel--the five thousand dollars cash in hand. The immediate use of that is a strong incentive to the house. They covet the colonel's business: they think well of the proposed extension. Cotton is sure to be up, and under practical, experienced cultivation must yield a handsome fortune. The result is foreseen. The cotton-house and the colonel enter into the usual agreement of such transactions. The colonel leaves his five thousand dollars, and draws on that, and for as much more as may be necessary in securing the crop. The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South will smile at the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to such a full-blown, thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the colonel, who carries childish extravagances in his very dress; but he will judge hastily. We have seen this gaudy efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with solid diamonds. The careful economist North puts his superfluous thousands in government bonds, or gambles them away in Erie stocks, because he likes the increase of Jacob's speckled sheep. The Southerner invests his in diamonds because he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market value. There is method, too, in the colonel's associations, and all his acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable. His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings his way to Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers. He goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard manure, if possible, before February is over. He follows the shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins to fail him. He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in the local paper. He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his opinions. He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for deficient labor. He buys "bull-tongues," "cotton-shovels," "fifteen-inch sweeps," "twenty-inch sweeps," "team-ploughs with seven-inch twisters," and a "finishing sweep of twenty-six inches." He hears of other inventions, and orders them. The South is flooded with a thousand quack contrivances now, about as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of nut-crackers; but the colonel buys them. He is going to dispense with the hoe. That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his merchant--and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the