On the night of the 15th of September the elegant mansion of Mr. Wiggins, the pampered slave of Laflin, lay smiling and smirking in beautiful frescoes from turret to foundation stone; astral lamps hung in rich festoons, shimmered from dome and window and verandah, lighting up the broad pebbly avenues that rayed out from the central vestibule. It was a night of surprises, of merriment, of revelry, of rivalries; when the bat and owl came out of their hollow, the cat out of its lair, the negro out of his cabin, the ku-klux out of his skin. It was a night that punctuated reconstruction with a red-hot iron, and dropped its dead ashes upon a score of hearth-stones. It was a night that stealthily removed the fifth wheel from the chariot of the bosses and dropped its inert body into the road. Ah! there were surprises! Corporal Ephraim Gillum was to take unto himself a wife, and Priscilla Pinxly, a spinster, was to take unto herself husband. No doleful Jeremiads in this carnival; no forbidding of banns; no scandal on religion; no trespass on the law. "Ef dat ar white gal is a mine ter jine hersef ter dat cullud gemman, who's ergwine ter hender?" There were ferns and smilax, hollies and magnolias; there was an altar embellished with carnations, red and white; who shall say it was profaned by this ceremonial? There were heavily groined parlors reposing in velvety carpets, bric-a-brac and rugs. Here were the minions of reconstruction in red, white and blue, the favorites of this institutional era; here were the animated beauties of the town bedizened, bejeweled and beflowered; here was the pompous celebrant in patent-leather slippers and dress coat, Elder Tuttle, paying court to the ladies.