I deemed that I gave myself away dirt-cheap,--excuse again the colloquialism; the transaction seems to require such a phrase,--for there is no doubt that Mr. Mellasys was greatly objectionable. It was certainly very illogical; but his neighbors who owned slaves insisted upon turning up their noses at Mellasys, because he still kept up his slave-pen on Touchpitchalas Street, New Orleans. Besides,--and here again the want of logic seems to culminate into rank absurdity,--he was viewed with a purely sentimental abhorrence by some, because he had precluded a reclaimed fugitive from repeating his evasion by roasting the soles of his feet before a fire until the fellow actually died. The fact, of coarse, was unpleasant, and the loss considerable,--a prime field-hand, with some knowledge of carpentry and a good performer on the violin,--but evasions must be checked, and I cannot see why Mr. Mellasys's method was too severe. Mr. Mellasys was also considered a very unscrupulous person in financial transactions,--indeed, what would be named in some communities a swindler; and I have heard it whispered that the estimable, but somewhat obese and drowsy person who passed as his wife was not a wife, ceremonially speaking. The dusky hues of her complexion were also attributed to an infusion of African blood. There was certainly more curl in her hair than I could have wished; and Saccharissa's wiggy looks waged an irrepressible conflict with the unguents which strove to reduce their crispness. Indeed, why should I not be candid? Mellasys _per se_ was a pill, Mrs. Mellasys was a dose, and Saccharissa a bolus, to one of my refined and sensitive taste. But the sugar coated them. To marry the daughter of the great sugar-planter of Louisiana I would have taken medicines far more unpalatable and assafoetidesque than any thus far offered. Meanwhile Mr. Mellasys Plickaman, cousin of my betrothed, had changed his tactics and treated me with civility and confidence. We drank together freely, sometimes to the point of inebriation. Indeed, unless he put me to bed, on the evening before the day of the events I am about to describe, I do not know how I got there. Morning dawned on the sixth of November. I was awakened, as usual, by the outcries of the refractory negroes receiving their matinal stripes in the whipping-house. Feeling a little languid and tame, I strolled down to witness the spectacle. It stimulated me quite agreeably. The African cannot avoid being comic. He is the grotesque element in our civilization. He will be droll even under the severest punishment. His contortions of body, his grimaces, his ejaculations of "O Lor'! O Massa!" as the paddle or the lash strikes his flesh, are laughable in the extreme.