Upon inquiring of Isaac what use had been made of the forty-six millions two hundred thousand dollars, he informed me that most of it remained invested in notes of hand. Money was scarce, and was expected to continue so until the onion crop had been got in. It was easy to see that the city had sadly declined from its meridian splendour. In fact, Dogtown has suffered a complete downfall, for hardly anybody now speaks of it as a city. They have as much land as ever, and so long as it continued to be valued at their own price, they were as rich as Jews; but, unfortunately, it fell in value the moment they expected the purchasers to pay for it. The Dogtowners are poor enough at present, but they are not the first, and probably will not be the last people who have ruined themselves by building a city on speculation. X. THE COON-HUNT; OR, A FENCY COUNTRY. ’Tis really astonishin’ what a monstrous sight of mischief there is in a pint of rum! If one of ’em was to be submitted to an analization, as the doctors call it, it would be found to contain all manner of devilment that ever entered the hed of man, from cussin’ and stealin’, up to murder and whippin’ his own mother, and nonsense enuff to turn all the men in the world out of their senses. If a man’s got any badness in him, it’ll bring it out, jest as sassafras-tea does the measles, and if he’s a good-for-nothin’ sort of a feller, without no bad traits in pertikeler, it’ll bring out all his greenness. It affects different people in different ways—it makes some men monstrous brave and full of fight, and some it makes cowards; some it makes rich and happy, and some poor and miserable; and it has a different effect on different people’s eyes—some it makes see double, and some it makes so blind that they can’t tell themselves from a side of bacon. One of the worst cases of rum-foolery that I’ve heard of for a long time, tuk place in Pineville last fall. Bill Sweeney and Tom Culpepper is the two greatest old coveys in our settlement for ’coon-huntin’. The fact is, they don’t do much of anything else, and when _they_ can’t ketch nothin’ you may depend ’coons is scarce. Well, one night they had everything reddy for a regular hunt, but owin’ to some extra good fortin’, Tom had got a pocket-pistol, as he called it, of reglar old Jimmakey, to keep off the rumatics. After takin’ a good startin’ horn, they went out on their hunt, with their lite-wood torch a-blazin’, and the dogs a-barkin’ and yelpin’ like forty thousand. Ev’ry now and then stoppin’ to wait for the dogs, they would drink one another’s helth, till they begun to feel very comfortable, and chatted away ’bout one thing and another, without mindin’ much which way they was gwine. Bimeby they cum to a fence. Well, over they got, ’thout much difficulty. “Who’s fence is this?” ses Bill. “’Taint no matter,” ses Tom, “let’s take suthin’ to drink.”