“This little creature--this _Trochilus obsidionalis_--this blockade-running tomtit--is full of joy. He has rich food to eat every day. He goes to the show every evening, when he is not on duty. He has a fine shirt on his back; patent-leather boots on his feet; the pick and choice of a dozen houses. He is of any age--chiefly of the conscript age; ranges singly or in couples; haunts auction houses; dodges enrolling officers; eats canvass-backs; smells of greenbacks; swears allegiance to both sides; keeps faith with neither; is hand and glove with ABE’S detectives as well as with WINDER’S Plugs; smuggles in an ounce of quinine for the Confederate Government, and smuggles out a pound of gold for the Lincolnites; fishes in troubled waters; runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds; sings Yankee Doodle through one nostril, and My Maryland through the other; is on good terms with everybody--especially with himself--and, withal, is as great a rascal as goes unhung. “He has sports of his own; roguish tricks of his own, of which a hearty hatred of humdrum, honest people is the basis. He has his own occupations, such as running for hacks, which he hires at fabulous prices; crossing the Potomac in all kinds of weather; rubbing off Yankee trade-marks and putting English labels in their stead. He has a currency of his own, slips of green paper, which have an unvarying and well regulated circulation throughout this gipsy band. “He is never satisfied with his pantaloons unless they have a watch-fob, and never satisfied with his watch-fob unless it contains a gold watch. Sometimes he has two watch-fobs; sometimes a score. “This rosy child of Richmond lives, develops, gets into and out of scrapes--a merry witness of our social unrealities. He looks on ready to laugh; ready also for something else, for pocketing whatever he can lay his hands on. Whoever you are, you that call yourselves Honor, Justice, Patriotism, Independence, Freedom, Candour, Honesty, Right, beware of the grinning blockade-runner. He is growing. He will continue to grow. “Of what clay is he made? Part Baltimore street-dirt, part James River mud, best part and worst part sacred soil of Palestine. What will become of him in the hands of the potter, chance? Heaven grant that he may be ground into his original powder before he is stuck up on our mantel-pieces as a costly vase, in which the choice flowers of our civilization can but wither and die.”