_Sugar_, as he was familiarly styled, was an old man, apparently about fifty years of age, and was clad in a coarse suit of brown linsey-woolsey. His pants were patched at each knee, and around the ankles they had worn off into picturesque points--his coat was not of the modern close-fitting cut, but hung in loose and easy folds upon his broad shoulders, while the total absence of buttons upon this garment, exhibited the owner's contempt for the storm and the tempest. A coarse shirt, tied at the neck with a piece of twine, completed his body covering. His head was ornamented with an old woollen cap, of divers colors, below which beamed a broad, humorous countenance, flanked by a pair of short, funny little grey whiskers. A few wrinkles marked his brow, but time could not count them as sure chronicles of his progress, for Sugar's hearty, sonorous laugh oft drove them from their hiding place. Across his shoulder was thrown a sack, in each end of which he was bearing to the scene of political action, a keg of _bran new whiskey_, of his own manufacture, and he strode forward on his moccason covered feet, encumbered as he was, with all the agility of youth. Sugar had long been the standing candidate of Nianga county, for the legislature, and founded his claim to the office upon the fact of his being the first “squatter” in that county--his having killed the first bar there, ever killed by a white man, and, to place his right beyond cavil, he had 'stilled the first keg of whiskey! These were strong claims, which urged in his comic rhyming manner would have swept the “diggins,” but Sugar, when the canvass opened, always yielded his claim to some liberal purchaser of his fluid, and duly announced himself a candidate for the next term. “Here you air, old fellar!” shouted an acquaintance, “allays on hand 'bout 'lection.” “Well, Nat.,” said Sugar, “you've jest told the truth as easy as ef you'd taken sum of my mixtur-- 'Whar politicians congregate, I'm allays thar, at any rate!'” “Set him up!--set the old fellar up somewhar, and let us take a univarsal liquor!” was the general shout. “Hold on, boys,--keep cool and shady,” said old Sugar, “whar's the candidates?--none of your splurgin round till I git an appropriation fur the sperits. Send em along and we'll negotiate fur the fluid, arter which I shall gin 'em my instructions, and they may then per-cede to 'Talk away like all cre-a-tion, What they knows about the nation.'”