'Wal, I _did_ leav'; but I leff a piece of mi mind ahind. I toled har I'de buy thet ar 'oman ef she cost all I war wuth and I had ter pawne my sole ter git the money; an' I added, jest by way uv sweet'nin' the pill, thet I owed all I hed ter har husband, an' dident furget _my_ dets ef she did _hern_, an' ef his own wife disgraced him, I'd be d----d ef _I_ wud. 'Wal, I've got th' ma'am an' har boy ter hum, an' my 'oman hes tuk ter har a heep. I doan't no w'en the sale's ter cum off, but ye may bet hi' on my bein' thar, an' I'll buy har ef I hev ter go my hull pile on har, an' borrer th' money fur ole Pomp. But _he'll_ go cheap, 'case the Cunnel's deth nigh dun him up. It clean killed Ante Lucey. She never held her hed up arter she heerd 'Masser Davy' war ded, fur she sot har vary life on him. Don't ye feel consarned 'bout the ma'am--I knows ye sot hi' on har. _I'll buy har_ shore. Thet an' deth ar th' onely things thet I knows on, in this world, jess now, that ar SARTIN.' Such is Andy's letter. Misspelled and profane though it be, I would not alter a word or a syllable of it. It deserves to be written in characters of gold and hung up in the sky, where it might be read by all the world. And it _is_ written in the sky--in the great record book--and it will be read when you and I, reader, meet the assembled universe, to give account of what _we_ have done and written. God grant that our record may show some such deed as that! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The whisky was kept in a back room, above ground, because the dwelling had no cellar. The fluid was kept safely under lock and key, and the farmer accounted for that by saying that his negroes would steal nothing but whisky. Few country houses at the South have a cellar--that apartment deemed so essential by Northern housekeepers. The intervening space between the ground and the floor is there left open, to allow of a free circulation of air.] [Footnote 2: No regular dinner-hour is allowed the blacks on most turpentine-plantations. Their food is usually either taken with them to the woods or carried there by house-servants, at stated times.] SOUTHERN RIGHTS. The right to poison bullets, The right to rifle graves, To cut our prisoners' gullets, Or treat them like our slaves; The right to use the savage To aid us in our fight, To freely scalp and ravage, Each is a Southern right. Call not these claims Satanic, They're far beyond your ken: How can a low mechanic Know aught of gentlemen? MACCARONI AND CANVAS. VI. ON THE PINCIO.