The history of the West and Southwest in the first half of the nineteenth century, is replete with romance, or with truth stranger than fiction. The sudden rise of a moneyed aristocracy in the West, furnishes a theme for the pen of a historian of no mean ability. This American aristocracy, diverse from the aristocracy of the old world, who stimulated by family pride, preserved the history of a long line of ancestors, born to distinction, and holding the tenure of office by inheritance, could trace the heroic deeds of their fathers back to the dark ages, while some of our American aristocrats are unable to give a true history of their grandfather. In the first half of the nineteenth century the cultivation of the cotton plant in the Southern States assumed gigantic proportions. The Northern States bartered their slaves for money, and the forest of the great Mississippi river fell by the ax of the colored man; salvation from the _demons of want_ was preached by the nigger and the mule. Young Simon was a cotton planter, inheriting from his father four plantations of one thousand acres, and more than six hundred slaves. Young Simon knew very little of the history of his family, and the more he learned of it, the less he wanted to know. His father in his lifetime, had learned the history of Roxie Daymon alias Roxie Fairfield, up to the time she left Louisville, and had good reason to believe that Roxie Daymon, or her descendants, also Suza Fairfield, or her descendants still survived. But as we have said, S. S. Simon stood in the half-way-house, between the honest man and the rogue. He reflected upon the subject mathematically, as he said mentally, “Twenty thousand dollars and twenty years interest--why! it would break me up; I wish to die a _rich man_.” And onward he strove, seasoned to hardship in early life, he slept but little, the morning bell upon his plantations sounded its iron notes up and down the Mississippi long before daylight every morning, that the slaves might be ready to resume their work as soon as they could see. Simon's anxiety to die a _rich man_ had so worked upon his feelings for twenty years, that he was a hard master and a keen financier. The time to die never entered his brain; for it was all absorbed with the _die rich_ question. Unexpectedly to him, death's white face appeared when least expected, from hard work, and exposure, S. S. Simon was taken down with the _swamp fever_; down--down--down for a few days and then the _crisis_, the last night of his suffering was terrible, the attending physician and his only son stood by his bedside. All night he was delirious, everything he saw was in the shape of Roxie Daymon, every movement made about the bed, the dying man would cry, “_Take Roxie Daymon away._”